A girl's life eighty years ago : $b Selections from the letters of Eliza Southgate BowneBowne, Eliza Southgate
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A girl's life eighty years ago : $b Selections from the letters of Eliza Southgate Bowne
Bowne, Eliza Southgate
Bowne, Eliza Southgate, 1783-1809; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1783-1865
As to the qualities of mind peculiar to each sex, I agree with you that
sprightliness is in favor of females and profundity of males. Their
education, their pursuits would create such a quality even tho’ nature
had not implanted it. The business and pursuits of men require deep
thinking, judgment, and moderation, while, on the other hand, females
are under no necessity of dipping deep, but merely “skim the surface,”
and we too commonly spare ourselves the exertion which deep researches
require, unless they are absolutely necessary to our pursuits in life.
We rarely find one giving themselves up to profound investigation for
amusement merely. Necessity is the nurse of all the great qualities of
the mind; it explores all the hidden treasures and by its stimulating
power they are “polished into brightness.” Women who have no such
incentives to action suffer all the strong energetic qualities of the
mind to sleep in obscurity; sometimes a ray of genius gleams through the
thick clouds with which it is enveloped, and irradiates for a moment the
darkness of mental night; yet, like a comet that shoots wildly from its
sphere, it excites our wonder, and we place it among the phenomenons of
nature, without searching for a natural cause. Thus it is the qualities
with which nature has endowed us, as a support amid the misfortunes of
life and a shield from the allurements of vice, are left to moulder in
ruin. In this dormant state they become enervated and impaired, and at
last die for _want of exercise_. The little airy qualities which produce
sprightliness are left to flutter about like feathers in the wind, the
sport of every breeze.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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