A young mother, whose little son has the measles, could not, even if she would, find pleasure in reading Volney's Travels in Syria, any more than her husband, a rich banker, could get pleasure out of meditating on Malthus in the midst of bankruptcy.
There is one, and only one, way for rich women to distinguish themselves from the vulgar: moral superiority. For in this there is a natural distinction of feeling.[2]
"We do not wish a lady to write books." No, but does giving your daughter a singing-master engage you to make her into an opera-singer? If you like, I'll say that a woman ought only to write, like Madame de Staël (de Launay), posthumous works to be published after her death. For a woman of less than fifty to publish is to risk her happiness in the most terrible lottery: if she has the good fortune to have a lover, she will begin by losing him.
I know but one exception: it is that of a woman who writes books in order to keep or bring up her family. In that case she ought always to confine herself to their money-value when talking of her own works, and say, for example, to a cavalry major: "Your rank gives you four thousand francs a year, and I, with my two translations from the English, was able last year to devote an extra three thousand five hundred francs to the education of my two boys."
Otherwise, a woman should publish as Baron d'Holbach or Madame de la Fayette did; their best friends knew nothing of it. To print a book can only be without inconvenience for a courtesan; the vulgar, who can despise her at their will for her condition, will exalt her to the heavens for her talent, and even make a cult of it.
Many men in France, among those who have an income of six thousand francs, find their habitual source of happiness in literature, without thinking of publishing anything; to read a good book is for them one of the greatest pleasures. At the end of ten years they find that their mind is enlarged twofold, and no one will deny that, in general, the larger the mind the fewer will be its passions incompatible with the happiness of others.[3] I don't suppose anyone will still deny that the sons of a woman who reads Gibbon and Schiller will have more genius than the children of one who tells her beads and reads Madame de Genlis.
A young barrister, a merchant, an engineer can be launched on life without any education; they pick it up themselves every day by practising their profession. But what resources have their wives for acquiring estimable or necessary qualities? Hidden in the solitude of their household, for them the great book of life necessarily remains shut. They spend always in the same way, after discussing the accounts with their cook, the three louis they get every Monday from their husbands.
I say this in the interest of the tyrant: the least of men, if he is twenty and has nice rosy cheeks, is a danger to a woman with no knowledge, because she is wholly a creature of instinct. In the eyes of a woman of intellect he will produce as much effect as a handsome lackey.
The amusing thing in present-day education is that you teach young girls nothing that they won't have to forget as soon as they are married. It needs four hours a day, for six years, to learn to play the harp well; to paint well in miniature or water-colours needs half that time. Most young girls do not attain even to a tolerable mediocrity—hence the very true saying: "Amateur means smatterer."[4]
And even supposing a young girl has some talent; three years after she is married she won't take up her harp or her brushes once a month. These objects of so much study now only bore her—unless chance has given her the soul of an artist, and this is always a rarity and scarcely helpful in the management of a household.