In short,
with respect to both mind and body, they are too intimate. That
decent personal reserve, which is the foundation of dignity of
character, must be kept up between women, or their minds will never
gain strength or modesty.
On this account also, I object to many females being shut up
together in nurseries, schools, or convents. I cannot recollect
without indignation, the jokes and hoiden tricks, which knots of
young women indulged themselves in, when in my youth accident threw
me, an awkward rustic, in their way. They were almost on a par
with the double meanings, which shake the convivial table when the
glass has circulated freely. But it is vain to attempt to keep the
heart pure, unless the head is furnished with ideas, and set to
work to compare them, in order, to acquire judgment, by
generalizing simple ones; and modesty by making the understanding
damp the sensibility.
It may be thought that I lay too great a stress on personal
reserve; but it is ever the hand-maid of modesty. So that were I
to name the graces that ought to adorn beauty, I should instantly
exclaim, cleanliness, neatness, and personal reserve. It is
obvious, I suppose, that the reserve I mean, has nothing sexual in
it, and that I think it EQUALLY necessary in both sexes. So
necessary indeed, is that reserve and cleanliness which indolent
women too often neglect, that I will venture to affirm, that when
two or three women live in the same house, the one will be most
respected by the male part of the family, who reside with them,
leaving love entirely out of the question, who pays this kind of
habitual respect to her person.
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