Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.


Letter to Charlotte Brontë in March 1837, reported in Gaskell The life of Charlotte Brontë, Vol. I (1857), p. 139, and in Mumby Letters of Literary Men, Vol. II (1906), p. 185.


Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.

Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.

Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.

Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.