Happy birthday, Jane Austen!
Ah, such joy you have brought us.
Though it's not a quote from her works, I thought it was sufficiently in her spirit to post this snippet of the play I'm currently writing on, Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem (1780). The jealous husband character explains what he sees as the essential social function of old maids:
Sir George: Formerly... every class of females had its particular description; grandmothers were pious, aunts discreet, old maids censorious! But now, aunts, grandmothers, girls, and maiden gentlewomen, are all the same creature; a wrinkle more or less is the sole difference between ye.
Mrs. Racket: That maiden gentlewomen have lost their censoriousness, is surely not in your catalogue of grievances.
Sir George: Indeed it is - and ranked amongst the most serious grievances. Things went well, madam, when the tongues of three or four old virgins kept all the wives and daughters of a parish in awe. They were the dragons, that guarded the Hesperian fruit; and I wonder they have not been obliged, by act of parliament, to resume their function.
Mrs. Racket: Ha, ha, ha! and pensioned, I suppose, for making strict inquiries into the lives and conversations of their neighbours.
Sir George: With all my heart.
Though it's not a quote from her works, I thought it was sufficiently in her spirit to post this snippet of the play I'm currently writing on, Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem (1780). The jealous husband character explains what he sees as the essential social function of old maids:
Sir George: Formerly... every class of females had its particular description; grandmothers were pious, aunts discreet, old maids censorious! But now, aunts, grandmothers, girls, and maiden gentlewomen, are all the same creature; a wrinkle more or less is the sole difference between ye.
Mrs. Racket: That maiden gentlewomen have lost their censoriousness, is surely not in your catalogue of grievances.
Sir George: Indeed it is - and ranked amongst the most serious grievances. Things went well, madam, when the tongues of three or four old virgins kept all the wives and daughters of a parish in awe. They were the dragons, that guarded the Hesperian fruit; and I wonder they have not been obliged, by act of parliament, to resume their function.
Mrs. Racket: Ha, ha, ha! and pensioned, I suppose, for making strict inquiries into the lives and conversations of their neighbours.
Sir George: With all my heart.