Madeleine

Dear Valeria,

I must this day overcome in your mind that distrust of yourself, and that folly shame, that hinders you from employing your mind with things which it is capable of. They who say that beauty is the portion of women, and that fine arts, good learning and all the eminent sciences are of the domination of men, without our having power to pretend to any part of them, are equally differing from justice and virtue.

Our sex is capable of everything that it would undertake.

Sincerely,

Madeleine de Scudéry