ABSTRACT
In the above article, Miss Müller contrasts the very narrow view which in past ages society has taken of celibate lives, with the wider scope which greater freedom, individuality and education now affords to women. The lives of single women in early times were bounded by the cloister, which did in the days of their highest development combine a good deal of associate, intelligent and actively useful life; the life of convents however rapidly deteriorated into narrow dullness and uniformity, and when these had to some extent passed away, the isolated joyless lives to which single women were condemned, each in her own domestic circle, was hardly less cabined and confined. In the broader and freer development which modern life has brought with, it, in the additional capability for good which, is now placed within the reach of women exists "a cementing element" which will effect an increase of solidarity and unity throughout the nation. The majority of women have been hitherto taught to look on marriage, not only as their probable future, but as their only desirable future; the means by which they will attain not only ends, objects, desires of life, but the highest degree of mental and moral development attainable in a woman's nature. Miss Müller points out that as high a possibility exists within the reach of a single woman. If the married woman can count her children by twos or threes, the other may give the same sympathy, devotion and help to hundreds. Bacon once said: "Certainly the best works and of the greatest merit to the public have proceeded from the unmarried and childless man, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public," and in as far as this is true of a man, it is true now of a woman. We are ourselves disposed to believe that the noble development of life is less dependent upon the one external circumstance of marriage or celibacy than Bacon does; but women may certainly feel grateful to writers who, like Miss Müller, show them what noble 72possibilities are within the reach of the formerly despised "old maids."
