ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the change that has taken place in the position of women during the nineteenth century, and, like other truisms, this one also is somewhat of a neglected truth. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, speaking generally, only two of the occupations which women now practise were open to them, and those were domestic life and society. There were, it is true, a few literary women and blue-stockings; but, as a rule, the interests of women were restricted to pleasing men, to the family, and to the household. No professions were open to them; social and philanthropic work in any organized sense was unknown; games, save of the feeblest sort, would have been deemed unsuitable; and the light French sandalled shoes of our grandmothers would not permit of their walking in the muddy lanes which did duty for roads.
