Endnotes
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A lively writer, I cannot recollect his name, asks what business women turned of forty have to do in the world. ↩
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Dr. Price. ↩
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Men of abilities scatter seeds that grow up, and have a great influence on the forming opinion; and when once the public opinion preponderates, through the exertion of reason, the overthrow of arbitrary power is not very distant. ↩
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Vide Rousseau, and Swedenborg. ↩
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A respectable old man gives the following sensible account of the method he pursued when educating his daughter.
“I endeavoured to give both to her mind and body a degree of vigour, which is seldom found in the female sex. As soon as she was sufficiently advanced in strength to be capable of the lighter labours of husbandry and gardening, I employed her as my constant companion. Selene, for that was her name, soon acquired a dexterity in all these rustic employments which I considered with equal pleasure and admiration. If women are in general feeble both in body and mind, it arises less from nature than from education. We encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy; instead of hardening their minds by the severer principles of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts, which terminate in vanity and sensuality. In most of the countries which I had visited, they are taught nothing of an higher nature than a few modulations of the voice, or useless postures of the body; their time is consumed in sloth or trifles, and trifles become the only pursuits capable of interesting them. We seem to forget, that it is upon the qualities of the female sex, that our own domestic comforts and the education of our children must depend. And what are the comforts or the education which a race of beings corrupted from their infancy, and unacquainted with all the duties of life, are fitted to bestow? To touch a musical instrument with useless skill, to exhibit their natural or affected graces, to the eyes of indolent and debauched young men, who dissipate their husbands’ patrimony in riotous and unnecessary expenses: these are the only arts cultivated by women in most of the polished nations I had seen. And the consequences are uniformly such as may be expected to proceed from such polluted sources, private misery, and public servitude.
“But, Selene’s education was regulated by different views, and conducted upon severer principles; if that can be called severity which opens the mind to a sense of moral and religious duties, and most effectually arms it against the inevitable evils of life.”
—Mr. Day’s Sandford and Merton, Volume 3 -
“I once knew a young person who learned to write before she learned to read, and began to write with her needle before she could use a pen. At first indeed, she took it into her head to make no other letter than the O: this letter she was constantly making of all sizes, and always the wrong way. Unluckily one day, as she was intent on this employment, she happened to see herself in the looking glass; when, taking a dislike to the constrained attitude in which she sat while writing, she threw away her pen, like another Pallas, and determined against making the O any more. Her brother was also equally averse to writing: it was the confinement, however, and not the constrained attitude, that most disgusted him.”
—Rousseau’s Emilius -
Vide Milton. ↩
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This word is not strictly just, but I cannot find a better. ↩
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And a wit, always a wit, might be added; for the vain fooleries of wits and beauties to obtain attention, and make conquests, are much upon a par. ↩
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Many other names might be added. ↩
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“I take her body,” says Ranger. ↩
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“Supposing that women are voluntary slaves—slavery of any kind is unfavourable to human happiness and improvement.” —Knox’s Essays ↩
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Sappho, Eloisa, Mrs. Macaulay, the Empress of Russia, Madame d’Eon, etc. These, and many more, may be reckoned exceptions; and, are not all heroes, as well as heroines, exceptions to general rules? I wish to see women neither heroines nor brutes; but reasonable creatures. ↩
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Rousseau’s Emilius Volume 3 page 176. ↩
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What is to be the consequence, if the mother’s and husband’s opinion should chance not to agree? An ignorant person cannot be reasoned out of an error, and when persuaded to give up one prejudice for another the mind is unsettled. Indeed, the husband may not have any religion to teach her though in such a situation she will be in great want of a support to her virtue, independent of worldly considerations. ↩
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Rousseau’s Emilius. ↩
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Can you?—Can you? would be the most emphatical comment, were it drawled out in a whining voice. ↩
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Let women once acquire good sense—and if it deserve the name, it will teach them; or, of what use will it be how to employ it. ↩
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“He is the free man, whom truth makes free!”
—Cowper -
I mean to use a word that comprehends more than chastity, the sexual virtue. ↩
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A person is not to act in this or that way, though convinced they are right in so doing, because some equivocal circumstances may lead the world to suspect that they acted from different motives. This is sacrificing the substance for a shadow. Let people but watch their own hearts, and act rightly as far as they can judge, and they may patiently wait till the opinion of the world comes round. It is best to be directed by a simple motive—for justice has too often been sacrificed to propriety;—another word for convenience. ↩
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Coinciding in opinion with Mrs. Macaulay relative to many branches of education, I refer to her valuable work, instead of quoting her sentiments to support my own. ↩
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See an excellent essay on this subject by Mrs. Barbauld, in Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose. ↩
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I have sometimes, when inclined to laugh at materialists, asked whether, as the most powerful effects in nature are apparently produced by fluids, the magnetic, etc. the passions might not be fine volatile fluids that embraced humanity, keeping the more refractory elementary parts together—or whether they were simply a liquid fire that pervaded the more sluggish materials giving them life and heat? ↩
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“Such is the country-maiden’s fright,
When first a redcoat is in sight;
Behind the door she hides her face,
Next time at distance eyes the lace:
She now can all his terrors stand,
Nor from his squeeze withdraws her hand,
She plays familiar in his arms,
And every soldier hath his charms;
From tent to tent she spreads her flame;
For custom conquers fear and shame.” -
Modesty, is the graceful calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness, the charm of vivacious youth. ↩
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The poor moth fluttering round a candle, burns its wings. ↩
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I remember to have met with a sentence, in a book of education that made me smile. “It would be needless to caution you against putting your hand, by chance, under your neck-handkerchief; for a modest woman never did so!” ↩
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The behaviour of many newly married women has often disgusted me. They seem anxious never to let their husbands forget the privilege of marriage, and to find no pleasure in his society unless he is acting the lover. Short, indeed, must be the reign of love, when the flame is thus constantly blown up, without its receiving any solid fuel. ↩
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I allude to various biographical writings, but particularly to Boswell’s Life of Johnson. ↩
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Smith. ↩
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L’amour propre, L’amour de soi meme. ↩
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Dr. Johnson makes the same observation. ↩
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I myself heard a little girl once say to a servant, “My mamma has been scolding me finely this morning, because her hair was not dressed to please her.” Though this remark was pert, it was just. And what respect could a girl acquire for such a parent, without doing violence to reason? ↩
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Treating this part of the subject, I have borrowed some hints from a very sensible pamphlet written by the late bishop of Autun on public education. ↩
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The Bishop of Autun. ↩
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I am not now alluding to that superiority of mind which leads to the creation of ideal beauty, when life surveyed with a penetrating eye, appears a tragicomedy, in which little can be seen to satisfy the heart without the help of fancy. ↩