An affected and pretentious woman is all deportment and words; a sensible woman shows her sense by her behaviour. This one follows her inclination and disposition, that one her reason and her affections; the one is formal and austere, the other is on all occasions exactly what she ought to be. The first hides her weaknesses underneath a plausible outside; the second conceals a rich store of virtue underneath a free and natural air. Affectation and pretension shackle the mind, yet do not veil age or ugliness, but often imply them; common-sense, on the contrary, palliates the imperfections of the body, ennobles the mind, gives fresh charms to youth, and makes beauty more dangerous.
(49.) Why should men be blamed because women are not learned? What laws, edicts, or regulations prohibit them from opening their eyes, from reading and remembering what they have read, and from introducing this in their conversation and in their writings? Is their ignorance, on the contrary, not owing to a custom introduced by themselves; or to the weakness of their constitution, or to the indolence of their mind, or the care of their beauty, or to a certain flightiness which will not allow them to prosecute any continuous studies, or to a talent and aptitude they only have for needlework, or to an inattention caused by domestic avocations, or to a natural aversion for all serious and difficult things, or to a curiosity quite distinct from that which gratifies the mind, or to a wholly different pleasure from that of exercising the memory? But to whatever cause men may ascribe this ignorance of women, they may consider themselves happy that women, who rule them in so many things, are inferior to them in this respect.
We look on a learned woman as we do on a fine piece of armour, artistically chiselled, admirably polished, and of exquisite workmanship, which is only fit to be shown to connoisseurs, of no use whatever, and no more apt to be used for war or hunting than a horse out of a riding-school is, though it may be trained to perfection.
Whenever I find learning and sagacity united in one and the same person, I do not care what the sex may be, I admire; and if you tell me that a sensible woman hardly thinks of becoming learned, or that a learned woman is hardly ever a sensible woman, you have already forgotten what you have just read, namely, that women are prevented from studying science by certain imperfections. Now you can draw your own conclusions, namely, that those who have the fewest imperfections are most likely to have the greatest amount of common-sense, and that thus a sensible woman bids fairest to become learned; and that a learned woman could never be such without having overcome a great many imperfections, and this is the very best proof of her sense.[176]
(50.) It is very difficult to remain neutral when two women, who are both our friends, fall out through some cause or other in which we are not at all concerned; we must often side with one or lose both.
(51.) There are certain women who love their money better than their friends, and their lovers better than their money.
(52.) We are amazed to observe in some women stronger and more violent passions than their love for men, I mean ambition and gambling. Such women render men chaste, and have nothing of their own sex but the dress.[177]
(53.) Women run to extremes; they are either better or worse than men.