ad its after effects:
the young girls grew up with a taste for system, discipline, piety,
and for a rigid devotion, which often led them to an instinctive need
of doctrine and sacrifice; consequently, in later life many turned to
Jansenism.

However, the young girls of this class who were not thus educated,
because their assistance was required at home, received an early
training in social as well as in domestic affairs; they had a solid
and practical, if uncouth, foundation, combined with a worldly and,
often, a frivolous temperament. To them many privileges were opened:
they were taken to the opera, to concerts and to balls, to the salons
of painting, and it often happened that they developed a craving for
the society to which only the nobly born demoiselle was admitted. When
this craving went too far, it frequently led to seduction by some of
the chevaliers who make seduction a profession.

The marriage customs in these circles differed little from those
of to-day. The suitor asked permission to call and to continue his
visits; then followed the period of present giving. The young girl
was almost always absolute mistress of the decision; if the father
presented a name, the daughter insisted upon seeing, receiving,
and becoming intimately acquainted with the suitor, a custom quite
different from that practised among the nobility. Instead of giving
her rights as it did the girl of the nobility, marriage imposed duties
upon the girl of the middle class; it closed the world instead of
opening it to her; it ended her brilliant, gay, and easy life, instead
of beginning it, as was the case in the higher classes. This she
realized, therefore hesitated long before taking the final step which
was to bind her until death.

With her, becoming a wife meant infinitely more than it did to the
girl of the nobility; her husband had the management of her money, and
his vices were visited upon her and her children--in short, he became
her master in all things. These disadvantages she was taught to
consider deeply before entering the marriage state.

This state of affairs developed distinctive physiognomies in the
different classes of the middle-class society: thus, "the wives of the
financiers are dignified, stern, severe; those of the merchants are
seductive, active, gossiping, and alert; those of the artists are
free, easy, and independent, with a strong taste for pleasure and
gayety--and they give the tone." As we approach the