to make the world
happier and brighter. There was not afforded to men the restfulness
and pleasure in the company of women which would serve as a delightful
foil to the practical and anxious cares of their daily lives; nor
were women taught to believe in themselves as capable persons in the
spheres of life in which feminine personality, taste, and touch
best affect and mould civilization. Except in a few notable cases,
literature and art, to say nothing of science, were outside of woman's
sphere, because she neither believed in herself nor was seriously
regarded by men as a factor in any of the wide relations of life other
than those which were involved in her sex. The arts of the toilette,
conversation, and deportment were all in which she was considered to
need to be adept. Where naturalness was suppressed, it is not strange
that the young women should have been influenced by false standards;
false modesty, false sensitiveness, false ignorance, were depended
upon to give them the artlessness and innocence of deportment which
should recommend them to the blase men of the times.

The estimate in which the sex was held was not quietly accepted by all
women; although the new woman had not appeared upon the horizon,
there were not wanting women who realized that their position was
a humiliating one, and who sought to create a sentiment for its
betterment. Mary Astell was one such, and the case as presented by
her shows the superficiality of the conventional routine of a woman's
life. She says: "When a young lady is taught to value herself on
nothing but her cloaths, and to think she's very fine when well
accoutred; when she hears say, that 'tis wisdom enough for her to know
how to dress herself, that she may become amiable in his eyes to whom
it appertains to be knowing and learned; who can blame her if she lays
out her industry and money for such accomplishments, and sometimes
extends it farther than her misinformer desires she should?... If from
our infancy we are nurs'd upon ignorance and vanity; are taught to be
proud and petulant, delicate and fantastick, humourous and inconstant,
'tis not strange that the ill effects of this conduct appear in
all the future actions of our lives.... That, therefore, women are
unprofitable to most, and a plague and dishonor to some men, is not
much to be regretted on account of the men, because 'tis the product
of their folly in denying them the benefits of an ingenuous and
liberal e