Instructing Women
 

33
 


 

The frontispiece of Charles Butler's The American Lady, 18 36,

illustrates the author's assertion that "The first of Parental duties

which nature points out to the Mother is to be herself the nurse

of her own Offspring,"
 

days, he has little practical advice: Unlike his female contempo¬
raries, he seems perfectly ignorant of the difficulties that marriage
and family—no matter how delightful—posed to nineteenth cen¬
tury women.