Women -- Biography; Women -- Social and moral questions
Woman intensely desires admiration, praise, and fame. This quality is
an excellent guard upon morals as well as manners. The loss of
character, to those largely endowed with it, is worse than death. “It
gives,” says Mr. Combe, “the desire to be agreeable to others; it is
the drill-serjeant of society, and admonishes us when we deviate too
widely from the line of march of our fellows; it induces as to suppress
numberless little manifestations of selfishness, and to restrain many
peculiarities of temper and disposition, from the dread of incurring
disapprobation by giving offence; it is the butt upon which wit
strikes, when, by means of ridicule, it drives us from our follies.” A
faculty thus beneficial ought to be carefully cultivated. By all means
indulge in a generous emulation to excel. Say nothing and do nothing
disgraceful. Assume those pleasant modes of action and expression which
are calculated to elicit encomiums. Mind appearances in those little
matters which win a good name. No sensible man likes to see a slattern;
nor admires a wife or sister who appears before him neat and clean, but
dressed after the fashion of a charwoman. The Creator has seen fit to
give you a fair form, and it is ungrateful to His beneficence not to
robe that form in suitable apparel. At the same time, it is well to
remember that the epicureanism of the toilet and the patient study of
costumial display, are neither female duties, nor primary requisites
for a finished woman.
How supremely ridiculous many women are rendered by the excess and
perversion of approbativeness. Not long ago young ladies, and some
rather old dowagers too, wore little hats with round crowns, and
beautiful lace fringe, edged with bugles and fancy bead-work, hanging
like a flounce round their eyes. The gauzy medium mightily improved the
looks of a certain class; but the beauties soon discovered the
disadvantage under which they laboured, and immediately betook
themselves to broad brims. As regards bonnets, once they were so large
that it was difficult to find the head; then the difficulty was, not to
find the head but the thing that was said to cover it. We wish our
sisters would always emulate their gracious sovereign, who “wears her
bonnet on her head, and _pays her bills quarterly_.” Mantles seem to us
both comfortable and becoming, and we may add economical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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