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Untitled Article
And is the condition of women amongst the middle classes of society any better ? How are they brought up ? They perchance have not teachers of accomplishments' at home , unless their parents are of more than common wealth , but they are duly sent to a € boarding school / where the arts of meretricious
blandishment are as studiously taught them , though perhaps not quite of so choice a quality , or rather price , as their sisters of the higher rank ; and they are all alike brought up to the same business , viz . to get married . If an only daughter , and the parents be wealthy , there is no need of advertisements in the shape of dinners and dances . Suitors in abundance will soon make their appearance ,
and the only difficulty which the father will experience , will be in preventing his heiress from being carried off by improper and ineligible persons , who may not possess equal wealth , or superior station to compensate for it , in order that , like Sir Giles Overreach , he may be enabled to say , * Mine honourable daughter . ' An heiress to a large property may select from the crowd which will
surround her , any one she chooses to bestow her property upon , but under this curse must she labour . Be she good , be she kind , be she beautiful , be she intellectual , nay , let her join all high qualities to the possession of exhaustless wealth , none but the baser portion of the community will seek her in marriage , and , unless by some rare chance , the husband of her choice will probably be a species of vampyre , who so soon as he has secured her property ,
will leave her to pine in bitterness . The needy spendthrift , the roue , the designing knave , the wary gambler clad in the garb of fashion , the broken down nobleman , and the idle soldier , will form the elite of the fortune-hunting band who will besiege her footsteps wherever she may go , till she has chosen one for her master . Ay , master is the word . When she has linked herself to the sensualist , or to the ambitious man who has sought her for her fortune , or to enable him to climb « ambition ' s ladder / from
that moment she is a bond-slave , unless , perchance , disappointed hopes convert her into a species of fury , commanding through fear that which , she could not obtain by affection . Speak I not the truth ? Answer , ye of blighted hearts , who have gone through the horrible ordeal . What hope is there for an heiress ? Amongst the wealthiest men it is rare that the worthiest are found , and
what high-minded man , learned , intellectual , refined , courageous , and all-accomplished though he might be , what high-minded man would submit to the imputation of being a fortune-hunter ? What high-minded poor man could f make an offer , ' or , as the more fashionable phrase has it , * propose' to an heiress ? He
could not , he must be dumb . And even if the lady saw such an one , and , knowing his worth , ardently longed for his attachment , and believed herself capable of attaining it , and securing it , even then is she forbidden by the rigid rules of tyrant-made custom , not merely to speak the thoughts of her heart , but to give the
Untitled Article
220 On the Condition of Women in England .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1833, page 220, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2612/page/4/
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