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Female affection

Chapter 3: THE PLEASURES OF AFFECTION.
By Basil Montagu
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Gender & Sexuality StudiesPhilosophy & Ethics

About This Book

The author argues that tenderness and benevolence are fundamental traits of women, treating affection as the most conspicuous feminine quality while acknowledging other putative traits such as taste for ornament, gaiety, impulsiveness, and variability. The essay outlines the pleasures derived from attachment—love, friendship, gratitude, and general charity—and supports its claims with anecdotal evidence drawn from travel narratives and scriptural exemplars, showing repeated instances of female hospitality, pity, and self-sacrifice across cultures. The work combines moral reflection with illustrative stories to emphasize affection's constancy and social value.

FEMALE AFFECTION.

THE PLEASURES OF AFFECTION.

The pleasures of the affections are Love, Friendship, Gratitude, and general Benevolence.

“For the pleasures of the affections,” says Lord Bacon, “we must resort to the poets, for there affection is on her throne, there we may find her painted forth to the life.”

Instead of referring us to the poets, he might, according to his own admonitions, have referred us to the certain mode of discovering truth, by observing facts around us, and particularly by observing the nature sought, where it is most conspicuous.

In searching, for any nature, observe it, he says, where it is most conspicuous; as, in inquiring into the nature of flame, observe the sudden ignition and expansion of gas—these are what he calls “glaring instances.”

The glaring instance of affection is Female Affection; there indeed she is on her throne, there we may find her painted forth to the life. It is the nature of woman to be affectionate.