How to Observe: Morals and MannersMartineau, Harriet
Science
How to Observe: Morals and Manners
Martineau, Harriet
Manners and customs; Observation (Psychology); Social psychology -- Methodology
It is a matter of course that women who are furnished with but one
object,--marriage,--must be as unfit for anything when their aim is
accomplished as if they had never had any object at all. They are no
more equal to the task of education than to that of governing the state;
and, if any unexpected turn of adversity befals them, they have no
resource but a convent, or some other charitable provision. Where, on
the other hand, women are brought up capable of maintaining an
independent existence, other objects remain when the grand one is
accomplished. Their independence of mind places them beyond the reach of
the spoiler; and their cultivated faculty of reason renders them worthy
guardians of the rational beings whose weal or woe is lodged in their
hands. There is yet, as may be seen by a mere glance over society, only
a very imperfect provision made anywhere for doing justice to the next
generation by qualifying their mothers; but the observer of morals may
profit by marking the degrees in which this imperfection approaches to
barbarism. Where he finds that girls are committed to convents for
education, and have no alternative in life but marriage, in which their
will has no share, and a return to their convent, he may safely conclude
that there a plurality of lovers is a matter of course, and domestic
enjoyments of the highest kind undesired and unknown. He may conclude
that as are the parents, so will be the children; and that, for one more
generation at least, there will be little or no improvement. But where
he finds a variety of occupations open to women; where he perceives them
not only pursuing the lighter mechanic arts, dispensing charity and
organizing schools for the poor, but occupied in education, and in the
study of science and the practice of the fine arts, he may conclude that
here resides the highest domestic enjoyment which has yet been attained,
and the strongest hope of a further advance.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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