In the Second Lecture of this Course I spoke of the Personal Duties of Women. In the Third Lecture we discussed their Social Duties generally, beginning with their Duties as Members of Families, Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, &c. In the Fourth Lecture I spoke of the Duties of Wives and Mistresses of Households. We now come to the consideration of the Duties of a Woman as a Member of Society; reserving for our last Lecture her Duties as a Citizen of the State and Member of the Human Race.

In this Lecture I beg you to take note that I shall use the word “Society” in its narrower conventional sense, implying the association of equals for purposes of pleasure, mutual hospitality, visits, entertainments, and so forth. The larger sense of the word “Society,” as applied to all human intercourse, is not here intended.

If the Home be, as it is often well called, “Woman's Kingdom,” every drawing-room is woman's throne-room. Modern civilized society all proceeds on the assumption, not only of woman's right to share in almost all kinds of social pleasures, (a concession already surprising to an Oriental), but to hold in them, conventionally, the position of the superior. Practically we all know that there is a good deal of ko-towing to men, in drawing-rooms as elsewhere; but, theoretically, a woman in society is queen.