800 Years of Women's Letters by Olga Kenyon Read Free Book Online Page A

there, where I have treasured up my soul,
    May the soft rays of dawning hope impart
    Reviving Patience to my fainting heart:-
    And when its sharp solicitudes shall cease,
    May I be conscious in the realms of peace
    That every tear which swells my children’s eyes,
    From sorrows past, not present ills arise.
    Then, with some friend who loves to share your pain,
    For ’tis my boast that some such friends remain,
    By filial grief, and fond remembrance prest,
    You’ll seek the spot where all my sorrows rest.
    CHARLOTTE SMITH, EMMELINE (1788)
MARY HAYS APPEALS TO MEN ON BEHALF OF WOMEN, IN A RANGE OF DISCOURSES, FROM IRONIC TO RATIONALIST
    Mary Hays was born in 1760 of a Dissenting family. Her fiancé died before the wedding and her later passion for a philosopher was not requited, which made her well aware of the sufferings of women, to which she draws public attention in 1798:
    Dear generous creatures!
    Of all the systems which human nature in its moments of intoxication has produced – if indeed a bundle of contradictions and absurdities may be called a system – that which men have contrived with a view to forming the minds, and regulating the conduct of women, is perhaps the most completely absurd. And, though the consequences are often very serious to both sexes, if one could for a moment forget these, and consider it only as a system, it would rather be found a subject of mirth . . .
    How great in some parts of their conduct, how insignificant upon the whole, would men have women to be! For one example – when their love, their pride, their delicacy; in short, when all the finest feelings of humanity are insulted and put to the rack, what is expected? When a woman finds that the husband of her choice, the object of her most sincere and constant love, abandons himself to other attachments, infinitely cutting to a woman of sensibility and soul, what is expected of a creature declared weak by nature – and who is rendered weaker by education?
    They expect that this poor weak creature, setting aside in a moment love, jealousy, and pride, the most powerful and universal passions interwoven in the human heart, and which even men, clothed in wisdom and fortitude, find so difficult to conquer, that they seldom attempt it – that she shall notwithstanding lay all these aside as easily as she would her gown and petticoat, and plunge at once into the cold bath of prudence, of which though the wife only is to receive the shock, and make daily use of, yet if she does so, it has the virtue of keeping both husband and wife in a most agreeable temperament. Prudence being one of those rare medicines which affect by sympathy; and this being likewise one of those cases, where the husbands have no objections to the wives acting as principals, nor to their receiving all the honours and emoluments of office; even if death should crown their martyrdom, as has been sometimes known to happen.
    For, there are no vices to which a man addicts himself, no follies he can take it into his head to commit, but his wife and his nearest female relations are expected to connive at, are expected to look upon, if not with admiration, at least with respectful silence, and at awful distance. Any other conduct is looked upon, as a breach of that fanciful system of arbitrary authority, which men have so assiduously erected in their own favour; and any other conduct is accordingly resisted, with the most acrimonious severity.
    A man, for example, is addicted to the destructive vice of drinking. His wife sees with terror and anguish the approach of this pernicious habit, and by anticipation beholds the evils to be dreaded to his individual health, happiness, and consequence: and the probable misery to his family. Yet with this melancholy prospect before her eyes, it is reckoned an unpardonable degree of harshness and imprudence, if she by any means whatever endeavours to check in the bud, this baleful practice; and she is in this case