She must constantly feel her unfitness to take any part in the society
that suits the taste of her more intellectual husband and children. She
must observe that they are obliged to bring down their conversation to
her level, that they are obliged to avoid, out of deference to, and
affection for her, all those varied topics which make social intercourse
a useful as well as an agreeable exercise of the mental powers, an often
more improving arena of friendly discussion than perhaps any professed
debating society could be. No such employment of social intercourse can,
however, be attempted when one of the heads of the household is
uneducated and unintellectual. The weather must form the leading, and
the only safe topic of conversation; for the gossip of the
neighbourhood, commented on in the freedom and security of family life,
imparts to all its members a petty censoriousness of spirit that can
never afterwards be entirely thrown off. Then the education of the
children of such a mother as I have described must be carried on under
the most serious disadvantages. Money in abundance may be at her
disposal, but that is of little avail when she has no power of forming a
judgment as to the abilities of the persons so lavishly paid for forming
the minds of the children committed to their charge: the precious hours
of their youth will thus be very much wasted; and when self-education,
in some few cases, comes in time to repair these early neglects, there
must be reproachful memories of that ignorance which placed so many
needless difficulties in the path to knowledge and advancement.

It is not, however, those alone who are bound by the ties of wife and
mother, whose intellectual cultivation may exercise a powerful influence
in their social relations: each woman in proportion to her mental and
moral qualifications possesses a useful influence over all those within
her reach. Moral excellence alone effects much: the amiable, the loving,