From the same source flows an opinion that young girls ought to
dedicate great part of their time to needle-work; yet, this
employment contracts their faculties more than any other that
could have been chosen for them, by confining their thoughts to
their persons. Men order their thoughts to be made, and have done
with the subject; women make their own clothes, necessary or
ornamental, and are continually talking about them; and their
thoughts follow their hands. It is not indeed the making of
necessaries that weakens the mind; but the frippery of dress. For
when a woman in the lower rank of life makes her husband's and
children's clothes, she does her duty, this is her part of the
family business; but when women work only to dress better than
they could otherwise afford, it is worse than sheer loss of time.
To render the poor virtuous they must be employed, and women in
the middle rank of life, did they not ape the fashions of the
nobility, without catching their ease, might employ them, whilst
they themselves managed their families, instructed their
children, and exercised their own minds. Gardening, experimental
philosophy, and literature, would afford them subjects to think
of and matter for conversation, that in some degree would
exercise their understandings. The conversation of French women,
who are not so rigidly nailed to their chairs to twist lappets, and knot ribands, is frequently
superficial; but, I contend, that it is not half so insipid as
that of those English women whose time is spent in making caps,
bonnets, and the whole mischief of trimmings, not to mention
shopping, bargain-hunting, &c. &c.: and it is the decent, prudent
women, who are most degraded by these practices; for their motive
is simply vanity. The wanton who exercises her taste to render
her passion alluring, has something more in view.
