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

In the following essay, LaMonaca studies Catharine Sedgwick's Means and Ends and Anna Jameson's Characteristics of Women, suggesting that both are progressive conduct books stressing the value of women's intellect and the importance of women's self-improvement through intellectual development, though neither challenges women's traditional roles in society.

… 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...