My correspondent says, “Would not our women be spared the drudgery of cooking and all its attendant worries, leaving them free for higher culture?” The first thing that occurs to me to say about this is very simple, and is, I imagine, a part of all our experience.  If my correspondent can find any way of preventing women from worrying, he will indeed be a remarkable man.  I think the matter is a much deeper one.  First of all, my correspondent overlooks a distinction which is elementary in our human nature.  Theoretically, I suppose, every one would like to be freed from worries.  But nobody in the world would always like to be freed from worrying occupations.  I should very much like (as far as my feelings at the moment go) to be free from the consuming nuisance of writing this article.  But it does not follow that I should like to be free from the consuming nuisance of being a journalist.  Because we are worried about a thing, it does not follow that we are not interested in it.  The truth is the other way.  If we are not interested, why on earth should we be worried?  Women are worried about housekeeping, but those that are most interested are the most worried.  Women are still more worried about their husbands and their children.  And I suppose if we strangled the children and poleaxed the husbands it would leave women free for higher culture.  That is, it would leave them free to begin to worry about that.  For women would worry about higher culture as much as they worry about everything else.

I believe this way of talking about women and their higher culture is almost entirely a growth of the classes which (unlike the journalistic class to which I belong) have always a reasonable amount of money.  One odd thing I specially notice.  Those who write like this seem entirely to forget the existence of the working and wage-earning classes.  They say eternally, like my correspondent, that the ordinary woman is always a drudge.  And what, in the name of the Nine Gods, is the ordinary man?  These people seem to think that the ordinary man is a Cabinet Minister.  They are always talking about man going forth to wield power, to carve his own way, to stamp his individuality on the world, to command and to be obeyed.  This may be true of a certain class.  Dukes, perhaps, are not drudges; but, then, neither are Duchesses.  The Ladies and Gentlemen of the Smart Set are quite free for the higher culture, which consists chiefly of motoring and Bridge.  But the ordinary man who typifies and constitutes the millions that make up our civilisation is no more free for the higher culture than his wife is.