They were made to be loved, and must
not aim at respect, lest they should be hunted out of society as
masculine.
But to view the subject in another point of view. Do passive
indolent women make the best wives? Confining our discussion to
the present moment of existence, let us see how such weak creatures
perform their part? Do the women who, by the attainment of a few
superficial accomplishments, have strengthened the prevailing
prejudice, merely contribute to the happiness of their husbands?
Do they display their charms merely to amuse them? And have women,
who have early imbibed notions of passive obedience, sufficient
character to manage a family or educate children? So far from it,
that, after surveying the history of woman, I cannot help agreeing
with the severest satirist, considering the sex as the weakest as
well as the most oppressed half of the species. What does history
disclose but marks of inferiority, and how few women have
emancipated themselves from the galling yoke of sovereign man? So
few, that the exceptions remind me of an ingenious conjecture
respecting Newton: that he was probably a being of a superior
order, accidentally caged in a human body. In the same style I
have been led to imagine that the few extraordinary women who have
rushed in eccentrical directions out of the orbit prescribed to
their sex, were MALE spirits, confined by mistake in a female
frame.
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