'Her dress is extremely
modest in appearance, and yet very coquettish in fact: she does not
make a display of her charms, she conceals them; but in concealing
them, she knows how to affect your imagination. Every one who sees her
will say, There is a modest and discreet girl; but while you are
near her, your eyes and affections wander all over her person, so that
you cannot withdraw them; and you would conclude, that every part of
her dress, simple as it seems, was only put in its proper order to
be taken to pieces by the imagination.' Is this modesty? Is this a
preparation for immortality? Again.- What opinion are we to form of
a system of education, when the author says of his heroine, 'that with
her, doing things well, is but a secondary concern; her principal
concern is to do them neatly.'
Secondary, in fact, are all her virtues and qualities, for,
respecting religion, he makes her parents thus address her, accustomed
to submission- 'Your husband will instruct you in good time.'
After thus cramping a woman's mind, if, in order to keep it fair, he
have not made it quite a blank, he advises her to reflect, that a
reflecting man may not yawn in her company, when he is tired of
caressing her.- What has she to reflect about who must obey? and would
it not be a refinement on cruelty only to open her mind to make the
darkness and misery of her fate visible? Yet, these are his sensible
remarks; how consistent with what I have already been obliged to
quote, to give a fair view of the subject, the reader may determine.
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