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Clothes for October

As the temperatures start to go down, it’s time to get some of those warmer clothes. Here’s some cute warm neutrals to keep you both cute and cozy this fall.

This is the third of what I hope will be monthly collections of clothing for for women with a sense of their own dignity. I will try to find items that are seasonally appropriate (for the Northern Hemisphere) and I will try to set it up so that you can make one or two outfits from the selections listed.

I think clothes are very important.  You can read about some of my reasons here. I want to promote clothes that are attractive and dignified and to make it easier to find nice clothes without searching through pages of things that are ugly or inappropriate. Please tell me if this is useful, or if you see something I should put up here.

Purchases through these links will benefit the website. However, I only post things that I actually like. I have not tried all of these clothes, so I cannot guarantee that they will fit, suit, or otherwise please anyone. In order to maintain some sort of quality control, I will not post any clothes that have not received an average of at least four stars in their reviews.


I have one friend who always starts with the shoes when she plans her outfits, and these boots look practical, comfortable, and easy to wear. Combine with any of these other pieces for a fuss-free look.

The perfect thing to throw on when it’s too chilly for just your shirt, but not cold enough for a coat. Pair with the scarf below for an even cozier feel. This also comes in lots of other colors, but the army green is so wonderfully fallish.

Here’s a nice basic khaki skirt for any casual occasion. This would look great with the boots.

This is a wonderful bottom layer, a bit more sophisticated than a teeshirt, but just as comfortable. Imagine how soft and comfy it would feel under the long cardigan at the top. Also comes in a wonderful variety of colors.

I love scarves. This scarf isn’t just for looks, though it will coordinate nicely with a fall pallette. It is heavy and warm as well and will keep the fall chill away.

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Successful Woman: Elizabeth Fry

This is the first of our Successful Women series. For the introduction, click here.

The style and some of the sentiments in this sketch, which was written in the late 1800s may seem a little quaint in the twenty-first century, but the story should still be able to inspire us, despite the difference in literary style and social conditions.

While some aspects of society are vastly different and/or vastly improved today, some of Elizabeth Fry’s ideas for prison reform could still be usefully applied today.

ELIZABETH FRY

“Humanity is erroneously considered among the commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a place there would be less urgent need than, alas! there is for its daily exercise among us. In its pale shape of kindly sentiment and bland pity it is common enough, and is always the portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like an ancient hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues.” –-JOHN MORLEY.

THE present century is one that is distinguished by the active part women have taken in careers that were previously closed to them. Some people would have us believe that if women write books, paint pictures, and understand science and ancient languages, they will cease to be true women, and cease to care for those womanly occupations and responsibilities that have always been entrusted to them. This is an essentially false and mistaken notion. True cultivation of the understanding makes a sensible woman value at their real high worth all her womanly duties, and so far from making her neglect them, causes her to appreciate them more highly than she would otherwise have done.

It has always been held, at least in Christian countries, that the most womanly of women’s duties are to be found in works of mercy to those who are desolate and miserable. To be thirsty, hungry, naked, sick, or in prison, is to have a claim for compassion and comfort upon womanly pity and tenderness. And we shall see, if we look back over recent years, that never have these womanly tasks been more zealously fulfilled than they have been in the century which has produced Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, Josephine Butler, and Octavia Hill.

Mrs. Fry was born before the beginning of this century in 1780 but the great public work with which her memory will always be connected was not begun till about 1813. She was born of the wealthy Quaker family, the Gurneys of Norwich. Her parents were not very strict members of the sect to which they belonged, for they allowed their children to learn music and dancing pursuits that were then considered very worldly even by many who did not belong to the Society of Friends. Mr. and Mrs. Gurney, however, seem to have been very free from such prejudices, as well as from others which were much more universal, for their children not only learned music and dancing, but also girls as well as boys Latin and mathematics.

She had a very strong, innate repugnance to anything which drew public attention upon herself, and when the sphere of public duty first revealed itself to her, she records in her diary what it cost her to enter upon it, and writes of it as ” the humiliating path that has appeared to be opening before me.” It must be noticed, however, that in her case, as always, the steep and difficult path of duty becomes easier to those who do not flinch from it. In a later passage of her diary, the public work which she had at first called a path of humiliation she speaks of as “this great mercy.”

The first great change in Elizabeth Gurney’s life was caused by the deep impression made upon her by the sermons of William Savery. It is rather strange to find the girl who had such a terror of enthusiasm, weeping passionately while William Savery was preaching. Her sister described what took place. “Betsy astonished us all by the great feeling she showed. She wept most of the way home. . . . What she went through in her own mind I cannot say; but the results were most powerful and most evident.” Her emotion was not of the kind that passes away and leaves no trace behind. The whole course of her life and tenor of her thoughts were changed.

Soon after this, at the age of twenty, she became the wife of Mr. Joseph Fry, and removed to London, where she lived in St Mildred’s Court, in the City. The family into which she married were Quakers, like her own, but of a much more severe and strict kind. Her marriage was, however, in every respect a fortunate one. Her husband sympathised deeply with her in all her efforts for the good of others, and encouraged her in her public work, although many in the Society of Friends did not scruple to protest that a married woman has no duties except to her husband and children. Her journal shows how anxiously she guarded herself against any temptation to neglect her home duties. She was a tender and devoted mother to her twelve children, and it was through her knowledge of the strength of a mother’s love that she was able to reach the hearts of many of the poor prisoners whom she afterwards helped out of the wretchedness into which they had fallen.

Her study of the problem of how to help the poor began in this way. A beggar-woman with a child in her arms stopped her in the street. Mrs. Fry, seeing that the child had whooping-cough and was dangerously ill, offered to go with the woman to her home in order more effectually to assist her. To Mrs. Fry’s surprise, the woman immediately tried to make off; it was evident what she wanted was a gift of money, not any help to the suffering child. Mrs. Fry followed her, and found that her rooms were filled with a crowd of farmed-out children in every stage of sickness and misery; the more pitiable the appearance of one of these poor mites, the more useful an implement was it in the beggar’s stock-in-trade.

From this time onwards the condition of women and children in the lowest and most degraded of the criminal classes became the study of Mrs. Fry’s life. She had the gift of speech on any subject which deeply moved her. From about 1809 she began to speak at the Friends’ meeting-house. This power of speaking, as well as working, enabled her to draw about her an active band of co-workers. When she first began visiting the female prisoners in Newgate it is probable that she could not have supported all that she had to go through if it had not been for the sympathy and companionship of Anna Buxton and other Quaker ladies whom she had roused through her power of speech, just as she had herself been roused when a girl by the preaching of William Savory.

The condition of the women and children in Newgate Prison, when Mrs. Fry first began visiting them in 1813, was more horrible than anything that can be easily imagined. Three hundred poor wretches were herded together in two wards and two cells, with no furniture, no bedding of any kind, and no arrangements for decency or privacy. Cursing and swearing, foul language, and personal filthiness, made the dens in which the women were confined equally offensive to ear, eye, nose, and sense of modesty. The punishment of death at that time existed for 300 different offences, and though there were many mitigations of the sentence in the case of those who had only committed minor breaches of the law, yet the fact that nearly all had by law incurred the penalty of death, gave an apparent justification for herding the prisoners indiscriminately together. It thus happened that many a poor girl who had committed a comparatively trivial offence, became absolutely ruined in body and mind through her contact in prison with the vilest and most degraded of women. No attempt whatever was made to reform or discipline the prisoners, or to teach them any trade whereby, on leaving the jail, they might earn an honest livelihood. Add to this that there were no female warders nor female officers of any kind in the prison, and that the male warders were frequently men of depraved life, and it is not difficult to see that no element of degradation was wanting to make the female wards of Newgate what they were often called a hell on earth.

When Elizabeth Fry and Anna Buxton first visited this Inferno, there was so little pretence at any kind of control over the prisoners that the Governor of Newgate advised the ladies to leave their watches behind them at home. Mrs. Fry, with a wise instinct, felt that the best way of influencing the poor, wild, rough women was to show her care for their children. Many of the prisoners had their children with them in jail, and there were very few even of the worst who could not be reached by care for their little ones. Even those who had no children were often not without the motherly instinct, and could be roused to some measure of self-restraint and decency for the sake of the children who were being corrupted by their example. So Mrs. Fry’s first step towards reforming the women took the form of starting a school for the children in the prison.

As usual in all good work of a novel kind, those who knew nothing about it were quite sure that Mrs. Fry would have been much more usefully employed if she had turned her energies in a different direction. People who have never stirred a finger to lighten the misery of mankind always know, so much better than the workers, what to do and how to do it. They would probably tell a fireman who is entering a burning house at the risk of his life, that he would be more usefully employed in studying the chemical action of fire, or in pondering over the indestructibility of matter. The popular feeling with regard to Mrs. Fry’s work in Newgate was embodied by Thomas Hood in a ballad which is preserved in his collected works, and serves now to show how wrong a good and tender-hearted man may be in passing judgment on a work of the value of which he was entirely unqualified to form an opinion. The refrain of the poem is “Keep your school out of Newgate, Mrs. Fry.”

I like the pity in your full-brimmed eye

I like your carriage and your silken gray,

Your dove-like habits and your silent preaching,

But I don’t like your Newgatory teaching.

No, I’ll be your friend, and like a friend

Point out your very worst defect. Nay, never

Start at that word! But I must ask you why

You keep your school in Newgate, Mrs. Fry.

Elizabeth Fry teaching in Newgate Prison

Mrs. Fry’s philanthropy was not of a kind to be checked by a ballad, and she went on perseveringly with her work; the school was formed, and a prisoner named Mary Connor, became the first schoolmistress. A wonderful change gradually became apparent in the demeanour, language, and appearance of the women in prison. In 1817 an association was formed for carrying on the work Mrs. Fry had begun. It was called ” An Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate.”

Public attention was now alive to the importance of the work; and in the following year a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire and report upon the condition of the London prisons. Mrs. Fry was examined before this committee. Her chief recommendations were that the prisoners should be employed in some industry, and be paid for their work, and that good conduct should be encouraged by rewards; she was also most urgent that the women prisoners should be in the charge of women warders.

Mrs. Fry did not confine her efforts to the poor and wretched of her own country. She visited foreign countries in order thoroughly to study various methods of prison work and discipline. On one occasion she found in Paris a congenial task in bringing the force of public opinion to bear on the treatment of children in the Foundling Hospital there. The poor babies were done up in swaddling clothes that were only unwrapped once in twelve hours. There was no healthy screaming in the wards, only a sound that a hearer compared to the faint and pitiful bleating of lambs. A lady who visited the hospital said she never made the round of the spotlessly clean white cots, without finding at least one dead baby! Everything in the hospital was regulated by clockwork; its outward appearance was clean and orderly in the extreme, but the babies died like flies!

There were many other classes of neglected or unfortunate people whose circumstances were improved by Mrs. Fry’s exertions. The lonely shepherds of Salisbury Plain were provided with a library after she had visited the desolate region where they lived. She also organised a lending library for coastguardsmen and for domestic servants. There was no end to her active exertions for the good of others except that of her life. She died at Kamsgate in 1845, and was buried at Barking.

Her private life was not without deep sorrows and anxieties. She lost a passionately beloved child in 1815; in 1828 her husband was unfortunate in his business affairs. They suffered from a great diminution of fortune, and were obliged to remove to a smaller house and adopt a less expensive style of living. She did not pretend to any indifference she was far from feeling under these trials ; but they were powerless to turn her from the duties which she had marked out for herself. The work which she had undertaken for the good of others probably became, in its turn, her own solace and support in the hour of trial and affliction. In helping others she had unconsciously built up a strong refuge for herself, thus giving a new illustration to the truth of the words: ” He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life, for my sake, shall find it.”

Adapted from Some Eminent Women of Our Time by Elizabeth Garret Fawcett

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What Does It Take To Be a Successful Woman?

There are a lot of different definitions of success. The most banal idea of success involves having a great job (or being retired), lots of money, a fancy car of your choice, a perfect house… you get the idea. This is, I think, what most people unconsciously imagine when they think of a successful person.

But is this really success? What if you live in your perfect house alone, and drive your fancy car to the high-paying job that you hate? What if you’re retired and have plenty of money, but are bored? What’s missing from this view of success? You have been successful in your career, but not in life.

Warren Buffet, who certainly would fit the having-lots-of-money definition of success, recently said,

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

I know many people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them.

That’s the ultimate test of how you have lived your life. The trouble with love is that you can’t buy it. You can buy sex. You can buy testimonial dinners. But the only way to get love is to be lovable. It’s very irritating if you have a lot of money. You’d like to think you could write a check: I’ll buy a million dollars’ worth of love. But it doesn’t work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.

Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, would have agreed with Warren Buffet, but he also would have gone further. Aristotle points out that no one wants money for its own sake. Everyone who wants money wants it to buy something that they want more than the cash. But even the stuff that money buys is acquired for the sake of something else. Why did you buy that new house? Why did you buy that new car? To be comfortable, to be admired by others… there are many reasons. Aristotle goes through all the things that people want, even friendship and love, and points out that the only thing that is desired for itself, and for no other reason, is happiness. The successful woman will be the happy woman.

Now Aristotle’s idea of happiness is not the same as pleasure. Pleasure is fleeting and can easily be lost. It can become sickening over time. Imagine your favorite dessert: soft, creamy, delicious cheesecake! Yum…. Now imagine eating that dessert all day, every day for a month. Yuck…. And any pleasure can become as old and dreary as your cheesecake would be after thirty days.

Aristotle’s view of happiness is rather the complete fulfillment of the human person. The human person is a rational being, and its greatest joys are those of the mind. But the human is also physical, and the physical needs must also be met. As the people at pursuit-of-happiness.org put it, “happiness consists in achieving, through the course of a whole lifetime, all the goods — health, wealth, knowledge, friends, etc.—that lead to the perfection of human nature and to the enrichment of human life. This requires us to make choices, some of which may be very difficult. Often the lesser good promises immediate pleasure and is more tempting, while the greater good is painful and requires some sort of sacrifice.”

True happiness requires that all the humans needs and desires be balanced, a state Aristotle calls virtue. Virtue is the state of order within the person in which that person can choose freely to do what is most good, without having an internal battle over it.

Most people agree that they are happiest in the moments when they accomplish some goal, and the higher and worthier that goal is, the greater the happiness is. Virtues are necessary for happiness because they allow the person to achieve his or her goals despite the temptations to do things that would prevent the acquisition of the “all the goods …that lead to the perfection of human nature and to the enrichment of human life.”

Virtue also allows us to avoid those things which prevent us from being happy. Drug use, overeating, and alcoholism are all bad choices that can ruin lives and prevent happiness. Virtue makes it easy to make good choices, like saving money, eating healthy food, maintaining important relationships, and avoiding harmful substances.

No woman can be called genuinely successful unless she is happy. They may have achieved notable things, and become rich or famous, but without happiness, this is worthless. While any woman who achieves happiness is successful in living, we like to hear about people who went above and beyond the ordinary. These are the people who inspire us, who make us want to be better, who make us want to be great ourselves.

Over the next few weeks, I want to post the stories of some successful women—women who not only achieved something more than the average, but also seem to have achieved happiness in their lives.

If you want to make sure that you don’t miss any of these inspiring stories, enter your email address and a name in the right-hand column, and hit the subscribe button. We’ll send them right to your inbox.

Here are the first two in our series:

Mary Carpenter

Elizabeth Fry

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How to Make a DIY Baby Car Sun Shade for Less Than $10

If you’re anything like me, you forgot to put a sunshade for the car on your baby registry. Being a first time mom can be pretty overwhelming, and there’s so much you don’t expect.

But then I noticed that the sun was shining in my baby’s eyes, which is uncomfortable, and possibly bad for her, what with UV rays and all that. So, I went looking for a DIY pattern for a sunshade, and thought about what would make it easy to use, cute, and effective, and decided to make my own.

Here’s a tutorial so you can make one too. It cost me $0.57 because all I had to buy was the dowel. I happened to have everything else lying around already. But you could easily do it for less than $10. And it’s really really easy. Even with taking pictures of every step, it probably took me about an hour and a half. (If I hadn’t been taking pictures, it probably would take about 40 minutes or less)

You will need:

  • about ½ yard of lightweight fabric (I used lining fabric leftover from some other project, but there’s all kinds of cute baby prints you could use. I like solids)
  • About 2 yards of matching cloth ribbon
  • Matching thread
  • 2 light Wooden dowels (about 12-14 inches long) (I got a 3/8 inch one from Walmart, and cut it, but you can find short ones that don’t need to be cut. There are a lot more than you need in this package, but they are already cut, and 1/4 inch should be strong enough. You don’t want to use more than 3/8 inches thick, because you don’t want it to be heavy in case it falls on your baby.)
  • A saw, if you need to cut the dowels. (I used this mini hack saw)
  • A pair of scissors
  • A sewing machine (You could hand sew it, but it would take forever)
  • An iron (You could do without, but the iron makes it easier and nicer)

To start with, you need to figure out how long you want it to be. I drive a small car, so 36 inches was perfect to reach from the handle over the door to the seat below. I decided to make it 14 inches wide so it would block the sun from the baby, but not take too much room or be too bulky. If you drive a larger vehicle, you might want it a little longer, but it would probably still work.

Once you decide how long you want it to be, add 3 inches to the length, and two inches to the width to make room for your hem. (You will want your fabric to be at least 2 inches wider than your dowels are long.

Measure

Cut your rectangle.

Iron about half an inch down on each end, then fold that over and iron about ¾ inch down. This will be your sheath for the dowels.

Next, before you sew the sheath together, you want to cut your ribbons and sew them on to the top. Cut 2 pieces about 16 inches long, and one about 18 inches long. The shorter ones will be to tie your shade to the handle over the door, and the long one will let you tie the shade up when it’s cloudy, or your baby isn’t riding with you. You’ll want to cut them at an angle like you see in the picture, otherwise they can unravel.

Sew the middle of each length of ribbon to the fabric along the line you ironed. The long one should be in the middle, the short ones should be about 3 inches away on either side.

Once those are on, go ahead and sew the sheath shut. Put the dowel inside. Do the same to the bottom.

Hem both sides. You might find that you have to move your needle over to the left side to sew the part near the dowel.

Tie it on.

Enjoy!

Tied up:

See it here as well, along with a whole bunch of other fabulous ideas. Check it out!

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How to be Kind (Without Being a Doormat)

This is the second article in our series about feminine virtues. See the introduction here.

This article may contain affiliate links. Purchases through these links earn us a small commission with no extra cost to you. 

You’ve all seen the nice girl. She’s nice to everyone. If anyone asks her to do anything she’ll do it. If someone says something mean to her, she won’t say something mean back. She’ll go along with whatever everyone else wants. She desperately wants love and friendship, and she’ll do anything to get it, but somehow everyone just uses her and then leaves her. When she needs help, friendship, comfort, there is no one to turn to, though she has always been there for others.

You’ve probably also met the mean girl. She demands what she wants. If you don’t like it, you need to get out of the way. She always gets her way, if not by physical force then by criticizing, demanding, and mocking. She would like to find love and friendship (she is human after all) but her abrasive personality drives away everyone but mindless groupies she despises. When she wants help, friendship, comfort, there is no one to turn to, as she has driven away anyone she would respect enough to confide in.

Are these the only two options? Sometimes it seems like this is the story that we are being sold. There are two stereotypes: the “Liberated woman” who will stand nothing from anybody, or the “Submissive woman” who will submit to anything from anybody. If you don’t want to be one, you have to be the other.

But what if I don’t want to be either? What if I want to have real true friends, both men and women? What if I want life to be pleasant both for myself and those around me? Isn’t there another option? There must be….

First of all, let’s look at the two stereotypes we have presented, and see what’s really going on.

The Nice Girl

The nice girl on the surface seems about as close to saintly perfection as it is possible to be. But if she is, and virtue leads to happiness as Aristotle says, then why isn’t she happy? She’s always nice to everyone, she wants everyone else to be happy—so far so good. They say happiness comes from making others happy, so she should be positively delirious with joy… But she’s not. She cries, she’s frustrated, she might end up with a nervous breakdown. And the people around her aren’t necessarily actually happy either.

The submissive girl’s difficulty is that she has no inner sense of what is her due, and what is her identity. She wants to love and be loved, like and be liked, but she has no respect for herself. Her sense of self-worth comes from being of use to others, being approved by others, being loved or liked by others. Because her self-worth is founded on this unstable ground, she is terrified of saying no to anyone. If she says no, they might not like her anymore. Wendy Shallit in her book Girls Gone Mild, tells stories of girls who give sexual favors they would prefer not to give, get in cars with drunk drivers, and are generally completely incapable of saying no to a man for fear that they will be rejected, either by the men or by society. They bend over backward to give people exactly what they want, whether it is good for them or not.

But in being unable to say no, the nice girl sabotages her chances of happiness. In everyday interactions she is seen by friends as lacking personality. She adds little to conversations and decision making processes for fear of offending or bothering someone else. Thus her friends are deprived of her thoughts and talents.

In relationships with men, she is often the victim of unscrupulous or abusive partners. She is too afraid to stand up for her rights or leave, afraid that she will not be able to find another partner, and dependent on the sense of self-worth that her abusive partner’s attention gives her. Sometimes she is even genuinely convinced that she is “making him better” and that it is her mission to stay and help him. In reality, she is enabling his dysfunctional behavior, and simply submitting to his abuse will never make him better, and will likely make him worse.

As a mother she is hopelessly wishy-washy and terrified that if she disciplines her children, they will hate her. As a result, she (and they) are unhappy and stressed.

The submissive woman, or “nice girl” is unhappy, and also fails to bring happiness to those around her. So what is the solution? Should she do the opposite? Force her ideas on everyone else, be aggressive and domineering?

The Mean Girl

The mean girl realizes that the “nice girl” system doesn’t work. Sometimes she is even a reformed nice girl. She is determined not to be a doormat. No one will force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. She wants to be happy and independent—so far so good. She chooses her own way, and does her own thing, and gets what she wants. Sounds like a recipe for happiness, doesn’t it? Except that she too, is never happy. Why not?

While the submissive woman’s trouble is that she has no sense of self-worth that is not given to her by others, the “mean girl” has no trouble knowing who she is. She knows, and everyone else had better know it too.

The mean girl’s trouble is more that she has no sense of what is due to others. She forgets that other people also need to feel valued and respected. She has no patience for other’s shortcomings. She takes everything personally, because she wants everyone to value her as much as she values herself. She has no trouble pushing others out of her way in her quest for what she wants. She is, after all, the most important person, and no one else’s ideas or desires really matter.

But, as Aristotle says, “Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” And the mean girl wants friends just as much as any other human. Meaningful relationships are essential to human happiness.

But she sabotages her own chances of having these relationships. In everyday social interactions, she is is considered abrasive and domineering. She allows no one else to add their ideas and talents to a situation, and thus impoverishes her life without even realizing it.

In relationships with men, she often drives away potential partners with her controlling and derisive behavior. She demands that everything be her way, and sensible men run for their lives, leaving her with wimps who someone to tell them what to do, rather than real men who want life companions.

As a mother, she is controlling and demanding. Her children have to be perfect, strong, and submissive all at the same time. They must act like her perfect imagination of them, or else they are failures. The stress of trying to live up to this expectation damages the child, and the mother is constantly frustrated by the incompetency of all who surround her.

The Kind Woman

Both the “nice girl” and the “mean girl” fail to be happy, make friends, or find love because they look for it in the wrong places. The nice girl looks for happiness in fulfilling the desires of others. The mean girl looks for happiness in fulfilling her own desires. What is missing?

In order to be happy and make those around you happy, you need an internal principle which will lead to balance. In other words, you need to have standards. There should be some things that you won’t do, no matter who asks you. Don’t be afraid to set boundaries. Recognize that there are things that no one has the right to ask you. No one has the right to demand that you give up your conscience, your health or your values for them. Determine what is genuinely important, set your boundaries, and don’t budge. A polite refusal to budge on core values is one of the most admirable traits any man, woman or child can have.

Secondly, understand that everyone else also has the right to set boundaries beyond which you cannot go, and that everyone has feelings that are just as valuable as yours. So when you say no, say no politely but firmly. If the person you are refusing to change your values for is offended by this, that’s okay. You probably didn’t want them as a friend anyway.

It’s also important to be able to care deeply about other people and to do things for them and give things to them. This is an extremely important part of life and happiness. Just don’t give everything to just anyone.

In everyday social interactions the kind woman confidently presents her ideas, but often agrees to other’s suggestions as well. She listens to others opinions, and uses courtesy in agreeing or disagreeing.

In relations with men she is not afraid to say no, but when she says no, says it courteously, unless a courteous refusal has been disregarded. She tries to make the people she is with feel valued and respected. These traits will make honorable men admire and respect her.

As a mother, she is firm and caring, setting boundaries and goals and maintaining discipline. She treats each child as an individual and helps each one feel loved and cared for, and confident to try to do good and even great things.

The kind woman, liberated by her principles from the stress of trying to please everyone, will be able to please the people she cares most about in the world, and will be able to achieve her own goals of happiness and fulfillment. She will be valued by those around her, and will know how to value herself.

Graph, illustrated with characters from Pride and Prejudice