EN 2010 Chapter Notes - Chapter 21-50: True Women
Document Summary
To be a true woman: piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife woman. Without them, no matter whether there was fame, achievement, or wealth, all was ashes. With them she was promised happiness and power (21) One reason religion was valued was that it did not take a woman away from her. Women were warned no to let their literary or intellectual pursuits take them away from god (23) Purity: without it she was, in fact, no woman at all, but a member of some lower order (23) Therefore all true women were urged, in the strongest possible terms, to maintain their virtue, although men, being by nature more sensual than they, would try to assault it (24) If, however, a woman managed to withstand man"s assaults on her virtue, she demonstrated her superiority and her power over him (25)
