Genre:

Short Fiction

Subjects:

Education, Gender, Piety, Reading

    The narrator records that on her eighteenth birthday she resolved to use her new-found liberty 'for the benefit of others, as well as for self-improvement' (56). She accordingly drew up a plan of her employments, which, after dressing, reading the Bible, and praying, involved, from 7 to 8am, reading 'some improving book, such as Butler's Analogy, or Paley's Natural Theology'. However, she very soon found that she could not keep to her plan. The trouble started when, one morning, instead of reading Butler's Analogy, she 'unfortunately got hold of a new volume of Travels in America', in which she became engrossed until she finished it. (57)