The exclamations then which any
advice respecting female learning, commonly produces, especially
from pretty women, often arise from envy. When they chance to see
that even the lustre of their eyes, and the flippant sportiveness
of refined coquetry will not always secure them attention, during a
whole evening, should a woman of a more cultivated understanding
endeavour to give a rational turn to the conversation, the common
source of consolation is, that such women seldom get husbands.
What arts have I not seen silly women use to interrupt by
FLIRTATION, (a very significant word to describe such a manoeuvre)
a rational conversation, which made the men forget that they were
pretty women.
But, allowing what is very natural to man--that the possession of
rare abilities is really calculated to excite over-weening pride,
disgusting in both men and women--in what a state of inferiority
must the female faculties have rusted when such a small portion of
knowledge as those women attained, who have sneeringly been termed
learned women, could be singular? Sufficiently so to puff up the
possessor, and excite envy in her contemporaries, and some of the
other sex. Nay, has not a little rationality exposed many women to
the severest censure? I advert to well known-facts, for I have
frequently heard women ridiculed, and every little weakness
exposed, only because they adopted the advice of some medical men,
and deviated from the beaten track in their mode of treating their
infants.
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