Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/173

This page has been validated.
A PIONEER OF THE MOVEMENT
169

moral atmosphere laden with impurities and utterly destitute of the ozone necessary to healthy lungs. Dr. Gregory, for instance, whose book, "A Legacy to his Daughters," seems to have been regarded as a standard work on female propriety at the end of the eighteenth century, recommends constant dissimulation to girls to whom nature has given a robust physical constitution. A sickly delicacy was supposed to be an essential part of feminine charm. This will perhaps be believed with difficulty at the present time; one more quotation may therefore be given in support of the assertion. The Rev. Dr. James Fordyce, in his sermons addressed to women, says: "Let it be observed that in your sex manly exercises are never graceful; that in them a tone and figure, as well as an air and deportment, of the masculine kind, are always forbidding; that men of sensibility desire in every woman soft features and a flowing voice, a form not robust, and demeanour delicate and gentle." The lordly protector, man, was supposed to have his vanity tickled by a constant exhibition of female feebleness. A healthy girl was therefore counselled by sage Dr. Gregory "not to dance with spirit when gaiety of heart would make her feet eloquent," lest the men who beheld her might either suppose that she was not entirely dependent on their protection for her safety, or else might entertain dark suspicions as to her modesty. Well might Mary Wollstonecraft protest against such "indecent cautions," and in respect of ninetenths of the advice proffered to girls by Dr. Gregory and other writers of the same stamp, one is inclined