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Untitled Article
the perfection of reason ; the jarrings which so frequently prove destructive to the affections and to the peace of domestic life , have their source in petty jealousies , narrow prejudices , and selfish irritations . In the mistress or wife of a month s men might be justified for looking no further than external graces and accomplishments ; but if in the mother of his children and the companion of his life ,
the sensible man finds not a rational friend , marriage will indeed become a gallingyoke , requiring all his fortitude patiently to endure . Even in the present times , when more elaborate attention is paid to female education , to what is it principally directed ? Still true to the text of voluptuousness , to vanity , and external ornament . The taste merely , and not the reason , is cultivated . Most young females , whatsoever their rank in life may be , are trained
to the arts only , and to accomplishments for exhibition and show . Disdaining the mere useful , all aspire to the ornamental , and a plain tradesman must now despair of getting a wife who will deign to be of any utility in her family , or whose refined habits and ideas will not make her shrink in disgust from the husband ,, whom necessity only compelled her to accept . All are ladies , no women are to be found ; social intercourse is become a mere theatre of
exhibition ; friendship and rational conversation give place to the piano , the harp , and the quadrille , where rival mothers and emulous daughters , reckless of the secret weariness and suppressed yawns of the suffering auditors and spectators , contest the palm of admiration and the meed of applause . Nothing is more worthless to every purpose of utility than a mere smattering in the fine arts ; to the wealthy and the unoccupied it may serve to beguile an idle hour , or to amuse leisure ;
but an indifferent artist , a mere tame and spiritless copyist , a tasteless and mechanical stmmmer on any instrument , be the instrument what it may , is utterly valueless ; their exhibitions delight only the doating parent , and will be endured by others but during the transient season of youth . Should the end to which the display is secretly directed , thatof procuring forlhemselves an establishment by marriage , of taking the heart captive through the eye or ear , fail amidst numerous competitors , what is to become of these unfortunate factitious beings—unable to dig , ashamed to beg ?
For a few years , it is true , many may employ in teaching their talents and acquirements , even though not of the highest order ; they may become governesses in families of greater affluence or superior rank ; or they may fill the humbler destiny of assistants in schools . But , while their youth withers , and their spirits are
exhausted in these situations of constraint , servility , or drudgery , —while beneath the roofs of the wealthy or the aristocracy of the land , they add a taste for luxuries and elegancies to that for the arts , and become still more unfitted for the humbler walks of life , — have they any chance or opportunities , from the remuneration which their services receive , of laying up in store any udequate
Untitled Article
492 On Female Education and Occupations .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1833, page 492, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2618/page/52/
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