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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: In the "citta dolente" of spinsterhood we often meet, especially in
France, with women whose lives are a sacrifice nobly and daily offered
to noble sentiments. Some remain proudly faithful to a heart which
death tore from them; martyrs of love, they learn the secrets of
womanhood only though their souls. Others obey some family pride
(which in our days, and to our shame, decreases steadily); these
devote themselves to the welfare of a brother, or to orphan nephews;
they are mothers while remaining virgins. Such old maids attain to the
highest heroism of their sex by consecrating all feminine feelings to
the help of sorrow. They idealize womanhood by renouncing the rewards
of woman's destiny, accepting its pains. They live surrounded by the
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