Colonial Dames and Good Wives by Alice Morse Earle

Nothing can more plainly show the regard in which women were held in Virginia in the middle of the eighteenth century than the entries in the accounts of Colonel William Byrd of his visits to Virginia homes. He was an accomplished and cultivated gentleman, who wrote with much intelligence and power when relating his interviews with men, or discussing what might be termed masculine subjects, but who revealed his opinion of the mental capacity of the fair sex by such side glimpses as these: "We supped about nine and then prattled with the ladies. " "Our conversation with the ladies was like whip-syllabub, very pretty but nothing in it. " He also makes rather coarse jokes about Miss Thekky and her maiden state, which was of course most deplorable in his and every one else's eyes; and he alludes disparagingly to Mrs. Chiswell as "one of those absolute rarities, a very good old woman. " The Virginia women are said by other authors of that day to have been "bounteous in size and manner. " M. Droz wrote of them: --

Most of the women are quite pretty and insinuating in their manner if they find you so. When you ask them if they would like to have husbands they reply with a good grace that it is just what they desire.