Females, in fact, denied all political privileges, and not allowed,
as married women, excepting in criminal cases, a civil existence,
have their attention naturally drawn from the interest of the whole
community to that of the minute parts, though the private duty of
any member of society must be very imperfectly performed, when not
connected with the general good. The mighty business of female
life is to please, and, restrained from entering into more
important concerns by political and civil oppression, sentiments
become events, and reflection deepens what it should, and would
have effaced, if the understanding had been allowed to take a wider
range.
But, confined to trifling employments, they naturally imbibe
opinions which the only kind of reading calculated to interest an
innocent frivolous mind, inspires. Unable to grasp any thing
great, is it surprising that they find the reading of history a
very dry task, and disquisitions addressed to the understanding,
intolerably tedious, and almost unintelligible? Thus are they
necessarily dependent on the novelist for amusement. Yet, when I
exclaim against novels, I mean when contrasted with those works
which exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination. For
any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a
blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement, and
obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking
powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to
the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross
gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade
of delicacy.
Pages:
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331