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
1 You love to dip your pencil , Pauline , into the colours of the caricaturist . It is highly delightful now to you to sketch this sentimental daughter of the shambles ; but such a character is as ridiculous and as pernicious in a less antithetical scene . How do the daughters of men , conventionally above the butcher , such as the more opulent trader , the manufacturer , the merchant , the
professional man , spend their time and employ their talents ? Those among them who cannot afford to enter society or to entertain it at home , pass their days in that listless idleness which the lady \ privilege , to do nothing , admits , —almost enjoins . So they stand , like your neighbour yonder , half the morning , and perhaps all the evening , looking over the parlour blinds , and deeming the sight of a passenger , who varies the vapid minutes , and excites their slumbering faculties , a boon . In fact , were I asked
what expression of countenance is most frequently absent from their faces , I should say the brightness which is incident to a mind full of some energetic and happy purpose . ' c Take care , Maria ; when we speak of the expression of a populace , or a part of a populace , we ought to consider the many causes in operation to create discontent and despondency ; there is the struggle to live , to ward off , to sustain , or conceal distress /
c My dear Pauline , the people who feel public evils or private exigencies acutely are not the people who remain listless or appear apathetic . They do not sit down to repine ; they r ise up to repair ; for they know that repining is but another make-weight in the scale of calamity . No , the women to whom I allude , so far from thinking about public ills or general distress , do not think of the evils or distresses often existing in their own homes ,
and which their inert habits and unhappy ignorance must tend to aggravate . All these women , and especially the more opulent portion of them , are united by the most endearing ties to men who are daily expending great personal toil , often intense mental exertion or anxiety , for the support of circumstances and style which does not yield them one hour ' s rational enjoyment out of the day . Did these women think and feel as human beings ought and might think and feel , would this slavish subservience
of mental and moral properties to the accumulation of pecuniary property , its protection and display , subsist for another month ? No , not for another hour . Were women those unfeminine things , politicians , philosophers , and political economists , in the best senses of those words , instead of being the pretty pets of gilded cages , with collars and chains of diamonds or pearls , they would , like the free bird , voluntarily help to build up the nest , and not admit into it an atom that was wruncr from the excruciated
energies of their mates ; they would be animated by the wisest views for their offspring , their country-people , their species . Theh man , instead of being , as he is , the slate of the slave ( for men domestically are something like kings politically , flattened
Untitled Article
Sketches of Domertic Life . 449
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1835, page 449, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2647/page/13/
-