Explore "The Education and Employment of Women" by Josephine E. Butler on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The economical position of women is one of those subjects on which there exists a "conspiracy of silence. " While most people, perhaps, imagine that nearly all women marry and are supported by their husbands, those who know better how women live, or die, have rarely anything to say on the subject. Such social problems as this are certainly painful; they may or may not be insoluble; they must not be ignored.
The phrase "to become a governess" is sometimes used as if it were a satisfactory outlet for any unsupported woman above the rank of housemaid. When we see advertisements in the newspapers, offering "a comfortable home," with no salary, as a sufficient reward for accomplishments of the most varied character, we sometimes wonder at the audacity of employers; but when we learn that such an advertisement, offering the situation of nursery governess, _unpaid_, was answered by _three hundred women_, our surprise has in it something of despair.