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    supply for advancing years or declining powers and life ? Is it even likely , however liberal may be the recompense of their labours , a circumstance rarely occurring and not to be reckoned upon , that , among the gay and great , surrounded by temptations to vanity and expense , they should acquire habits of self-denial , economy , and prudence ? But liberal remunerations are not to be expected , competition is too great , and the market is already glutted ; in the universal rage for the acquisition of accomplishments , their value is daily sinking ; many accomplished young women , upon whose training and education a little fortune has been expended , actually barter their acquirements and time for less than the wages of a domestic servant , and for scarcely more than temporary protection and support .

    Where will , where must this end ? What is to become , after a transient season , of these refined , delicate , and helpless creatures ? Will the honest mechanic , will the plain tradesman , burthen themselves with fine ladies and take them for wives ? Will the higher classes stoop to lift to their rank females , however lovely , amiable , or endowed , whom they are accustomed to consider in their families as scarcely raised above a servile station ? If lovely and attractive in their persons and manners , they are encompassed by tenfold perils .

    Most formidable , most threatening in their moral consequences , are the impediments hence likely to arise to an improved state of society and civilization . This mode of female education is infinitely worse and more dangerous than would be its total neglect , since , in that case , woman , amidst the present diffusion of knowledge and literature , would come in for her share ; she would read , think , acquire principles , communicate them to her children , and fulfil , at least , the domestic duties of her station . She would not blush for her unrefined parents and relatives ; she would not shrink disgusted from the honest affection of her equal and neighbour , who , occupied in procuring the property , or the habits , necessary to the provision for a family , had no leisure for the study of ornament and grace .

    Accomplishments , in the present rage for them , are become , not the recreation , but the arduous , absorbing business of female life . They are considered worthless if not cultivated to an excess , that enfeebles the body , engrosses the time , and leaves little leisure either for the exercise that strengthens the former , or for the knowledge and thought by which the latter only can be invigorated . If more solid studies are affected to be taught in our female schools , ( or establishments in more fashionable phraseology , ) they must be in subordination to those which the vanity of parents and the mandates of fashion imperiously alike demand and crave . Those who preside over schools , however qualified by good principles and good sense , ( and some such respectable individuals doubtless there are , ) are not at liberty to use their

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    On Female Education and Occupations . 493

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1833, page 493, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2618/page/53/