By Yufeng Zan
The Lady’s Museum is a didactic periodical written by Charlotte Lennox. This periodical is dedicated to supporting female self-education and intellectual development. The traditional polite female education completely deprived women the opportunity to accept the development of literature and thinking. Lennox’s periodical uses unique teaching methods, such as letters to the editor that guided female readers to expand their minds and perspective on intellectual topics that led to women realizing their importance and the equality they deserved. These topics continue to be relevant in the twenty-first century. I have written my own letter to the editor to further consider what the Lady’s Museum did (and can do) for women.
A Letter to the Trifler
As a reader of the Lady’s Museum, I sincerely believe it is the greatest and rarest literary creation of the eighteenth century. As a periodical that endows women with soul and wisdom, its appearance allows women to be reinvigorated again. There is no denying that this outstanding periodical provides a brand-new comprehensive female education for more women who are not wealthy and who have lost interest in traditional female education. In order to be more suitable for women’s elegance and natural beauty, this periodical provides knowledge and studying topics in history and natural philosophy, which will provide a wide field for exercising their minds. The Trifler acts as a mentor, and under your instruction, the Lady’s Museum can undoubtedly be regarded as a revolutionary work on female education, which seeks to ameliorate the humiliation of women and make their charming enduring. In my view, your guidance empowers females to respect their own minds, imagination, and wit. This periodical and your effort make me trust that it fulfills the original intention of the author, which is to contain both intellectual development and fashionable amusement. On the first page of the Lady’s Museum, your actions of learning and reading books that are beyond traditional female education will be viewed as a new-age female model for the women group. Therefore, I firmly believe that the followers or readers of the Lady’s museum will get rid of the shackles imposed on women by traditional education or society from your guidance.
Sincerely yours,
Amelia Braveheart