Some Reflections Upon Marriage.: With additions.Astell, Mary
Philosophy
Some Reflections Upon Marriage.: With additions.
Astell, Mary
Marriage; Women -- Social conditions
Again, it may be said, If a Wife’s Case be as it is here represented, it
is not good for a Woman to marry, and so there’s an End of Human Race.
But this is no fair Consequence, for all that can justly be inferr’d
from hence, is, that a Woman has no mighty Obligations to the Man who
makes Love to her; she has no Reason to be fond of being a Wife, or to
reckon it a Piece of Preferment when she is taken to be a Man’s
Upper-Servant; it is no Advantage to her in this World; if rightly
manag’d it may prove one as to the next. For she who marries purely to
do good, to educate Souls for Heaven, who can be so truly mortified as
to lay aside her own Will and Desires, to pay such an intire Submission
for Life, to one whom she cannot be sure will always deserve it, does
certainly perform a more Heroick Action, than all the famous Masculine
Heroes can boast of, she suffers a continual Martyrdom to bring Glory to
_GOD_, and Benefit to Mankind; which Consideration, indeed, may carry
her through all Difficulties, I know not what else can, and engage her
to Love him who proves perhaps so much worse than a Brute, as to make
this Condition yet more grievous than it needed to be. She has need of a
strong Reason, of a truly Christian and well-temper’d Spirit, of all the
Assistance the best Education can give her, and ought to have some good
Assurance of her own Firmness and Vertue, who ventures on such a Trial;
and for this Reason ’tis less to be wonder’d at that Women marry off in
haste, for perhaps if they took Time to consider and reflect upon it,
they seldom would marry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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