American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian HomesStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
A person possessed of wealth, who has nothing more noble to engage
attention than seeking personal enjoyment, subjects the mental powers
and moral feelings to a degree of inactivity utterly at war with health
and mind. And the greater the capacities, the greater are the sufferings
which result from this cause. Any one who has read the misanthropic
wailings of Lord Byron has seen the necessary result of great and noble
powers bereft of their appropriate exercise, and, in consequence,
becoming sources of the keenest suffering.
It is this view of the subject which has often awakened feelings of
sorrow and anxiety in the mind of the writer, while aiding in the
development and education of superior feminine minds, in the wealthier
circles. Not because there are not noble objects for interest and
effort, abundant, and within reach of such minds; but because
long-established custom has made it seem so quixotic to the majority,
even of the professed followers of Christ, for a woman of wealth to
practice any great self-denial, that few have independence of mind and
Christian principle sufficient to overcome such an influence. The more
a mind has its powers developed, the more does it aspire and pine after
some object worthy of its energies and affections; and they are
commonplace and phlegmatic characters who are most free from such
deep-seated wants. Many a young woman, of fine genius and elevated
sentiment, finds a charm in Lord Byron's writings, because they present
a glowing picture of what, to a certain extent, must be felt by every
well-developed mind which has no nobler object in life than the pursuit
of self-gratification.
If young ladies of wealth could pursue their education under the full
conviction that the increase of their powers and advantages increased
their obligations to use all for the good of society, and with some
plan of benevolent enterprise in view, what new motives of interest
would be added to their daily pursuits! And what blessed results would
follow to our beloved country, if all well-educated women, carried out
the principles of Christianity, in the exercise of their developed
powers!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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