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Catherine Graham
Excerpt from Letters on Education (1790)
-- Letter XXIV, Flattery, Chastity, and Male Rakes
". . . beside, as I intend to
breed my pupils up to act a rational part in the world, and
not to fill up a niche in the seraglio of a sultan, I shall
certainly give them leave to use their reason in all matters
which concern their duty and happiness, and shall spare no
pains in the cultivation of this only sure guide to virtue.
I shall inform them of the great utility of chastity and continence;
that the one preserves the body in health and vigor, and the
other, the purity and independence of the mind, without which
it is impossible to possess virtue or happiness. I shall intimate;
that the great difference now beheld in the external consequences
which follow the deviations from chastity in the two sexes,
did in all probability arise from women having been considered
as the mere property of the men; and, on this account had
no right to dispose of their own persons: that policy adopted
this difference, when the plea of property had been given
up; and it was still preserved in society from the unruly
licentiousness of the men, who, finding no obstacles in the
delicacy of the other sex, continue to set at defiance both
divine and moral law, and by mutual support and general opinion
to use their natural freedom with impunity. I shall observe,
that this state of things renders the situation of females,
in their individual capacity very precarious; for the strength
which Nature has given to the passion of love, in order to
serve her purposes, has made it the most ungovernable propensity
of any which attends us. The snares, therefore, that are continually
laid for women, by persons who run no risk in compassing their
seduction, exposes them to continual danger; whilst the implacability
of their own sex, who fear to give up any advantages which
a superior prudence, or even its appearance, give them, renders
one false step an irretrievable misfortune. That, for these
reasons, coquetry in women is as dangerous as it is dishonorable.
That a coquette commonly finds her own perdition, in the very
flames which she raises to consume others; and that if any
thing can excuse the baseness of female seduction, it is the
baits which are flung out by women to entangle the affections,
and excite the passions of men.
I know not what you may think
of my method, Hortensia, which I must acknowledge to carry
the stamp of singularity; but for my part, I am sanguine enough
to expect to turn out of my hands a careless, modest beauty,
grave, manly, noble, full of strength and majesty; and carrying
about her an aegis sufficiently powerful to defend her against
the sharpest arrow that ever was shot from Cupid's bow. A
woman, whose virtue will not be of the kind to wrankle into
an inveterate malignity against her own sex for faults which
she even encourages in the men, but who, understanding the
principles of true religion and morality, will regard chastity
and truth as indispensable qualities in virtuous characters
of either sex; whose justice will incline her to extend her
benevolence to the frailties of the fair as circumstances
invite, and to manifest her resentment against the underminers
of female happiness; in short, a woman who will not take a
male rake either for a husband or a friend. And let me tell
you, Hortensia, if women had as much regard for virtue of
chastity as in some cases they pretend to have, a reformation
would long since have taken place in the world; but whilst
they continue to cherish immodesty in the men, their bitter
persecution of their own sex will not save them from the imputation
of those concealed propensities with which they are accused
by Pope, and other severe satirists on the sex."
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