The College, the Market, and the Court: or, Woman's relation to education, labor and lawDall, Caroline Wells Healey
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The College, the Market, and the Court: or, Woman's relation to education, labor and law
Dall, Caroline Wells Healey
Women -- Education; Women -- Employment; Women -- Legal status, laws, etc.
Her translation of Salzman's "Elements of Morality" led to an
interesting correspondence with its author, who repaid the service,
subsequently, by translating into German her "Rights of Woman." These
occupations, if they did little towards the discipline of her powers,
served to rouse her from the dejection into which the death of her
friend had plunged her. Her earnings were now devoted to her own family.
One sister she kept at Paris for two years to qualify her as a
governess; another she placed as parlor-boarder at a London school. Her
brother James she sent to Woolwich; afterward procuring for him a
position in the navy, where he soon rose to be a lieutenant. Her
favorite, Charles, she placed with a farmer for instruction; and then
fitted him out for America, where he grew wealthy on the basis she
provided. This brother must have left a large family in the State of
New York. Her brothers and sisters thus established, she attempted to
rescue a support for her father from his broken and confused fortunes.
This proving impossible, he was supported by her own labor, until his
death. The very great demands made upon her by such natural obligations
did not prevent her from assuming others. She adopted for her own the
child of a dead friend, the niece of John Hunter. Her brilliancy, her
personal beauty, her unselfish devotion, could not fail to win for her
many loving friends; and among them the French Revolution found her. The
work which first gave her her proper literary rank was her answer to
Burke's Reflections upon that movement. She wrote rapidly: her pamphlet
was the first of the many that appeared, and obtained extraordinary
success. The public applause warmed her, and her next production was her
celebrated "Vindication of the Rights of Woman." The startling energy
with which she exploded the system of gallantry, a miserable relic of
the Stuart courts, roused the popular indignation. It was hard to
reconcile the vigor of her rebuke to the tender sentiment which trembled
through the book, and also to the impression produced by Mary herself,
lovely in person, and, in the most engaging sense, feminine in her
manners. Her intimacy with the historical painter, Fuseli, followed. He
was a man of powerful genius and strong prejudices. His influence upon
Mary, if it was sometimes refreshing, could not always have been
beneficial. The reader of Haydon's Autobiography will remember this
man. A wider knowledge of the world would have protected her from his
influence: as it was, she pursued the intimacy with unsuspecting
delight; for Fuseli was a contented husband, and his wife was her
friend. She was now in her thirty-second year; she had arrived at a
period when domestic happiness of some sort becomes essential to the
strongest woman. The fullest-fruited laurel then withers before her
eyes, if it has not taken root at her own hearth. At the close of the
year 1792, Mary took refuge in Paris from the chagrin and restlessness
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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