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Women's Courtship

John Lucas Seymour, "Flirtation," © Corporation of London

Ladies, you must maintain your demeanor of modesty throughout the passions of courtship, and never succumb to lover’s demands. Most of your responses to your courtship shall be done through conversation and epistolary communication.

Here are my top five time tested tips for ladies on how to be a good Wife:
5. As women are naturally educated and “unfitted for the delicate pleasures of a rational esteem, and the godlike joys of a manlike friendship," I would advise you to strive to restrain your natural gaiety. (1) Addison has reflected well upon the nature of women, "in their natural gaiety, and also the manner to which their education must give naturally to them a strong bias to dissembling and affectation; the turn of thinking which for the most part they early imbibe; the too much attention and artifice they are taught to bestow on their personsl the trifling, and often ill-judged accomplishments, by which their ambition is excited, and in which, for the most part, they so studiously endeavour to excel." (2)

4. Keep a modest appearance. Men are not necessarily looking for coquets or beautiful mistresses who might prove inconstant- as Addison says, "n the gay time of coutrship, it seems to be a general practice with both sexes, to conceal all personal defects by every artifice of dress, etc. This is not so polite, and may be attended with future consequences very prejudicial. By so intimate a union as that of marraige, all bodily defects will soon be discovered; and as hypocrisy, in the minutest matters." (3) Learn to dress properly by paying a visit to the ladies’ dress department.

3. Guard your youthful passions. Courtships are particularly a testing time for the young; parents, I would advise you to visit my Children's Moral Instruction area to guarantee that your children will not be growing up with these loose morals in the first place. Learn the true nature of love from the wise words of Addison: "Unhappy marriages are often occasioned from the headstrong marriages of ungoverned passion. Passions are extremely transient and unsteady; and love, with no other support, will ever be short-lived and fleeting. It is a fire that is soon extinguished; and where there is no solid esteem and well-cemented friendship to blow it up, it rarely lights agtain, but from some accidental impulses, by no means to be depended on..."(4)

2. Write him love letters, filled with compliments and flowery words!

1. Listen to Daniel Defoe and your parents.

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