The Excellent Daughter: a Discourse More Especially Design'd for the Benefit of Poor Girls Taught and Cloathed by Charity. With Proper Lessons of the Duty of Daughters

The Excellent Daughter: A Discourse More Especially Design'D For The Benefit Of Poor Girls Taught And Cloathed By Charity. With Proper Lessons Of The Duty Of Daughters. White Kennett is a didactic sermon and instructional manual centered on shaping feminine virtue in early modern England. Drawing on Proverbs, especially the portrait of the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31, Kennett expounds a fourfold curriculum for girls: modest demeanor in appearance and speech, meekness and temper, industriousness and domestic management, and acts of charity. He elevates piety as the crowning grace that sanctifies all other accomplishments. The work defends charitable education through charity-schools for poor girls, arguing that disciplined training in dress, behavior, and work prevents vice and idleness, cultivates obedience to parents, and fosters responsible wifehood and motherhood. It includes explicit prayers for morning and evening devotion and a paraphrase of Proverbs 31 in English verse. The text serves both as pastoral guidance for mothers and as advocacy for parish-supported female education in a Christian moral economy.