1
Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February,
1859, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859
Author: Various
Release Date: March 17, 2004 [EBook #11606]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen and PG Distributed Proofreaders
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
* * * * *
VOL. III--FEBRUARY, 1859.--NO. XVI.
* * * * *
OUGHT WOMEN TO LEARN THE ALPHABET?
Paris smiled, for an hour or two, in the year 1801, when, amidst Napoleon's mighty projects for remodelling the religion and government of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvain Maréchal, thrust in his "Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women." Daring, keen, sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the author's friend and biographer, Madame Gaeon Dufour, who declared that he must be partially insane, and proceeded to prove herself so by replying to him. His proposed statute consists of eighty-two clauses, and is fortified by a "whereas" of a hundred and thirteen weighty reasons. He exhausts the range of history to show the frightful results which have followed this taste of the fruit of the tree o