How to bring up your daughters: tongue-in-cheek advice from 1811
From the Gazette de L'Isle de Guernesey, March 30, 1811. Outrageous! The illustration is a detail from a fashion plate of July 1807, and is in the Library Collection.
If you have no Fortune to bequeath to your Daughters, educate them in every polite science, such as Dancing and Music.
Keep them from domestic employments, because it is vulgar, and from reading, because it hurts their eyes. N.B. An exception may be made here in favour of novels, plays, and 'Books of the Opera.'
Procure them to be introduced to young Men of high rank and fashion, to whom, for this purpose, you must give expensive entertainments. They, in turn, will eat your victuals, toy with your Daughters and laugh at your absurd pride.
Take care your Misses miss no Ball, fête, or public amusement. Let them be seen as often, and in as many places, as possible.
Endeavour to make them forget what they are, and they will soon forget what they ought to be.
Let these practises be continued as long as possible, and 'the young Ladies of beauty, taste, and spirit' will, if they escape being taken into keeping, at least be so blown upon, that you need not fear their being solicited in marriage by such vulgar fellows as tradesmen and shopkeepers.
Probatum est.
P.S. A trip to India has been often recommended, when other methods have failed, but this cure has of late been found ineffectual, many young Ladies having been brought home incurable.—Women, like Wines, are not the better for keeping—nor become more mellow for having crossed the Line.
This piece can be found under the title 'Education on a New Plan, principally adapted to the Female Sex' as early as 1789 in The British Mercury, and probably in other similar magazines of the period.