"What is the sphere of woman?
Home. The social circle.
What is her mission? To mold character, --to
fashion herself and others after the model character of Christ.
What
are her chief instruments for the accomplishment of her great work? The
affections. Gentleness, sweetness,
loveliness, and purity are the elements of her "power".
Her place
is not on life's' great battlefields. Man belongs there. It is for him
to go forth armed for its conflicts and struggles to do fierce battle
with the host of evils that throng our earth. But woman must abide in
the peaceful sanctuaries of home, and walk in the noiseless vales of
private life.
There she must dwell, beside the secret springs of public virtue.
There
she must smile upon the father, the brother, the husband, when,
returning like warriors from the fight, exhausted and covered with the
dust of strife, they need to be refreshed by sweet waters drawn from
affections spring, and cheered to renewed struggles by the music of her
voice.
There she must rear the Christian patriot, and statesman, the self-denying philanthropist, and the obedient citizen.
There,
in a word she must form the character of the world, and determine the
destiny of her race! How awful is her mission! What dread responsibility
attaches to her work!
Surely she is not degraded by filling
such a sphere. nor would she be elevated, if , forsaking it, she should
go forth into the highway of society and jostle with her brothers for
the offices and honors of public life. Fame she might occasionally gain,
but it would be at the price of her womanly influence." ~Dan Wise
(1857)
[Slightly edited.]
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