The Book of the Boudoir

Lady Morgan's witty, wide-ranging chapter turns religious severity, social fashion, and literary vanity into targets of sharp satire. A comic exchange with fasting Catholics and a stern evangelical exposes the absurdity of mistaking gloom, self-denial, and sectarian pride for holiness, while the argument expands into a defense of charity, sociability, and a cheerful Sabbath rooted in family affection and peaceful rest. From there, the book broadens into a philosophical and historical meditation on how hardship, ignorance, and insecurity foster stoicism, terror, and harsh creeds, and how civilization naturally softens them into more humane pleasures. The chapter also celebrates temperament, sensory enjoyment, and moderation, mocking ascetics who condemn pleasure while secretly craving comfort. In playful literary digressions, it questions the claim that poets make good lovers, surveys famous writers from Pope and Dryden to Petrarch, Ovid, and Rousseau, and traces the changing meaning of the fan as a symbol of courtship, display, and fading custom. The closing memoiristic section shifts to women, literature, and memory, as the narrator recalls Helen Maria Williams, receives a thoughtful letter from Mrs. Le Fanu, and reflects with humor and melancholy on age, admiration, and the gap between youthful ideals and social reality. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.