What Higher Studies are Suitable.
Carrying the education further may consist either in perfecting the four studies already mentioned, reading well, writing neatly, singing sweetly, and playing finely, to such an unusual degree, that though the things are but ordinary, special excellence in them may bring more than ordinary admiration, or else in acquiring skill in languages in addition to the above, so that the abundance of gifts may cause yet more wonder.
I fear women would have little turn for geometry or the sister sciences, nor would I make them mathematicians, except in so far as they study music, nor lawyers to plead at the bar, nor physicians, though skill in herbs has been much commended in women, nor would I have them profess divinity, to preach in pulpits, though they must practice it as virtuous livers. Philosophy would help them in general discourse, if they had leisure to study it, but the knowledge of some tongues, either as the vehicle of deeper learning, or for their immediate uses, may well be wished for them, and all those powers also that belong to the furniture of speech. If I should allow them the pencil to draw, as well as the pen to write, and thereby entitle them to all my elementary studies, I might have good reasons to give. For young maidens are ready enough to take to it, and it would help to beautify their needlework.
And is not a young gentlewoman, think you, thoroughly well equipped who can read distinctly, write neatly and swiftly, sing sweetly, and play and draw well, understand and speak the learned languages, as well as the modern tongues approved by her time and country, and who has some knowledge of logic and rhetoric, besides the information acquired in her study of foreign languages? If in addition to all this she be an honest woman and a good housewife, would she not be worth wishing for and worth enshrining? And is it likely that her children will be one whit the worse brought up?