To endeavour to reason love out of the world, would be to out
Quixote Cervantes, and equally offend against common sense; but an
endeavour to restrain this tumultuous passion, and to prove that it
should not be allowed to dethrone superior powers, or to usurp the
sceptre which the understanding should ever coolly wield, appears
less wild.
Youth is the season for love in both sexes; but in those days of
thoughtless enjoyment, provision should be made for the more
important years of life, when reflection takes place of sensation.
But Rousseau, and most of the male writers who have followed his
steps, have warmly inculcated that the whole tendency of female
education ought to be directed to one point to render them
pleasing.
Let me reason with the supporters of this opinion, who have any
knowledge of human nature, do they imagine that marriage can
eradicate the habitude of life? The woman who has only been taught
to please, will soon find that her charms are oblique sun-beams,
and that they cannot have much effect on her husband's heart when
they are seen every day, when the summer is past and gone. Will
she then have sufficient native energy to look into herself for
comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties? or, is it not more
rational to expect, that she will try to please other men; and, in
the emotions raised by the expectation of new conquests, endeavour
to forget the mortification her love or pride has received? When
the husband ceases to be a lover--and the time will inevitably
come, her desire of pleasing will then grow languid, or become a
spring of bitterness; and love, perhaps, the most evanescent of all
passions, gives place to jealousy or vanity.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67