What can a woman do?

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What Can a Woman Do, or Her Position in the Business and Literary World, by Mrs. M. L. Rayne (HC, late 1890s (?), 552 pages, $7, which is 1/3 the internet price.)

This is a beautiful book. The cover is dark purple with black and purple decorations. A gilded square in the top left corner tells the book's title. I loved the marbled design of the page edges.

I expected little from the content, but I was wrong. She may be writing over a hundred years ago, but the author believed women could succeed at many jobs. Some jobs on her list are the usual ones held by women of the time: housekeeper, nurse, stenographer, cook, dressmaker, and clerk. Others on the list amazed me: journalist, lawyer, doctor, and even entrepreneur. My favorites, though, are the chapters on raising chickens, ducks and bees. (Bees?)

I was disgusted by her chapter concerning telegraph operators. In those days, it would seem, women were considered to have less endurance, and to be absent more frequently than men. I wonder if this was really true, or if it was just the reason men gave for paying their women workers 1/3 less.

The end half of this book introduces us to women's writing of the time, both poetry and prose. At the very end of the book is a weird rendering of the poem, "Curfew must not ring tonight". For some reason the poem, which is also quoted earlier in the book, is presented here in a 24 page, large print, fully illustrated version. Strange.

Since half of this book is non-fiction, it can be found on the new non-fiction table.