They are ornaments of the estate. These ask nothing beyond their function as dolls, and hate all attempts to elevate womankind. But there are domestic Women, who order a house and are not mere drudges, adorn it, and are not mere dolls, but Women. They are not wholly taken up with their function as housekeeper, wife and mother. With us in New England, in all the North, it is a very large class.
Every shoemaker looks on that proverb with appropriate contempt.
Shoemaking is an accident of his manhood, not manhood an accident of his shoemaking. Still, a great many men at this day have just the same esteem for women that those haughty persons of whom I have spoken had for mechanics and for merchants. A great many sour proverbs there are, which look the same way. But, just now, such is the intellectual education of women of the richer class in all our large towns, that these sour proverbs will not go down so well as of old. The domestic function does not consume all her time or talent.