Woman's work is a work of charity. The fact points back to woman's
origin. God brought her as a gift to man, with characteristics and
endowments which fitted her to be his helpmeet, his counsellor, and
companion. Recall Adam's position. He was alone in the garden. He
found no helper in the beasts. He longed for a kindred spirit. Endowed
with a nature too communicative to be content with itself, he requires
society, a resting point, a complement, for he only half lives while
he lives alone. Made to speak, to think, to love, his thought seeks
another thought to reveal and quicken itself; his speech is lost
sorrowfully in the air, or only awakens an echo which reverberates it,
but cannot reply; his love knows not where to fix itself, and falling
back on itself, threatens to become a barren egotism; in short, fill
his being aspires to another self, but his other self does not exist.
At this time, when the desire for communion was stifling him, he
slept, and from his side God took a rib and made woman, and brought
her to him. Behold Adam. He sees her, and is in rapture.
"Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love."