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Witch Weekly · October 24, 2021 – 7:15 PM

Letters From Our Reader
Dear Witch Weekly readers,

I am a mother of three daughters. The eldest has just turned one-and-twenty, my middle is nineteen, and my younger will soon be fifteen. I know there are a number of mothers in the mother's book club I attend who have been stressing about sending their daughters to a reputable finishing school such as Pendergast's School for Young Roses, and after much thought I have decided to tell the rest of the world what I have told them.

They are not worth it.

There, I said it. You mothers in the upper echelons of society probably gasped as you wrote it, while mothers too poor to afford to tuition probably think me a privileged woman who takes for granted what opportunities I'm able to afford for my daughters. But those of you like me, with still-unmarried daughters with no evident prospects despite their education, will understand what I mean.

My eldest daughter is one-and-twenty, which is by no means old, but is certainly no longer the fresh-faced debutante she was when she debuted at the age of nineteen. She forewent her final year at Hogwarts in favor of finishing, which we expected to be to her advantage. We are a well-off family with a good pedigree and no scandal to our name, and my daughter, though shyer than some of the debutantes on the marriage mart, is twice as pretty as many. Why, then, are women like the now Mrs. Caroline Delaney, an American with no finishing on records and no mass of wealth, able to snag husbands with positions of power in the Ministry? What qualities do they possess that my eldest doesn't?

I asked myself that for a long time—and she did, too, I'm sure. It was made worse when her younger sister, who just turned nineteen, decided to finish her time at Hogwarts and attend the Hogwarts Coming Out Ball as a mere formality. Like her elder sister, she intended to go to finishing school (and might I say, she needed it more than my eldest!) and yet found herself with an interested suitor before the evening had concluded! Now she is engaged to be married, and her fiancé seemed to care very little that she was never finished!

Mothers of magical Britain, I tell you this: society no longer values what it did when we were young. Demureness, femininity, and grace have been discarded in favor of love, passion, and attraction. Men no longer seek a mother for their children, but a life partner. Men are not as observant with the little details as we women are—they don't notice the quality of their brush strokes when they paint or the smoothness of their voices when they sing. They may care about the quality of a mother they will make, but no finishing school is required to teach a woman to mother properly.

I say this: instead of shoveling money into finishing schools who make a fool out of our daughters after their second and third unsuccessful seasons, let us invest in their futures. Dowries make a difference, and investing that money in your daughters' wardrobes, tickets to social events, and quality experiences is likely to help their futures much more than a few governesses who can teach them skills that go unnoticed.

Signed,

A Mother with Unfinished Business

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