THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

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VOL. III--FEBRUARY, 1859.--NO. XVI.

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OUGHT WOMEN TO LEARN THE ALPHABET?


Paris smiled, for an hour or two, in the year 1801, when, amidst
Napoleon's mighty projects for remodelling the religion and government
of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvain Maréchal, thrust in his
"Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women." Daring, keen,
sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its
pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the
author's friend and biographer, Madame Gacon Dufour, who declared that
he must be partially insane, and proceeded to prove herself so by
replying to him. His proposed statute consists of eighty-two clauses,
and is fortified by a "whereas" of a hundred and thirteen weighty
reasons. He exhausts the range of history to show the frightful results
which have followed this taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge;
quotes the Encyclopédie, to prove that the woman who knows the alphabet
has already lost a portion of her innocence; cites the opinion of