Peru as It Is, Volume 1 (of 2): A Residence in Lima, and Other Parts of the Peruvian Republic, Comprising an Account of the Social and Physical Features of That CountrySmith, Archibald
History
Peru as It Is, Volume 1 (of 2): A Residence in Lima, and Other Parts of the Peruvian Republic, Comprising an Account of the Social and Physical Features of That Country
Smith, Archibald
Peru -- Description and travel
We have pleasure in bearing our humble evidence in favour of the great
pains, and cost, to which mothers now put themselves in educating their
daughters; and it is incontrovertible, that the rising generation are
about to come on the stage of active life, with many advantages of
instruction which were not enjoyed by their parents. But, granting it
to be true, that these interesting young ladies may have considerable
advantages over their predecessors in the knowledge of French, geography,
music, a little drawing, and a chaster fashion of dancing, still, we are
apprehensive, that in more humble and useful domestic education not a
little is wanting: and this important defect, we conceive, is not to be
remedied by expensive teachers, or by the routine of boarding-schools;
but, if we mistake not, by good example at home. To improve the domestic
education in the female part of the community, it would be necessary to
detach young ladies as much as possible from the customary attendance
of old favourite “zambas;” who, there is much reason to believe, teach
them at an early age to pry into the private weaknesses of their seniors,
and excite in their quick, comprehensive minds a degree of attention
and curiosity which, when indiscreetly called forth, seldom fail to
bias their inclination to vices that may on some occasions be deemed
hereditary; and thus open a door to a series of indulgences which, in the
long-run, prove the bane of their own ill-sought happiness, as well as
the wreck of many a fond parent’s hopes, too blindly placed on a daughter
left to the daily tutorship of intriguing domestics.
The ladies when young, and long before they become marriageable, are
taught to anticipate their own omnipotence at fifteen, which little girls
of seven or eight years of age already reckon to be the approaching
era of their perfect felicity; for the Spaniards say “No hay fea de
quince,”—All are fair at fifteen. There is also among these gifted
women, whose superiority, as a body, over their own countrymen is
always admitted, a great “esprit de corps,” so that the greatest sinner
among them is never left without a gentle voice to plead her cause, and
palliate, when she cannot exculpate, a sister’s errors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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