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Untitled Article
rnents . This has its source in the one principle which is the base of female degradation . Let it not be imagined that I am so unwise as to undervalue beauty , —so unsexed as to deny the yet greater value of modesty , —so cold as to be insensible to the charm of tenderness . But
these qualities need to be combined with others ; and at different stages of life wear and exert a different aspect and power . The modesty and tenderness of the girl , united with immature and untried power , and with utter inexperience , makes her a shrinking , sensitive being , needing aid , not yielding it ; but this
creature , advanced to be an aged matron , though the same in principle , is very different in her powers and their application . Instead of blushing behind the silver shield of modesty , she walks forth , and bears it along with her : instead of pressing the urn of feeling secretly and silently to her own heart , she carries it forth , and pours it into the hearts of others .
When the upholder of things as they are is beat out of every other hold , then he says it is tenderness which shelters women from the rude encounters of the world , which any attention to general interests would necessitate her meeting . What a fallacy is this ! How is this plan kept in the letter , and violated in spirit ! Many a woman , in the unregarded walks of common life , bears the brunt of more than our men in authority have ever
faced . If , without lacerating private feeling , the biography of the King ' s Bench , for instance , could be written , we should behold many of those who are ostensibly so carefully sheltered from the gusty storms of public life , buffeting the huge waves of a sea of private sorrow . Truly , man and woman have walked through life very much like the giant and the dwarf in the fable , —he has got all the honours , and she all the blows .
Men have been misled by their overweening estimate of physical strength , —it is a force which in its blind action may do much evil , but no good ; it is the direction of intelligence that gives it value , and intelligence finds that it may now be left to rank , like the fossil mammoth , with the distinctions of past ages , —such huge masses are no longer necessary to overcome the
inertia and resistance of chaotic matter . As society refines , man transfers labour to machinery , and works himself b y mental , not by manual , power . The principle of physical superiority might place the muscular coachman above his nervous master , though the one was only fit to drive coach horses , and the other capable to direct the state team .
The benefactors of society , if some power could burst the cerements of the grave , and call them in array "before us , would present in their ranks few Ajaxes , and no Hectors ; the majority have been little men with large minds , and unboastful and unpresuming in proportion to their merit . Yet if this idea were indeed realized , these pale apparitions would make men blush , as
Untitled Article
35 Quaker Women .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1835, page 36, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2641/page/36/
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