The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February,
1859, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859

Author: Various

Release Date: March 17, 2004 [EBook #11606]
[Date last updated: July 24, 2005]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

* * * * *

VOL. III--FEBRUARY, 1859.--NO. XVI.

* * * * *

OUGHT WOMEN TO LEARN THE ALPHABET?

Paris smiled, for an hour or two, in the year 1801, when, amidst
Napoleon's mighty projects for remodelling the religion and government
of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvain Marechal, thrust in his
"Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women." Daring, keen,
sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its
pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the
author's friend and biographer, Madame Gacon Dufour, who declared that
he must be partially insane, and proceeded to prove herself so by
replying to him. His proposed statute consists of eighty-two clauses,
and is fortified by a "whereas" of a hundred and thirteen weighty
reasons. He exhausts the range of history to show the frightful results
which have followed this taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge;
quotes the Encyclopedie, to prove that the woman who knows the alphabet
has already lost a portion of her innocence; cites the opinion of
Moliere, that any female who has unhappily learned anything in this line
should affect ignorance, when possible; asserts that knowledge rarely
makes men attractive, and females never; opines that women have no
occasion to peruse Ovid's "Art of Love," since they know it all in
advance; remarks that three-quarters of female authors are no better
than they should be; maintains that Madame Guion would have been far
more useful, had she been merely pretty and an ignoramus, such as Nature
made her,--that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz proba