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Woman's wickedness

Olive Branch
​June 5, 1852
"Don't marry a woman under twenty. She hasn't come to her wickedness before then." -- Blackwood's Magazine
          WELL ---! If I knew any bad words, I'm awful afraid I should say 'em!! I just wish I had hold of the perpetrator of that with a pair of sons, I'd bottle him up in sperrits, and keep him for a terror to liars, as sure as his name is "Kit North."
         "Set a thief to catch a thief!" How came you to know when that crisis in a woman's life occurs? Answer me that! I'll tel you what my opinion is; and won't charge you any fee for it either! A woman "comes to her wickedness" when she comes to her HUSBAND!! ---and if she knew anything good before, it all "goes by the board," then; it's no more use to her afterwards, than the fifth wheel of a coach! Don't you know, you wicked calumniator, that thunder don't sour milk more 
effectively than matrimony does women's tempers?
          "​Come to their wickedness, indeed! Snowflakes and soot! They'd never know the meaning of the word "wicked," if your sex were blotted out of existence! We should have a perfect little heaven upon earth --- a regular terrestrial Paradise --- no runaway matches, no cases of ---c---oncience! no divorces, no deviltry of any kind. Women would keep young​ till the millennium; in fact, millennium would be merely a nominal jubilee! because it would have already come.​ The world would be an universal garden of pretty, rosy, laughing women; no masculine mildew to mar their beauty or bow their sweet heads, the blessed year round! 
          Now you'd better repent of your sins, Mr. What's-your-name; for as sure as preaching, you will go where you'll have nothing to do but ​think of 'em! and won't find any women there, either; for they all go to the other place!

Fanny Fern

To cite this project:
Fanny Fern, "Woman's Wickedness," Fanny Fern Archive, Ed. Haley Jones (2019) http://fannyfernarchive.org.
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