In 1744 Edward Moore published his _Fables for Ladies_.[437] In thirteen rather smoothly versified little tales he enforces the ordinary maxims included in the accepted social creed for women. Only the last one goes out of the realm of decorum and domesticity. In "The Owl and the Nightingale" the Nightingale represents the woman who "minds the duties of her nest" and sings the song taught her by nature, and so gains applause from man and bird. The opposite type is represented by the Owl who, puffed up with self-conceit, spends her time in pedantry and sloth. The owl-like lady vaunts her own wits, twits her husband with his inferiority, and lets her children go ragged and dirty. With books her litter'd floor is spread, Of nameless authors, never read; Foul linen, petticoats, and lace Fill up the intermediate space. Abroad, at visitings, her tongue Is never still, and always wrong; All meanings she defines away, And stands, with truth and sense, at bay. [Sidenote: Samuel Richardson] Samuel Richardson was the first to make feminism an issue in fiction. Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe have the characteristics counted ideal by Richardson, and both of these young ladies have not only exceptional facility with the pen, but they have an education superior to that of most girls of their day, and they have educational ideas far ahead of their time. Though Clarissa was very young when she died, she is represented as having accomplished much. In fine needlework she excelled cloistered nuns, pieces of her work being sent even to Italy to show the skill of English maidens. She had a pretty hand at drawing, and, even when her execution was faulty, she was nevertheless "absolute mistress in the _should-be_ of art." She knew French and Italian well, and had read the chief poetry in those tongues as well as in English. She had also begun Latin. She read aloud fluently and correctly, with grace and dramatic effect. Her maxim was, "All that a woman can learn above the useful knowledge proper to her sex, _let her learn_." But she had no patience with a "learned slattern," and deprecated any education that could turn a woman away from domestic economy. Pamela was but sixteen when she married and her education had been in the main that gained through four years with Lady B. But after her marriage she settles into a routine of life, one element of which is three hours a day for study. Italian, French, geography, and arithmetic receive particular attention. The chief pleasures in her home are intellectual ones. Her first theatrical season in London presents her in the rôle of dramatic critic. Ambrose Philips's _The Distressed Mother_ and Steele's _Tender Husband_ had awakened tears and laughter from a generation of play-goers, before Pamela, self-appointed censor of the stage, revealed their immoralities and improbabilities. It is also Pamela who is chosen to lay bare the absurdities of the Italian opera.