Vicesimus Knox, you are creeping me out

"The learned lady...rather than neglecting her domestic duties, would pursue them with more efficiency, enthusiasm, and skill. As Knox explained, ridiculing his opponents for their unenlightened outlook, 'A woman of improved understanding and real sense is more likely to submit to her condition, whatever it may be, than the uneducated or the half-learned.'" (from Arianne Chernock: "Cultivating Woman: Men's Pursuit of Intellectual Equality in the Late British Enlightenment")

And this is one of the relative good guys (we are operating with sophisticated moral categories today) of 18th-century women's educational reform; he at least doesn't think that domestic life and intellectual endeavours are incompatible. But for the very creepiest of reasons. (I think it's also that the whole thing is uncannily reminiscent of the very-much-later Feminine Mystique. Um, happy Women's Day?)