A serious proposal to the Ladies, for the advancement of their true and greatest interest (In Two Parts)Astell, Mary
Religion
A serious proposal to the Ladies, for the advancement of their true and greatest interest (In Two Parts)
Astell, Mary
Feminism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century -- Sources; Women's rights -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century -- Sources
Does any think their Money lost to their Families when ’tis put in
here? I will only ask what course they can take to save it, and at
once to preserve their Money, their Honour and their Daughters too?
Were they sure the Ladies wou’d die unmarried, I shou’d commend their
Thrift, but Experience has too often shewn us the vanity of this
expectation. For the poor Lady having past the prime of her Years in
Gaity and Company, in running the Circle of all the Vanities of the
Town, having spread all her Nets and us’d all her Arts for Conquest,
and finding that the Bait fails where she wou’d have it take; and
having all this while been so over-careful of her Body, that she had no
time to improve her Mind, which therefore affords her no safe retreat,
now she meets with Disappointments abroad, and growing every day more
and more sensible, that the respect which us’d to be paid her decays
as fast as her Beauty; quite terrified with the dreadful Name of _Old
Maid_, which yet none but Fools will reproach her with, nor any wise
Woman be afraid of; to avoid this terrible _Mormo_, and the scoffs that
are thrown on superannuated Virgins, she flies to some dishonourable
Match as her last, tho’ much mistaken Refuge, to the disgrace of her
Family and her own irreparable Ruin. And now let any Person of Honour
tell me, if it were not richly worth some thousand Pounds, to prevent
all this mischief, and the having an idle Fellow, and perhaps a race of
beggarly Children to hang on him and to provide for?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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