I am a malformed, misguided wretch

I'm reading Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks and came across a paragraph that simultaneously infuriated and enlightened me.

Its 1661 and Bethia has just revealed to her current master a new plan to get a job in the "buttery" at Harvard College so that she can overhear the lectures taking place and learn while she is preparing meals. His response:

"This is most unwise my dear, most imprudent. These lectures are not fashioned for the unfurnished mind of the fairer sex. What need has a wife and mother to cudgel her faculties with the seven arts and the three philosophies? Have a care, or you will torment yourself into a malformed, misguided wretch...."

I was infuriated by the repression, the inequality, the unfairness.

I was enlightened by the unbearable truth in the statement. Since the majority of child-raising and home-managing is done by women (it still is all around the world, even in Scandinavia - but that's another post), then isn't it easier if this is all they know? If that is all that is ever open to them?

I'm proposing that to have a taste of freedom and intellect and then lose it is much harder and makes us much less happy than never having had those things in the first place.