On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
visits at stated intervals , perhaps every evening , or less frequently , and if bad tempered , he can stay away ; he approaches not , except in smiles , and in his most engaging garments ; he can put what cheat he pleases upon the lady as to the cause of his absence ;
he may court two at once , or approach her after he is sated with the embraces of a hireling . But the lady , having less freedom , is obliged to have recourse to more art . Be she well or ill , cheerful or ill-tempered , she must submit to be courted , whenever the lover chooses to make his appearancQ , and she dresses her
countenance in smiles accordingly . The usual announcement is heard at the door , and up start mother and daughter , to hide away the household sewing which employed them , drive the younger children out of the room to bed , or to the kitchen , arrange their caps or curls , and take up some c company * work . ' The * Queen of Spain has no legs ! ' thundered out her Mayordomo to some manufacturers who came to present her with stockings , and
even thus , girls who are undergoing courting , would fain have it supposed that they are a species of fairies , whose fingers know no drudgery , Better , a thousand times better , is the true coarseness of peasant girls , than this false refinement ! I should here mention ., that the . business of stocking-mending , as pursued by many good housewives , has always been a marvel to me . I once made it clear , so far as reasoning and argument can make a thing clear ,
to an indefatigable stocking-mender , who deemed that a judgment would have fallen on her had she abandoned a stocking so long as any of the original material remained , —I made it clear to her , that the time she occupied in mending , would have earned at ordinary needlework more money than would have purchased a new pai r * Yet it was of no use , her mother had done so before her , and she coukf not comprehend that a thing which was useful
when stockings were dear , became useless when stockings were cheap . But there the lover sits , while the lady tats or knits , and discourses on such things as providence has forced on his knowledge , till mamma escapes for ten minutes , to give orders for some * company' supper ;* and then the lovers do their tenderness , till
she returns . Some few plays , perhaps an opera , an occasional walk or so , and the money concerns arranged , it is supposed that the young couple perfectly understand each other ' s character , though perhaps the only link is youth and passion—two things which mostly incapacitate the judgment—and they are wedded . Rapture vanishes , the male takes to his business , the female to
her household , they eat together , drink together , sleep together , The principle of giving dinners and suppers as a mattei of mercantile marriage business , has become so common in more classes than one , that a man of refinement would almost starve , rather than partake of the food of above one person in an hundred—family men , or women . < Sir , ' said a blunt old man , ' when do you mean to propose for my daughter ? You have now dined at my house fifty times within the last eighteen months , and it is time you decided on something . ' The gentleman , yrhf > was a ? diner out by profession , mode his bow and retired .
Untitled Article
21 & 4- . On the Condition of Women in England .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1833, page 224, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2612/page/8/
-