Book 7 - Chapter 4 - Page 2

Authority, which they had venerated longer. That Authority had
furnished a very explicit answer to persons who might inquire where
their social duties began, and might be inclined to take wide views as
to the starting-point. The answer had not turned on the ultimate good
of Society, but on "a certain man" who was found in trouble by the
wayside.

Not that St. Ogg's was empty of women with some tenderness of heart
and conscience; probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness
in it as any other small trading town of that day. But until every
good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid,--too
timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings,
when these would place them in a minority. And the men at St. Ogg's
were not all brave, by any means; some of them were even fond of
scandal, and to an extent that might have given their conversation an
effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by masculine
jokes, and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual
hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the masculine mind at
St. Ogg's that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment
of each other.

And thus every direction in which Dr. Kenn had turned, in the hope of
procuring some kind recognition and some employment for Maggie, proved
a disappointment to him. Mrs. James Torry could not think of taking
Maggie as a nursery governess, even temporarily,--a young woman about
whom "such things had been said," and about whom "gentlemen joked";
and Miss Kirke, who had a spinal complaint, and wanted a reader and
companion, felt quite sure that Maggie's mind must be of a quality
with which she, for her part, could not risk _any_ contact. Why did
not Miss Tulliver accept the shelter offered her by her aunt Glegg? It
did not become a girl like her to refuse it. Or else, why did she not
go out of the neighborhood, and get a situation where she was not
known? (It was not, apparently, of so much importance that she should
carry her dangerous tendencies into strange families unknown at St.
Ogg's.) She must be very bold and hardened to wish to stay in a parish
where she was so much stared at and whispered about.

Dr. Kenn, having great natural firmness, began, in the presence of
this opposition, as every firm man would have done, to contract a
certain strength of determination over and above what would have been
called forth by the end in view. He himself wanted a daily governess
for his younger children; and though he had hesitated in the first
instance to offer this position to Maggie, the resolution to protest
with the utmost force of his personal and priestly character against
her being crushed and driven away by slander, was now decisive.