Page:The Higher Education of Women.djvu/123

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

DOMESTIC LIFE.
119

were otherwise, a woman who had work similar, though not in all respects identical with that of her husband, would be more able than one whose occupation was of an entirely alien character, to sympathise with him in his difficulties and in his successes. She would understand them and enter into them with a first-hand kind of interest, fuller and more intelligent, if not more genuine, than a merely reflected interest could be. On the other hand, it would be at least as easy for a husband to enter into interests somewhat akin to his own, as into the small domestic worries which fill so large a space in the thoughts and imaginations of women who have nothing else to occupy them. There are many wives who really have very little to