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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oldport days, with ten heliotype illustrations from views taken in Newport, R. I., expressly for this work. 50 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Afternoon landscape: poems and translations 42 0 Browse Search
Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: the story of his life 24 0 Browse Search
George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor (ed. George Hillard) 20 0 Browse Search
Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (ed. W. H. Channing) 16 0 Browse Search
James Russell Lowell, Among my books 8 0 Browse Search
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 2 6 0 Browse Search
James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen 4 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays 4 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays 4 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays. You can also browse the collection for Petrarch or search for Petrarch in all documents.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Ought women to learn the alphabet? (search)
all in advance; remarks that three quarters of female authors are no better than they should be; maintains that Madame Guion would have been far more useful had she been merely pretty and an ignoramus, such as Nature made her,--that Ruth and Naomi could not read, and Boaz probably would never have married into the family, had they possessed that accomplishment,that the Spartan women did not know the alphabet, nor the Amazons, nor Penelope, nor Andromache, nor Lucretia, nor Joan of Arc, nor Petrarch's Laura, nor the daughters of Charlemagne, nor the three hundred and sixty-five wives of Mohammed; but that Sappho and Madame de Maintenon could read altogether too well; while the case of Saint Brigitta, who brought forth twelve children and twelve books, was clearly exceptional, and afforded no safe precedent. It would seem that the brilliant Frenchman touched the root of the matter. Ought women to learn the alphabet? There the whole question lies. Concede this little fulcrum, and A
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, The Greek goddesses. (search)
the sole modern figure, and she has not an ideal interest, but one that is philanthropic alone. Her presence in art asserts the modern spirit, and perhaps marks an era in history. Far be it from me to deny its value. Yet if we are looking for the very highest, it cannot be found in the fallen; and if we must lose either from the temple, we can better spare the suppliant than the goddess. And save in depicting this attribute of humility or contrition, modern literature, at least since Petrarch, seems to me singularly wanting in grand pictures of ideal womanhood. Spenser's impersonations, while pure and high, are vague and impalpable. Shakespeare's women seem at best far inferior, in compass and variety, to Shakespeare's men; and if Ruskin glorifies them sublimely on the one side, Thackeray on the other side professes to find in them the justification of his own. Goethe paints carefully a few varieties, avoiding the largest and noblest types. . Where among all these delineation