They scheme, they plot, they dress to ensnare husbands. The gentlemen turn them into ridicule; they don't want them; they hold them very cheap. They say--I have heard them say it with sneering laughs many a time-- the matrimonial market is overstocked. Fathers say so likewise, and are angry with their daughters when they observe their manoeuvres--they order them to stay at home. What do they expect them to do at home? If you ask they would answer, sew and cook. They expect them to do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly, uncomplainingly, all their lives long, as if they had no germs of faculties for anything else-Charlotte Brontë, Shirley
It's easy to forget how lucky we are to have oportunities and freedoms equal to those of men. Thank God for women like Charlotte Brontë who refused to believe themselves inferior.
