Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a carpet. (...) Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to working by herself in the kitchen garden; and one to the regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company: no conversation. I believe she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed for her; and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity.
C. Bronte, "Jane Eyre"
Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a carpet. (...) Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to working by herself in the kitchen garden; and one to the regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company: no conversation. I believe she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed for her; and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity.
C. Bronte, "Jane Eyre"
