Note 14 — Chapter VIII · A MISFIT EDUCATION

The Western governesses, in so many cases, took no interest in their pupils’ reading, and allowed them to read everything they could lay their hands on. With their capacity for intrigue, they smuggled in principally French novels of the most harmful kind. Physical exercise being impossible to work off the evil effects of this harmful reading, the Turkish woman, discontented with her lot, saw only two ways of ending her unhappy existence—flight or suicide; she generally preferred the latter method.