“‘I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me.’
“‘What is that?’ said Will....
“‘That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quiteknow what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divinepower against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the strugglewith darkness narrower.’”—Middlemarch, Book iv.
The following short sketches of the lives of some of theeminent women of our times were written for The Mothers’Companion, and are now republished by the kind permissionof the proprietors and publishers, Messrs. Partridge.
They were suggested by the fact that nearly all thebest contributions of women to literature have been madeduring the last hundred years, and simultaneously withthis remarkable development of literary activity amongwomen, there has been an equally remarkable activity inspheres of work held to be peculiarly feminine. So far,therefore, from greater freedom and better education encouragingwomen to neglect womanly work, it has causedthem to apply themselves to it more systematically andmore successfully. The names of Elizabeth Fry, MaryCarpenter, Sarah Martin, Agnes Jones, Florence Nightingale,and Sister Dora are a proof of this. I believe thatwe owe their achievements to the same impulse which inanother kind of excellence has given us Jane Austen,Charlotte Brontë, and Elizabeth Browning.
The sketches were intended chiefly for working womenand young people; it was hoped it would be an encouragementto them to be reminded how much good work hadbeen done in various ways by women.
An apology should, perhaps, be offered to the readerfor the want of arrangement in the sequence of thesesketches. As they appeared month by month, in 1887and 1888, the incidents of the day sometimes suggestedthe subject. Thus the papers on Queen Victoria and onQueen Louisa of Prussia were suggested by the celebrationof the Jubilee in June 1887, and by the universal grieffelt for the death of Queen Louisa’s son and grandson in1888. As the incidents mentioned in some sketches aresometimes referred to in those that follow, it has beenthought best not to alter the sequence in which theyoriginally appeared. The authorities relied on are quotedin each paper.
London, 1889.