SOURCE: “‘She Could Make a Cake as Well as Books …’: Catharine Sedgwick, Anna Jameson, and the Construction of the Domestic Intellectual,” in Women's Writing, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1995, pp. 235-49.

In the following essay, Lamonaca examines and compares the impact of Catharine Sedgwick's and Anna Jameson's “domestic advice manuals” and “conduct books” on nineteenth century women.

… I resolved to form Dora's mind.

I began immediately. When Dora was very childish … I tried to be grave—and disconcerted her, and myself too. I talked to her on the subjects which occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her—and fatigued her to the last degree. I accustomed myself to giving her, as if it were quite casually, little scraps of useful information, or sound opinion—and she started from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers. No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavored to...