During the nineteenth century many had been so carefully enclosed in invisible cages, they had been so well drilled in the reticences and the duties and the subserviences that their parents silently demanded of them, that we can never know all the tragedies that took place.

In exceptional cases, indeed, they gave a sign.

When they possessed unusual power of intellect, or unusual power of character and will, they succeeded in breaking loose from their cages, or at least in giving expression to themselves.

This is seen in the stories of nearly all the women eminent in life and literature during the nineteenth century, from the days of Mary Wollstonecraft onwards.

The Brontes, almost, yet not quite, strangled by the fetters placed upon them by their stern and narrow-minded father, and enabled to attain the full stature of their genius only by that brief sojourn in Brussels, are representative.
Elizabeth Barrett, chained to a couch of invalidism under the eyes of an imperiously affectionate father until with Robert Browning's aid she secretly eloped into the open air of freedom and health, and so attained complete literary expression, is a typical figure.