The young lady's private counselor : the care of mind and body...; a book designed for young ladies, to aid them in acquiring a life of purity, intellectual culture, bodily strength and freedom from many of the ills and annoyances of life that custom has placed on the sex; also, studies for young ladies on subjects concerning themselves, by many mothers / prepared and compiled by Melville C. Keith.

  • Keith, Melville C.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The young lady's private counselor : the care of mind and body...; a book designed for young ladies, to aid them in acquiring a life of purity, intellectual culture, bodily strength and freedom from many of the ills and annoyances of life that custom has placed on the sex; also, studies for young ladies on subjects concerning themselves, by many mothers / prepared and compiled by Melville C. Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    As I have never heard a name for this fact, and it is a fact that at once accounts for all the contrary things we see con- cerning the female sex, why at one time a woman is raised to the rank of a queen and a goddess, and at another time she is classed as a slave, we have decided to call it feminine power. We think, we assert, that every woman has this power born in her, and that she is the possessor of the power as much as she is the possessor of the reproductive organs. So long as she is in a certain state, the female is a queen, a ruler, a lovely being that controls the world and is favored directly from heaven. She has the power of heaven to create happiness around her. When once this power is gone, she is no longer a queen, but a ''weaker vessel, a plaything, a slave, seemingly a misfortune to herself, a source of trouble and unhappiness. Understand, please, that this is a man writing (whose mother was a woman), a father, lover, husband, counselor, and that with no outlines to go before, we are stating a fact as it ap- pears to us and new to the world—a cause why woman as woman exists. We sa}r the cause is, that God designed a superior, higher, better, purer life than man could naturally possess, and for this reason he made that superior, higher, better, purer being and gave her the same body reversed, retained, innate, and called it woman. A short space only will be taken up by the consideration of this fact, although it is of such vast importance and the proofs are so abundant that it would take a volume to do it justice, and to mention this series of facts as they are in histoiy, and in the experience of every thoughtful person, man or woman. Throughout all nations and ages we have these queens ana superior creatures, and we have also a corresponding class of slaves. We read of the women of the Bible, the women of histoiy, and we see the women of to-day in the same two great classes. We assert that the same power, the same superior purity,