Page [201].
[piii]
SKETCHES
OF
THE FAIR SEX,
IN
ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD.
TO WHICH ARE ADDED
RULES FOR DETERMINING
THE PRECISE FIGURE, THE DEGREE OF BEAUTY,
THE HABITS, AND THE AGE
NOTWITHSTANDING THE AIDS AND DISGUISE
OF DRESS.
BOSTON:
THEODORE ABBOT,
388 WASHINGTON ST.
1841.
[piv]
Entered according to act of congress, in the year 1841, by
THEODORE ABBOT,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
It is our design to present a pleasing and interesting miscellany, which will serve to beguile the leisure hour, and will at the same time couple instruction with amusement. We have used but little method in the arrangement: Choosing rather to furnish the reader with a rich profusion of narratives and anecdotes, all tending to illustrate the
FEMALE CHARACTER,
to display its delicacy, its sweetness, its gentle or sometimes heroic virtues, its amiable weaknesses, and strange defects—than to attempt an accurate analysis of the hardest subject man ever attempted to master, viz—WOMAN.
It will be seen that we do not set down Woman as a cipher in the account of human beings. We accord to her her full share of importance in the world, and we have not attempted to relieve her from a sense of her responsibility as an accountable being. Above all, we have not failed to impress upon her the obligations she is under to Christianity, whose benign influences have raised her to be the companion and bosom-friend of man, [pvi] instead of his mere handmaid and dependant. It is religion that must form such a character as the following, which though applied by Pope to one of the most accomplished women of his time, is that of a Christian Wife in every age and station,—
“Oh! blest with temper whose unclouded ray
Can make tomorrow cheerful as to-day:
She who can love a sister’s charms, or hear
Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;
She who ne’er answers till a husband cools,
Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules;
Charms by accepting—by submitting sways,
By causing the character of woman to be more thoroughly discussed and better understood;—by making it more frequently the theme of rational meditation to the young and ardent, who, from the force of defective education, are apt to regard all “the sex,” beyond a very limited circle, as mere accessaries to animal enjoyment,—whose peace they may wound without compunction, and whose happiness they may peril without reflection,—we feel that we shall do both sexes a good service, and one for which as they advance in life, and in their turn become husbands, wives and parents, they will thank our little book, as having helped them to know themselves and each other.
[pvii]
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
| African Women, | [43] |
| Adultery, punishment of | [155] |
| Bathing at Rome, | [31] |
| Betrothing and Marriage, | [104] |
| Chinese Women, | [40] |
| Chinese Bridegroom, | [41] |
| Cæsar, Anecdote of | [157] |
| Celibacy of the Clergy, | [160] |
| Cleopatra, Death of | [199] |
| Courts of Love, | [172] |
| Courtship, ancient Swedish | [176] |
| Courtship, Grecian | [165] |
| Courtship, Eastern | [168] |
| Condition of Women in the 8th Century, | [52] |
| Egyptian Women, Ancient | [13] |
| Egyptian Women, Modern | [15] |
| Euthira, desperate act of | [162] |
| Eastern Women, | [37] |
| English Women, | [62] |
| First Woman, | [9] |
| Female Friendship, | [109] |
| Female Delicacy, | [30] |
| French Women, | [53] |
| French Girls, | [55] |
| Female Simplicity, | [71] |
| Female Inferiority, idea of | [67] |
| Females during the age of Chivalry, | [48] |
| First Kiss of Love, | [198] |
| Grecian Women, | [19] |
| German Women, | [99] |
| Grecian Courtezans, | [20] |
| Greeks, religious festivals of | [180] |
| Grecian Ladies, luxurious dress of | [164] |
| Girls sold at Auction, | [153] |
| Husbands, on the choice of | [114] |
| Italian Women, | [57] |
| Influence of female society, | [83] |
| Immodesty at Babylon, | [173] |
| Indecency at Adrianople, | [175] |
| Lucretia and Virginia, | [182] |
| Ladies of Lapland and Greenland, | [177] |
| Matrimony, an essay on | [203] |
| Matrimony among the French | [55] |
| Matrimony in three different lights, | [103] |
| Magnanimity of Women, | [77] |
| Monastic Life, | [89] |
| Marriage Brokers at Genoa, | [60] |
| Marrying, power of | [159] |
| Noah’s three sons, | [43] |
| Nuptial Ceremonies, | [66] |
| On looking at the picture of a beautiful female, | [183] |
| Persian Women, | [17] |
| Philtres and charms, power of | [167] |
| Roman Women, | [24] |
| Roman Oppian Law, | [29] |
| Russian Women, | [65] |
| Spanish Women, | [60] |
| St. Valentine’s Day, | [171] |
| Sentimental Attachment, | [92] |
| Sale of a wife, | [154] |
| Saxons and Danes, long hair of | [170] |
| Venus de Medici, | [194] |
| Women, Art of determining the figure, beauty, habits, and the age of | [185] |
| Women in the Patriarchal ages, | [10] |
| Woman in Savage Life, | [32] |
| Woman in times of Chivalry, | [45] |
| Women in Asia and Africa, | [79] |
[pviii]
“Sketches indeed, from that most passionate page,
A woman’s heart, of feelings, thoughts, that make
The atmosphere in which her spirit moves;
But like all other earthly elements,
O’ercast with clouds; now dark, now touched with light,
With rainbows, sunshine, showers, moonlight, stars,
Chasing each other’s change. I fain would trace
Its brightness and its blackness.”