Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red menJameson, Mrs. (Anna)
History
Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men
Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Indians of North America -- Canada; Ontario -- Description and travel
In women, as now educated, there is a strength of local habits and
attachments, a want of cheerful self-dependence, a cherished physical
delicacy, a weakness of temperament,--deemed, and falsely deemed, in
deference to the pride of man, essential to feminine grace and
refinement,--altogether unfitting them for a life which were otherwise
delightful:--the active out-of-door life in which she must share and
sympathise, and the inn-door occupations which in England are considered
servile; for a woman who cannot perform for herself and others all
household offices, has no business here. But when I hear some men
declare that they cannot endure to see women eat, and others speak of
brilliant health and strength in young girls as being rude and vulgar,
with various notions of the same kind too grossly absurd and perverted
even for ridicule, I cannot wonder at any nonsensical affectations I
meet with in my own sex; nor can I do otherwise than pity the mistakes
and deficiencies of those who are sagely brought up with the one end and
aim--to get married.
A woman, blessed with good health, a cheerful spirit, larger sympathies,
larger capabilities of reflection and action, some knowledge of herself,
her own nature, and the common lot of humanity, with a plain
understanding, which has been allowed to throw itself out unwarped by
sickly fancies and prejudices,--such a woman would be as happy in Canada
as anywhere in the world. A weak, frivolous, half-educated, or
ill-educated woman may be as miserable in the heart of London as in the
heart of the forest. But there her deficiencies are not so injurious,
and are supplied to herself and others by the circumstances and
advantages around her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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