"
All creators are single-aimed. Never will the painter, sculptor, writer
lose sight of his art. Even in the intervals of rest and diversion which
are necessary to his health and growth, every thing he sees ministers to
his passion. Consciously or unconsciously, he makes each shape, color,
incident his own; sooner or later it will enter into his work.
So it must be with the woman who will create a home. There is an evil
fashion of speech which says it is a narrowing and narrow life that a
woman leads who cares only, works only for her husband and children; that
a higher, more imperative thing is that she herself be developed to her
utmost. Even so clear and strong a writer as Frances Cobbe, in her
otherwise admirable essay on the "Final Cause of Woman," falls into this
shallowness of words, and speaks of women who live solely for their
families as "adjectives."
In the family relation so many women are nothing more, so many women
become even less, that human conception may perhaps be forgiven for losing
sight of the truth, the ideal.
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