p.p1%20%7Bmargin%3A%200.0px%200.0px%200.0px%200.0px%3B%20font%3A%2012.0px%20Helvetica%7D The text below comes from a nineteenthcentury bestseller, Sarah Stickney Ellis's The Women of England: Their Social Duties and Domestic Habits. The extract outlines Ellis's view of the characteristics of British women: In looking around, then, upon our “nation of shopkeepers,” we readily perceive that by dividing society into three classes, as regards what is commonly called rank, the middle class must include so vast a portion of the intelligence and moral power of the country at large, that it may not improperly be designated the pillar of our nation's strength, its base being the important class of the laborious poor, and its rich and highly ornamental capital, the ancient nobility of the land. In no other country is society thus beautifully proportioned, and England should beware of any deviation from the order and symmetry of her national column. There never was a more shortsighted view of society, than that by which the women of our country have lately learned to look with envious eyes upon their superiors in rank, to rival their attainments, to imitate their manners, and to pine for the luxuries they enjoy; and consequently to look down with contempt upon the appliances and means of humbler happiness. The women of England were once better satisfied with that instrumentality of Divine wisdom by which they were placed in their proper sphere. They were satisfied to do with their own hands what they now leave undone, or repine that they cannot have others to do for them. (Ellis, 1839, pp. 1415)