A School for Brides by Patrice Kindl

from her lips. Both were rather afraid of her, but consoled themselves with the thought that
decent
women did not give a fig about the precise arrangement of the solar system. Indeed, Miss Winthrop on occasion braved Miss Franklin’s scornful eye by venturing the opinion that it only stood to reason that the Earth was the unmoving center of the universe.
    â€œAnyone with a particle of sense can plainly see that
we
stand still whilst everything else revolves around
us
,” she was wont to say. “And that is precisely as it should be. Now let us hear no more on the subject.”
    Even Miss Quince, who was rather better informed than her co-headmistresses on the laws of physics and the Earth’s place in the universe, sometimes felt a bit daunted at the prospect of attempting to teach Miss Franklin anything, as she appeared to know nearly everything about everything already. That is to say, she possessed exhaustive information on volcanoes and glaciers, the various types of cloud formations, and the movements of the tides and of the heavenly spheres. However, while she could tell you the proper taxonomy of every plant in the garden, her floral arrangements were a perfect disgrace—a hodgepodge of broken stems, some with and some without blooms, jabbed all anyhow into a jam jar—and while she could describe in detail the workings of the new Jacquard looms, her embroidery was a snarl of broken threads and knots of which a five-year-old child might reasonably have been ashamed.
    â€œOh, what can it possibly matter!” she would exclaim when her skills at painting a fire screen or picking out a tune on the spinet were found lacking. “Fire screens require no decoration to enable them to perform their function, and music only distracts the mind from rational thought.” In vain did anyone protest that these things gave pleasure—and might be an intellectual discipline in themselves. Hers was a mind formed for infinite space and the grandest designs of Nature.
    Miss Franklin had pleaded with her mother to send her to school in Oxford or Cambridge, where, although she would not be admitted to the lecture halls of either university, she might be able to attend the meetings of learned societies and take notes upon their discussions. However, Mrs. Franklin had no notion of allowing her daughter to become even more of a bluestocking than she already was, and instead determined to send her as far away from modern scientific thought as she could manage—hence the Winthrop Hopkins Female Academy in Lesser Hoo, Yorkshire.
    â€œNever mind, my dear,” said that lady comfortably as her daughter raged. “I am only thinking of your health. You know, the best physicians say that you’ll do yourself a mischief overworking your brain like that. Girls ought not to think on difficult subjects; it’s well known to make you barren, and I shouldn’t wonder but what you’ll contract brain fever and go mad. Worse, you will die an old maid.” She went on to quote Mr. Thomas Broadhurst, the eminent educator, on the subject: “‘Of all the objects that are disagreeable to the other sex, a pedantic female, I believe, is the most confessedly so.’” Miss Franklin’s mama was herself singularly ill-read, but over the years she had picked up a few useful references in her long battle with an inconveniently brilliant daughter.
    â€œA pox on the other sex,” Miss Franklin muttered. “May the entirety of the other sex—always excepting those who are engaged in important scientific research—fall into the sea and choke itself.”
    â€œWhat’s that, dear?”
    â€œI do not intend to marry, Mama,” she said more loudly, in what she hoped sounded like a composed and resolute tone of voice.
    â€œFie, what nonsense! When a woman says that it is because she is not pretty enough, or because she has no dowry. Of what use is a woman who does not