I am fully persuaded that we should hear of none of these
infantine airs, if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise, and
not confined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed, and
their powers of digestion destroyed. To carry the remark still
further, if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps,
created, were treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we
should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. It is true, they
could not then with equal propriety be termed the sweet flowers that
smile in the walk of man; but they would be more respectable members
of society, and discharge the important duties of life by the light of
their own reason. 'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the
more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.'
This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over
men; but over themselves.
In the same strain have I heard men argue against instructing the
poor; for many are the forms that aristocracy assumes. 'Teach them
to read and write,' say they, 'and you take them out of the station
assigned them by nature.' An eloquent Frenchman has answered them, I
will borrow his sentiments. But they know not, when they make man a
brute, that they may expect every instant to see him transformed
into a ferocious beast. Without knowledge there can be no morality!
Ignorance is a frail base for virtue! Yet, that it is the
condition for which woman was organized, has been insisted upon by the
writers who have most vehemently argued in favour of the superiority
of man; a superiority not in degree, but essence; though, to soften
the argument, they have laboured to prove, with chivalrous generosity,
that the sexes ought not to be compared; man was made to reason, woman
to feel: and that together, flesh and spirit, they make the most
perfect whole, by blending happily reason and sensibility into one
character.
Pages:
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109