The long battle of woman and her friends for equal educational and
other opportunities is essentially won all along the line. Her
academic achievements have forced conservative minds to admit that her
intellect is not inferior to that of man. The old cloistral seclusion
and exclusion is forever gone and new ideals are arising. It has been
a noble movement and is a necessary first stage of woman's
emancipation. The caricatured maidens "as beautiful as an angel but as
silly as a goose" who come from the kitchen to the husband's study to
ask how much is two times two, and are told it is four for a man and
three for a woman, and go back with a happy "Thank you, my dear";
those who love to be called baby, and appeal to instincts half
parental in their lovers and husbands; those who find all the sphere
they desire in a doll's house, like Nora's, and are content to be
men's pets; whose ideal is the clinging vine, and who take no interest
in the field where their husbands struggle, will perhaps soon survive
only as a diminishing remainder. Marriages do still occur where
woman's ignorance and helplessness seem to be the chief charm to men,
and may be happy, but such cases are no farther from the present ideal
and tendency on the one hand than on the other are those which consist
in intellectual partnerships, in which there is no segregation of
interests but which are devoted throughout to joint work or enjoyment.
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