Thus degraded, her reason, her misty reason! is employed
rather to burnish than to snap her chains.
(*Footnote. I mean to use a word that comprehends more than
chastity, the sexual virtue.)
Indignantly have I heard women argue in the same track as men, and
adopt the sentiments that brutalize them with all the pertinacity
of ignorance.
I must illustrate my assertion by a few examples. Mrs. Piozzi, who
often repeated by rote, what she did not understand, comes forward
with Johnsonian periods.
"Seek not for happiness in singularity; and dread a refinement of
wisdom as a deviation into folly." Thus she dogmatically addresses
a new married man; and to elucidate this pompous exordium, she
adds, "I said that the person of your lady would not grow more
pleasing to you, but pray let her never suspect that it grows less
so: that a woman will pardon an affront to her understanding much
sooner than one to her person, is well known; nor will any of us
contradict the assertion. All our attainments, all our arts, are
employed to gain and keep the heart of man; and what mortification
can exceed the disappointment, if the end be not obtained: There is
no reproof however pointed, no punishment however severe, that a
woman of spirit will not prefer to neglect; and if she can endure
it without complaint, it only proves that she means to make herself
amends by the attention of others for the slights of her husband!"
These are true masculine sentiments.
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