Women might certainly
study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses. And
midwifery, decency seems to allot to them, though I am afraid the
word midwife, in our dictionaries, will soon give place to
accoucheur, and one proof of the former delicacy of the sex be
effaced from the language.
They might, also study politics, and settle their benevolence on
the broadest basis; for the reading of history will scarcely be
more useful than the perusal of romances, if read as mere
biography; if the character of the times, the political
improvements, arts, etc. be not observed. In short, if it be not
considered as the history of man; and not of particular men, who
filled a niche in the temple of fame, and dropped into the black
rolling stream of time, that silently sweeps all before it, into
the shapeless void called eternity. For shape can it be called,
"that shape hath none?"
Business of various kinds, they might likewise pursue, if they were
educated in a more orderly manner, which might save many from
common and legal prostitution. Women would not then marry for a
support, as men accept of places under government, and neglect the
implied duties; nor would an attempt to earn their own subsistence,
a most laudable one! sink them almost to the level of those poor
abandoned creatures who live by prostitution. For are not
milliners and mantuamakers reckoned the next class? The few
employments open to women, so far from being liberal, are menial;
and when a superior education enables them to take charge of the
education of children as governesses, they are not treated like the
tutors of sons, though even clerical tutors are not always treated
in a manner calculated to render them respectable in the eyes of
their pupils, to say nothing of the private comfort of the
individual.
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