If they were properly educated I don't see why they
shouldn't be much the same as men--as satisfactory I mean; though, of
course, very different. The question is, how should one educate
them. The present method seems to me abominable. This girl, though
twenty-four, had never heard that men desired women, and, until I
explained it, did not know how children were born. Her ignorance upon
other matters as important" (here Mrs. Ambrose's letter may not be
quoted) . . . "was complete. It seems to me not merely foolish but
criminal to bring people up like that. Let alone the suffering to them,
it explains why women are what they are--the wonder is they're no worse.
I have taken it upon myself to enlighten her, and now, though still a
good deal prejudiced and liable to exaggerate, she is more or less a
reasonable human being. Keeping them ignorant, of course, defeats its
own object, and when they begin to understand they take it all much too
seriously. My brother-in-law really deserved a catastrophe--which he
won't get. I now pray for a young man to come to my help; some one, I
mean, who would talk to her openly, and prove how absurd most of her
ideas about life are. Unluckily such men seem almost as rare as the
women. The English colony certainly doesn't provide one; artists,
merchants, cultivated people--they are stupid, conventional, and
flirtatious.
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