" The more proposals, the more credit. Fan says Trix always asks when she comes home after the summer excursions, how many birds have you bagged as if men were partridges. What wicked creatures we are! Some of us at least. I wonder why such a love of conquest was put into us? Mother says a great deal of it is owing to bad education nowadays, but some girls seem born for the express purpose of making trouble, and would manage to do it, if they lived in a howling wilderness. "

― Louisa May Alcott , An Old-Fashioned Girl