Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life

 

Charlotte Bronte wrote in her- The History of the Year

""I am in the Kitchen of the Parsonage house Haworth.

Tabby the servant is washing up after breakfast

 and Anne my youngest sister

 is kneeling on a chair

 looking at some cakes which Tabby has been baking for us.

Emily is in the parlour brushing it,

Papa and Branwell are gone to Keighley.

Aunt is up stairs in her room

 and I am sitting by the table writing this in the kitchen."

-------------------------------
The same day

 in 12-03-1829

Charlotte Bronte received a letter from Robert Southey

 The Poet Laureate:

(In December 1836 twenty-year-old Charlotte Brontë
wrote to Southey
asking his opinion of some verses she sent him.)

"Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life:

& it ought not to be.

 The more she is engaged in her proper duties,

the less leisure she will have for it,

 even as an accomplishment & a recreation.

To those duties you have not yet been called,

 & when you are you will be less eager for celebrity".

Charlotte reply was humble:

 "I trust I shall never more feel ambitious to see my name in print;

if the wish should rise,

I'll look at Southey's letter,

and suppress it."