Thence I infer that the men of the world and the women of the world are neither of them—good for much.
MEDON.
And you have written a book to make them better?
ALDA.
Heaven forbid! else I were only fit for the next lunatic asylum. Vanity run mad never conceived such an impossible idea.
MEDON.
Then, in a few words, what is the subject, and what the object, of your book?
ALDA.
I have endeavoured to illustrate the various modifications of which the female character is susceptible, with their causes and results. My life has been spent in observing and thinking; I have had, as you well know, more opportunities for the first, more leisure for the last, than have fallen to the lot of most people. What I have seen, felt, thought, suffered, has led me to form certain opinions. It appears to me that the condition of women in society, as at present constituted, is false in itself, and injurious to them,—that the education of women, as at present conducted, is founded in mistaken principles, and tends to increase fearfully the sum of misery and error in both sexes; but I do not choose presumptuously to fling these opinions in the face of the world, in the form of essays on morality, and treatises on education. I have rather chosen to illustrate certain positions by examples, and leave my readers to deduce the moral themselves, and draw their own inferences.
MEDON.