“You don’t think I should encourage her in her art courses, Mr. Wilde?” said Marquis.
“Don’t be an ass, Marquis,” said the painter. “Keep her at it until the day she marries. The Victorians, at whom we sneer, knew the value of wrapping a girl in the cotton wadding of aesthetic studies. It’s the only way to keep fresh the sparkle of her ignorance, virginity’s chief charm. A girls’ school today sullies and dulls young females to a middle-aged familiarity with sex machinery and domestic management before they have been authentically kissed. Let her paint or sing or write until she charms and weds a young man as rich and untalented as herself. Only, in all charity, never expose her products again to a man of taste. They are puppy yappings.”
p. 178
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