Volume 2

Mrs Dollymop’s Advice for the Single Woman

On Womanhood – The Importance of Being Yourself – Hair, Make-up, and Perfume – The Padded Bust – Health and Fashion – The Monthlies – Flirtation – When to Marry – Choosing a Husband – The Wedding Day – Women to Admire

Ladies, the modern world is, at times, a befuddling place to navigate. Herein I will guide you through the main attributes of femininity, from costume and dress to the many ideas of womanliness and the art of securing a husband. I will end my ruminations with a list of women for whom there is no equal, no muse greater, no voice clearer, than theirs who have been known as ‘woman’ during our glorious time. But before we begin, the essay below, written in 1877, is for your rumination so that you can better understand the complexities of ‘womanhood’ in our age.

Last evening the Rev. Eli Fay, minister of the Upper Chapel, Norfolk-street, delivered the first of a series of lectures he intends to give on ‘Woman.’ The particular subject of last night’s discourse was ‘Woman in the Realm of Thought,’ and Mr. Fay, who is from America, sought to show that woman, although essentially different from man, is in no way his inferior.

Opening with the words of Genesis, 1st Chapter 27th verse, the rev. gentleman said there was an ineradicable difference between man and woman, a difference in structure, and a difference intellectually and physically. Nor did the fact that there were women like Cornelia, Joan of Arc, Miss Nightingale, and Mrs. Beecher Stowe to place against Cromwell and Napoleon, Michaelangelo, Shakespeare, and Beethoven, alter this fact. The mind of Mrs. Stowe, while the clearest, strongest, and best balanced in the Beecher family, was yet essentially a female mind. Feminine men and masculine women were monstrosities, and any attempt to repress the characteristics of either sex by education was against the law of nature. Man was granite, woman was Italian marble.

But still it did not follow that woman was inferior to man; there were far more suicides among men than among women – while a man committed suicide a woman wept and died at her post. Woman had no more difficulty than Man in mastering the sciences and practical matters. Madam de Stael was a power among the French diplomatists, and our own Queen Victoria was said to hold very decided opinions on public matters. Still statesmanship was not the sphere of woman.

The reverend gentleman then condemned and deplored the unjust discrimination which excluded the sex from our great seats of learning, and pointed out that the intellect of woman had not been found wanting in any department in which it had been tried. To say that woman was inferior was an insult to our wives and sisters, and he urged that the sex should have an opportunity of displaying their capacity.

While man’s education continued for years after woman’s, indeed during his life, she when she married settled down to the treadmill of domestic duties, and often actually retrograded in knowledge. He believed that the domestic duties of woman were a sacred mission, but he urged that husbands should encourage their wives, who were almost always their best counsellors, to take an interest in what was going on in the world, and not encourage them to lavish their time on idle vanities. The intellectual progress of women often ended on their wedding-day, and they were not nearly so bright at 40 as at 20.

Mr. Fay then enumerated the causes which circumcised the realm of thought in women, and declared that if women were allowed fair opportunities for education they would often prove better help-mates than now. Women too often gave themselves up to dress and idle dissipation, and who were responsible but the men who preferred a pretty face and attractive person to rare intellectual and moral worth in plain attire.

The Importance of Being Yourself: -

I admire beauty in a woman, but what I have grown to admire more in all my days of schooling is sound common sense, and this is true of all the best society. Unless a beautiful woman is possessed of this sterling quality her beauty indeed falls flat upon us. A woman – as much as a man – must attend to her health; we have a right to possess just as good health, and perhaps better. All women would be healthier and nonetheless beautiful if they are in the possession of firm muscles and strong limbs. Often, young women are given to comparing themselves to popular ideas of beauty, or, far more serious in nature, against the characteristics of their friends.