6 Florence Nightingale Quotes on Gender roles

Florence Nightingale quotes on gender roles

24. Suffering, sad 'female humanity!' What are these feelings which they are taught to consider as disgraceful, to deny to themselves? What form do the Chinese feet assume when denied their proper development? If the young girls of the 'higher classes,' who never commit a false step, whose justly earned reputations were never sullied even by the stain which the fruit of mere 'knowledge of good and evil' leaves behind, were to speak, and say what are their thoughts employed upon, their thoughts, which alone are free, what would they say?

32. Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, except 'suckling their fools '; and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world or to others, but that they can throw it up at the first 'claim of social life.' They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which it is their ' duty ' to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.

39. That man and woman have an equality of duties and rights is accepted by woman even less than by man. Behind his destiny woman must annihilate herself, must be only his complement. A woman dedicates herself to the vocation of her husband; she fills up and performs the subordinate parts in it. But if she has any destiny, any vocation of her own, she must renounce it, in nine cases out of ten.

47. It is thought pretty to say that 'Women have no passion.' If passion is excitement in the daily social intercourse with men, women think about marriage much more than men do; it is the only event of their lives. It ought to be a sacred event, but surely not the only event of a woman's life, as it is now. Many women spend their lives in asking men to marry them, in a refined way. Yet it is true that women are seldom in love. How can they be?

51. Nothing can well be imagined more painful than the present position of woman, unless, on the one hand, she renounces all outward activity and keeps herself within the magic sphere, the bubble of her dreams; or, on the other, surrendering all aspiration, she gives herself to her real life, soul and body. For those to whom it is possible, the latter is best; for out of activity may come thought, out of mere aspiration can come nothing,

52. The time is come when women must do something more than the 'domestic hearth,' which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.