The air of fashion, which many young people are so eager to
attain, always strikes me like the studied attitudes of some modern
pictures, copied with tasteless servility after the antiques;- the
soul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what
may properly be termed character. This varnish of fashion, which
seldom sticks very close to sense, may dazzle the weak; but leave
nature to itself, and it will seldom disgust the wise. Besides, when a
woman has sufficient sense not to pretend to any thing which she
does not understand in some degree, there is no need of determining to
hide her talents under a bushel. Let things take their natural course,
and all will be well.
It is this system of dissimulation, throughout the volume, that I
despise. Women are always to seem to be this and that- yet virtue
might apostrophize them, in the words of Hamlet- Seems! I know not
seems!- Have that within that passeth show!-
Still the same tone occurs; for in another place, after
recommending, without sufficiently discriminating delicacy, he adds,
'The men will complain of your reserve. They will assure you that a
franker behaviour would make you more amiable. But, trust me, they are
not sincere when they tell you so.- I acknowledge that on some
occasions it might render you more agreeable as companions, but it
would make you less amiable as women: an important distinction,
which many of your sex are not aware of.'-
This desire of being always women, is the very consciousness that
degrades the sex.
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