But women who have to fend for themselves are not likely to be idiots, and each of them is likely to be able to judge better for herself

than all the members of Parliament put together can judge for her

which sort of discomfort will be the most to her comfort.

There was once—at least the story says so—a young woman,

who went on work, work, work, at spinning threads out of nettles

and sewing the stuff into garments. The employment was cruel

to her tender hands, the nettles blistered them and the thread cut

them; and instead of being limited to four-and-a-half hours’ labor

at a stretch and not going on a minute after four on Saturdays and

nine on the other workdays, she went on through days and through

nights in a limitless manner that would have set Mr. Cross’s charitable hair on end.

Her conduct seemed strange to the people of the country, and

being under a penance of dumbness, she would not explain it, but

they had no Parliament to protect her, and the police did not intervene to stop her spinning and sewing. If she had been protected, if  the police had intervened, she would not have been able to throw

the garments at the nick of time over the eleven swans, thereby

restoring them to human shape as her brothers and having herself

accepted as the princess she was born.

--Emily Isaacson quotes Augusta Webster, The Fleur-de-lis Vol III