Not only are the doors of the old avenues thrown open:  we have created new ways for the women who work.  Literature offers a hundred paths, each one with stimulating examples of feminine success.  There is journalism, into which women are only now beginning to enter by ones and twos.  Before long they will sweep in with a flood.  In medicine, which requires arduous study and great bodily strength, they do not enter in large numbers.  Acting is a fashionable craze.  Art covers as wide a field as literature.  Education in girls’ schools of the highest kind has passed into their own hands.  Moreover, women can now do many things—­and remain gentlewomen—­which were formerly impossible.  Some keep furniture shops, some are decorators, some are dressmakers, some make or sell embroidery.

In all these professions two things are wanting—­natural aptitude and special training.  Unfortunately, the competition is encumbered and crowded with those who have neither, or else both imperfectly, developed.

The present state of things is somewhat as follows:  The world contains a great open market, where the demand for first-class work of every kind is practically inexhaustible.  In literature everything really good commands instant attention, respect—­and payment.  But it must be really good.  Publishers are always looking about for genius.  Editors—­even the much-abused editors—­are always looking about for good and popular writers.  But the world is critical.  To become popular requires a combination of qualities, which include special training, education, and natural aptitude.  Art, again, in every possible branch, offers recognition—­and pay—­for good work.  But it must be really good.  The world is even more critical in Art than in Literature.  In the theatre, managers are always looking about for good plays, good actors, and good actresses.  In scholarship, women who have taken university honours command good salaries and an honourable position if they can teach.  In music, a really good composer, player, or singer, is always received with joy and the usual solid marks of approval.  In this great open Market there is no favouritism possible, because the public, which is scornful of failure—­making no allowance, and receiving no excuses—­is also generous and quick to recognise success.  In this Market clever women have exactly the same chances as clever men; their work commands the same price.  George Eliot is as well paid as Thackeray; and the Market is full of the most splendid prizes both of praise and pudding.  It is a most wonderful Market.  In all other Markets the stalls are full of good things which the vendors are anxious to sell, but cannot.  In this Market nothing is offered but it is snapped up greedily by the buyers; there are even, indeed, men who buy up the things before they reach the open Market.  In other Markets the cry of those who stand at the stalls is ‘Buy, buy, buy!’ In this Market it is the buyers who cry out continually, ’Bring out more wares to sell.’  Only to think of this Market, and of the thousands of gentlewomen outside, fills the heart with sadness.