Feminine accomplishments, such as embroidery, amateurish drawing and painting, awakened her active hostility. This definite rejection of all that ordinarily filled the feminine mind, and a rejection, moreover, in the interests of books and writing, of course made Ardelia the unhappy victim of many a sneer. The attack on her by Pope and Gay, in _Three Hours after Marriage_, in 1717, may be taken as an extreme example of the indignities to which "a petticoat author" might be subjected, but there must have been many lesser evidences of social disapproval or the irritating theme would not so often recur in her poems. In "The Introduction" she says: Alas! a woman that attempts the pen, Such an intruder on the rights of men, Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem'd, The fault, can by no vertue be redeem'd. They tell us, we mistake our sex and way; Good breeding, fassion, dancing, dressing, play Are the accomplishments we should desire; To write, or read, or think, or to enquire Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time, And interrupt the Conquests of our prime. She congratulates herself that she had at least had the good sense to keep her rhymes a secret while at court, where a "Versifying Maid of Honour" would have been looked upon "with prejudice, if not with contempt." During a visit to London she heard the young gossip Almeria describe a certain lady as "A Poetess! a woman who writes! A common jest!" Conscious of her growing folio at Eastwell, Ardelia resented the implied censure. What law, she asks, forbids women to think? Women, she protests, are "Education's and not Nature's fools." Ardelia had high praise from noted contemporaries and cordial appreciation at home. But these did not avail to conquer her morbid sensitiveness to criticism. She seemed to embody in herself two warring tendencies, a demand for complete intellectual freedom and the author's inevitable desire to spread his wares abroad, with the shrinking modesty of the lady to whom any sort of publicity was hateful.