The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1898-02-14

but there is 10 knowing how much better
II might have been II Thaekeray had been
obliged 20 cover his manuscript wIta ,
lar-e piece % muslin work" The cozvlc-
ton faar y0u are about % aIsgraee your
family and incur the scorn Of gezEee'
psDHsr sAs uao9un.edlF q great in1es4se-
tu84 stimulus 70 tie wcrren writer's OF that
day II was abcat this ttzze that Char
loste Bronte married her fathers cur@te.
the Res AFtAaT Skcholss; ard before ins
Eenfeai bridegroom led her .. the altar he
e1seted from her 3 promise that sho would
never write another novel The pooT. dear
man thought he could stand the sumilia-
tloa % having married literary woman
ID she wosild oalg premise 70 bs literary no
more Marrying woman wHo had wrfi
ten novel seems 70 aave been IKE marry
Ing a woman with a past
Fha. large piece CT muslin work Is no
Iongev q necessary feature Of the literary
wan.ans desk; bUV the letters and chains
CT domestic dradgefy SIN hang heavy
about her, ard when she writes book, IN
the rare Encnasnss SJ0.eu from baking
sweeping nursing, cooking and sowing.
the critics OF the land rise I'D and COM
pare her work with mans work and damn
her with faint praise. In all the critical
estimates Of Mrs. ELEPHANTS work that
appeared after her death II was stated
that though a sweet, womanly writer. her
work coud not be called great. Wen,
hardly; great literary work is not pro-
6uced in such an environment as Ma
raret ollphanfs domestic life. IL is no
tlceable that the women whose literary
work approaches most nearly the stand
ard of mems work are those who were
unfetfered by household and family cares
II Is not probable that Sappho. burning
Sappho" ever made a loaf Of bread in
her life: George Sand never served an ap-
premiership at the washtub; Nine de
Staefs youth was not spent in housewor&
and plain sewing: George Eliot, after en-
tering on her career as a writer, seems
to have divorced herself completely from
domestic matters. and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning knew no more about houseNeeo-
ing and cooking than a Sis;ine Madonna.
Literary critics are daily weighing wo-
mans work and declaring with eXuitation
that no woman has ever produced a play
equal "a Sh2kespeare's, or an oratorio
equal to Handels. or poem like Para
disc Lost" All very true. Woman has
been too busy producing the Shakespeares,
The Handles. the Millions. and trying to
make the modern home n Paradise Re-
gained The pseudo-scientists who are
weighing her brain and assuring her that
she can never hope to do the literary work
that man has done are premature by about
800 years II Is not always the size OF
wornan's brain that keeps her from pro-
dacing the sort Of work man produces;
IL is frequently the size of her darning
basket. Ard when / think of women
who have borne from three to fourteen
children and filled the varied professions
Of nurse, cook. laundrcss. housenaid and
seamstsezs. and at the same time produced
immortal literature, / am dumb with adj
niTation. Milton. Shakespeare ard
Thackeray may well hide their diminished
heaGs before the work of literary women
like these.
IL Is said that the hands OF one OF our
best woman poets were strong and worn
with labor | wish they had been sculp-
tured In marble, as q perpetual witness 10
the domestic virtues Of the literary woman
and perpetual protest against the So
called science that weighs her brains and
her work against mans
Ida CALVERT oBENCHAIN.