A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects

Mary Wollstonecraft

[Brackets]

enclose editorial explanations. Small

dots

enclose material that has been added, but can be read as

though it were part of the original text. Occasional

•

bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations,

are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the

omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difﬁculty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported

between brackets in normal-sized type.—If this work gets you interested in its author, read Claire Tomalin’s ﬁne

The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (1974).

First launched: April 2010

Contents

Dedicatory Letter 1

Introduction 4

Chapter 1: Human rights and the duties they involve 7

Chapter 2: The prevailing opinion about sexual differences 12

Chapter 3: The same subject continued 26

Chapter 4: The state of degradation to which woman is reduced by various causes 36

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft

Chapter 5: Writers who have rendered women objects of pity, bordering on contempt 53

Section 1: Rousseau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Section 2: Fordyce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Section 3: Gregory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Section 4: Some women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Section 5: Chesterﬁeld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Chapter 6: The effect that an early association of ideas has on the character 71

Chapter 7: Modesty comprehensively considered and not as a sexual virtue 75

Chapter 8: Morality undermined by sexual notions of the importance of a good reputation 80

Chapter 9: The pernicious effects of the unnatural distinctions established in society 85

Chapter 10: Parental Affection 89

Chapter 11: Duty to Parents 91

Chapter 12: National education 93

Chapter 13: Examples of the harm done by women’s ignorance 99

Section 1: Charlatans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Section 2: Novel-reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Section 3: Dressing up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Section 4: Sensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Section 5: Ignorance about child-care . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Section 6: Concluding thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft

Glossary

accomplishment:

That is a kind of sneer-word when MW

uses it writing about the ‘accomplishments’ that women

are trained to have. To ‘accomplish’ something can be to

complete or ﬁnish it; a few decades ago some young women

were sent to a ‘ﬁnishing school’ before being launched into

society.

address:

skill, elegance, dexterity; usually thought of (by

MW at least) as something learned, practised, contrived—not

natural. See page 58.

amuse:

In MW’s time ‘amuse’ had a central meaning which

it now has only at the margins: to ‘amuse oneself by. . . ’ was

to pass the time by. . . . A child who is ‘amusing herself’ by

dressing her doll (page 29) needn’t be taking much pleasure

in this.

animal spirits:

These ﬁgured in a theory, popularised

by Descartes: they were supposed to be an extremely

ﬁne-divided liquid or gas—much less lumpy than water or

air—that could move with great speed and get in anywhere;

among their roles was to transmit causal inﬂuences from the

sense-organs to the brain, almost instantaneously.

brute, brutal:

A brute is a lower or non-human animal. A

brutal or brutish way of behaving is one that falls below

a minimum standard for being human—e.g. the ‘brutal’

behaviour of a mother

[on page 89]

who indulges her child

without thinking about the effects of her conduct on the

child’s later development or on

•

other people.

docile

: Strictly and originally this meant ‘able to learn’

and/or ‘willing to learn’. In MW’s usage, as in ours today,

a ‘docile’ person is one who is easy to manage, persuade,

manipulate, etc. One who is biddable.

education:

In MW’s time this word had a wider meaning

than it tends to have today. It wouldn’t be far wrong to

replace most occurrences of it by ‘upbringing’. See MW’s

discussion of ‘education’ starting on page 14.

genius:

In the present work this means something like

‘extremely high-level intellect’; similar to the word’s present

meaning, but not as strong.

he or she:

MW never uses ‘he or she’, ‘his or hers’ or the like.

These occur in the present version to avoid the discomfort

we feel in her use of ‘it’, as when she says ‘every being’ can

become virtuous by the exercise of ‘its own reason’.

(im)mortal:

MW ties

•

being immortal to

•

having reason and

•

being anwerable to God.

mistress:

In this work, a ‘mistress of’ a family is in charge

of a family; and a ‘mistress of’ a man is a sexual partner of a

man. The word is not used here except in those two kinds of

context.

person:

When MW refers to a woman’s ‘person’ she is

always referring to the woman herself considered as sexually

attractive. A man’s interest in a woman’s ‘person’ is his

sexual interest in her body, though clothing and jewellery

may also come into it.

prescription:

In several important places MW uses ‘prescrip-

tion’ in its sense as a legal term, now obsolete, referring to

something’s being accepted or unchallenged etc.

because it

has been in place for so long.

sceptre:

An ornamental rod held in the hand of a monarch

as a symbol of royal authority. MW uses the word several

times, always as a metaphor for power or authority: ‘beauty

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft

is woman’s sceptre’ means that beauty is woman’s source of

power.

sense:

MW speaks of ‘a man of sense’ she means ‘a fairly

intelligent man’ or, in her terms, ‘a man with a fairly enlarged

understanding’.

sensibility:

Capacity for reﬁned emotion, readiness to feel

compassion for suffering, or the quality of being strongly

affected by emotional inﬂuences. MW uses the adjective

‘sensible’—e.g. on page 63—in pretty much our sense of it.

sentimental:

This meant ‘having to do with feelings’; the

implication of shallow and unworthy feelings came after

MW’s time. On page 1 ‘sentimental lust’ presumably means

‘intense hankering for various kinds of feelings’.

sex:

For MW ‘sex’ is a classiﬁcatory term—e.g. ‘I speak for

my sex’ meaning ‘I speak for all women’. (The use of ‘sex’

as short for ‘copulation’ is of more recent vintage.) See the

striking example on page 36. MW uses phrases about ‘giving

a sex to X’ meaning (page 6) treating X as though it related

to only one of the sexes, or (pages 24, 29 and 41) treating

X as though there were one version of it for females and a

different one for males.

subtlety:

In MW’s usage this means something close to

‘address’ (see above).

vice, vicious:

For an 18th century writer vice is simply

wrong conduct, with no necessary implication of anything

sexual (except perhaps on page 55); and a vicious person is

simply someone who often acts wrongly, with no necessary

implication of anything like savage cruelty.

virtue:

On a few occasions in this work MW uses ‘virtue’

with some of its older sense of ‘power’. One example is on

page 36. On page 65 MW personiﬁes virtue as feminine.

voluptuous: Having to do with sexual pleasure.

vulgar:

In MW’s day ‘vulgar’ as applied to people meant

‘common, ordinary, not much educated, not very thoughtful’.

More generally, ‘vulgar x’ meant ‘the kind of x that would be

associated with vulgar people’.

woman:

This version follows MW exactly in her uses of

‘woman’, ‘women’, ‘lady’, ‘female’ and ‘feminine’, and in her

use of the masculine counterparts of these.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft Dedicatory Letter

Dedicatory Letter

[This work appeared in 1792, when Talleyrand—as he is usually called today—was active in the higher levels of the developing French revolution. A

Constitution establishing France as a constitutional monarchy had been established in 1791. The infamous ‘reign of terror’ was still a year away. Two

years earlier, MW had published a defence of the revolution against Burke, entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Men.]

To M. Talleyrand-Périgord

former Bishop of Autun

Sir:

Having read with great pleasure a pamphlet on National

Education that you recently published, I dedicate this volume

to you, to induce you to reconsider the subject and maturely

weigh what I shall say about the rights of woman and

national education; and I’m calling with the ﬁrm tone of

humanity.

[‘National education’ is the topic of the penultimate chapter,

starting on page 93.]

In these arguments, sir, I am not trying

to get anything for myself; I plead not for myself but for

my sex.

My own personal wants, anyway, amount to very

little

. For many years I have regarded

independence

as the

great blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and even if I

end up living on a barren heath, I will always guarantee my

independence by contracting my wants.

So it is my affection for the whole human race that

•

makes my pen speed along to support what I believe to

be the cause of virtue, and

•

leads me to long to see woman’s

place in the world enable her to advance the progress of the

glorious principles that give a substance to morality, rather

than holding them back. My opinion about the rights and

duties of woman seems to ﬂow so naturally from those simple

principles that it seems almost inevitable that some of the

enlarged minds who formed your admirable constitution will

agree with me.

[In this next paragraph, ‘essence’ is used not in the customary philosophi-

cal sense, but in the sense involved in ‘essence of lavender’. A ‘voluptuary’

is someone devoted to the pursuit of luxury and sensual pleasure.]

Knowledge is spread more widely in France than in any

other

part of Europe; and I attribute this in large measure to

the social intercourse there has long been in France between

the sexes. It is true (I’m going to speak freely) that in France

the very essence of sensuality has been extracted for the

pleasure of the voluptuary, and a kind of sentimental lust

[see Glossary]

has prevailed. This, together with the system of

deceptiveness that the whole spirit of their political and civil

government taught, have given a sinister sort of knowingness

to the French character. . . .and a polish of manners that

injures the substance by driving sincerity out of society. And

modesty—the fairest garb of virtue—has been more grossly

insulted in France than even in England; the

minimal

attention to decency that

even

brutes instinctively observe

is regarded by French women as prudish!

Manners and morals are so closely related that they have

often been confused with one another; but although manners

should

be only the natural reﬂection of morals, when various

causes have produced unnatural and corrupt manners that

infect even the young, morality becomes an empty name.

Personal restraint and respect for cleanliness and delicacy

in domestic life are the graceful pillars of modesty, but

French women almost despise them. If the pure ﬂame

of patriotism has reached their hearts, they should work

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft Dedicatory Letter

to improve the morals of their fellow-citizens by teaching

men not only

•

to respect modesty in women but

•

to become

modest themselves, as the only way to deserve women’s

respect.

Fighting for the rights of women, my main argument is

built on this simple principle:

If woman isn’t ﬁtted by educa-

tion to become man’s companion, she will stop the progress of

knowledge

, because truth must be common to all; if it isn’t it

won’t be able to inﬂuence how people in general behave. And

how can woman be expected to cooperate if she doesn’t know

why

she ought to be virtuous? if freedom doesn’t strengthen

her reason until she understands her

•

duty and sees how

it is connected with her real

•

good? If children are to be

brought up to understand the true principle of patriotism,

their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind,

from which an orderly sequence of virtues arises, can be

produced only by attending to the moral and civil interest

of mankind; but the upbringing and situation of woman at

present shuts her out from such investigations.

In this work I have produced many arguments that I

found conclusive, showing that the prevailing notion of ‘the

female character’ is subversive of morality. I have contended

that to make the human body and mind more perfect,

chastity must more universally prevail; and that chastity

will never be respected in the male world until

the person of

a woman

is not virtually idolized while

the woman

has little

virtue or sense. [see Glossary on ‘person’]. . . .

Consider these remarks dispassionately, Sir, for you

seemed to have a glimpse of this truth when you said

that ‘to see one half of the human race excluded by the

other half from all participation of government is a political

phenomenon that can’t possibly be explained according to

abstract principles’. If that is so, what does your constitution

rest on? If the abstract rights of man can stand discussion

and explanation, those of woman—by a parity of reasoning—

won’t shrink from the same test: though a different view

prevails in this country, built on the very arguments that

you use to justify the oppression of woman—prescription

[see

Glossary].

I address you as a legislator: When men ﬁght for their

freedom, ﬁght to be allowed to judge for themselves concern-

ing their own happiness, isn’t it inconsistent and unjust

to hold women down? I know that you ﬁrmly believe you

are acting in the manner most likely to promote women’s

happiness; but who made

man

the exclusive judge

of that

if woman shares with him the gift of reason?

Tyrants of every kind, from the weak king to the weak

father of a family, use this same argument

that ‘It is in

your own best interests’

. They are all eager to crush reason,

but they always say that they usurp reason’s throne only to

be useful. Isn’t that what you are doing when you

force

all

women, by denying them civil and political rights, to remain

walled in by their families and groping in the dark? Surely,

sir, you won’t say that a duty can be binding without being

founded on reason! Arguments

•

for civil and political rights

can be drawn

•

from reason; and with that splendid support,

the more understanding women acquire the more they will

be attached to their duty,

understanding

it. Unless they

understand it—unless their morals are based on the same

immutable principles as those of man—no authority can

make them act virtuously. They may be convenient slaves,

but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master

and the abject dependent.

If you are going to exclude women, without consulting

them, from sharing in the natural rights of mankind, then

defend yourself against accusations of injustice and inconsis-

tency by proving that

women don’t have reason

. If you don’t

do that, then this ﬂaw in your

New Constitution

—the ﬁrst

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft Dedicatory Letter

constitution based on reason—will show for all times that

man must in some way act like a tyrant, and that tyranny,

in whatever part of society it raises its arrogant head, will

always undermine morality.

I have produced what seemed to me to be irrefutable

arguments, drawn from matters of fact, to prove my often-

repeated assertion that women cannot by force be conﬁned

to domestic concerns. However ignorant they are, they

will

get involved in more weighty affairs, neglecting private duties

only to disturb by cunning tricks the orderly plans of reason

that rise above their comprehension.

Also, while women are only made to acquire personal

accomplishments

[see Glossary]

, men will seek pleasure in

variety, and faithless husbands will make faithless wives.

Indeed, such ignorant beings as wives are in such a system

will be very excusable when, not having been taught to

respect public good or allowed any civil rights, they try to

make things more fair by retaliation.

When the box of mischief has been thus opened in society,

what is to preserve private virtue, the only security of public

freedom and universal happiness?

The answer is

: Let there be no coercion established in

society—

no laws that

force

people into this or that social

role or situation

. When that is achieved, the common law of

gravity will hold sway and the sexes will fall into their proper

places. With fairer laws forming your citizens, marriage can

become more sacred; your young men can choose wives from

motives of affection, and your maidens can allow love to root

out vanity.

The father of a family won’t weaken his constitution and

debase his sentiments by visiting prostitutes; he won’t in

obeying the call of

sexual

appetite forget the purpose for

which it was implanted in him; and the mother won’t neglect

her children to practise the arts of teasing and ﬂirting when

sense and modesty secure her the friendship of her husband.

But until men become attentive to the duty of a father,

you can’t expect women to spend in their nursery the time

that they. . . .choose to spend at their mirror; for this exercise

in cunning is only a natural instinct to enable them to obtain

indirectly a little of the power of which they are unjustly

denied a share. If women aren’t permitted to enjoy legitimate

rights, they will seek illicit privileges in ways that make both

men and themselves vicious [see Glossary].

I wish, sir, to get some investigations of this kind going in

France. If they lead to a conﬁrmation of my principles, then

when your constitution is revised the rights of woman may

•

respected, if it has been fully proved that reason calls for

this

•

respect and loudly demands

justice

for one half of the

human race.

I am, sir,

Yours respectfully,

M. W.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft Introduction

Introduction

After thinking about the sweep of history and viewing the

present world with anxious care, I ﬁnd my spirits depressed

by the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation.

I have had to admit, sadly, that either nature has made a

great difference between man and man, or that the world is

not yet anywhere near to being fully civilized. I have looked

into various books on education, and patiently observed the

conduct of parents and the management of schools; but all

this has given me is a deep conviction that

•

the neglected

education of my fellow creatures is the main source of the

misery I deplore, and that

•

women in particular are made

weak and wretched by a number of co-operating causes,

originating from one hasty conclusion

[MW’s phrase]

. The

conduct and manners of women, in fact, show clearly that

their minds are not in a healthy state; as with ﬂowers planted

in soil that is too rich, strength and usefulness are sacriﬁced

to beauty; and the ﬂamboyant leaves, after giving pleasure

to viewers, fade on the stalk, disregarded, long before it was

the time for them to reach maturity. This barren blooming is

caused partly by a false system of education, gathered from

the books on the subject by men. These writers, regarding

females as women rather than as human creatures, have

been more concerned to make them alluring mistresses than

affectionate wives and rational mothers; and this homage

to women’s attractions has distorted their understanding to

such an extent that almost all the civilized women of the

present century are anxious only to inspire

•

love, when they

ought to have the nobler aim of getting

•

respect for their

abilities and virtues.

In a book on female rights and manners, therefore, the

works written speciﬁcally for their improvement mustn’t be

overlooked; especially when the book says explicitly

•

that

women’s minds are weakened by false reﬁnement,

•

that the

books of instruction written by men of genius

[see Glossary]

have been as likely to do harm as more frivolous produc-

tions; and

•

that—when improvable

reason

is regarded as

the dignity that raises men above the lower animal and

puts a natural sceptre

[see Glossary]

in a feeble hand—those

‘instructive’ works regard woman (in true Moslem fashion) as

beings of a subordinate kind and not as a part of the human

species.

But don’t think that because I am a woman I mean stir

up violently the debated question about the equality and

inferiority of the

female

sex; but that topic does lie across

my path, and if I sidle past it I’ll subject my main line of

reasoning to misunderstanding. So I shall pause here in

order to give a brief statement of my opinion about it. In

the government of the physical world—

as distinct from the

governments of the social or political world

—it is observable

that the female is, so far as strength is concerned, inferior to

the male.

This is the law of nature; and it doesn’t seem to be

suspended or repealed in favour of woman. This physical

superiority can’t be denied—and it is a noble privilege! But

men, not content with this natural pre-eminence, try to sink

us lower still, so as to make us merely alluring objects for

a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration that

men (under the inﬂuence of their senses) pay them, don’t try

to achieve a permanently important place in men’s feelings,

or to become the

friends

of the fellow creatures who ﬁnd

amusement [see Glossary] in their society.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft Introduction

I am aware of an obvious inference: from every direction

I have heard protests against ‘masculine women’, but where

are they to be found? If men are using this label in criticism

of women’s ardour in hunting, shooting, and gambling, I

shall gladly join in; but if their target is

the imitation of manly virtues, or (more accurately)

the achieving of the talents and virtues that ennoble

the human character and raise females in the scale

of animal being when they are brought under the

comprehensive label ‘mankind’,

all those who view women with a philosophical eye must, I

should think, join me in wanting women to grow more and

more ‘masculine’ every day.

This discussion naturally divides the subject. I shall ﬁrst

consider women as

human creatures

who, in common with

men, are placed on this earth to develop their abilities; and

then I shall attend to the implications of the more speciﬁc

label women.

I want to steer clear of an error that many writers have

fallen into, namely giving

women

instruction that has been

appropriate for

ladies

. . . . I shall address my sex in a ﬁrmer

tone, focussing particularly on those in the middle class,

because they appear to be in the most natural state.

for the upper classes

: Perhaps the ‘great’ have

always

scattered seeds of false reﬁnement, immorality, and vanity!

Weak, artiﬁcial beings who have been prematurely and

unaturally raised above the ordinary wants and feelings of

mankind undermine the very foundation of virtue and spread

corruption through the whole mass of society! They have

a stronger claim to pity than any other class of mankind.

The upbringing of the rich tends to make them vain and

helpless, and their unfolding minds are not strengthened by

the practice of the duties that dignify the human character.

They live only to amuse

[see Glossary]

themselves, and—by a

law that also operates in nature—they soon come to have

nothing to offer except barren amusement.

That is enough about that for the present: I plan to take

the different ranks of society separately, and discuss the

moral character of women in each. I have mentioned the

subject

of class-differences

here only because I think that

the essential task of an Introduction is to give a sketchy

account of the contents of the work it introduces.

I hope my own sex will excuse me if I treat them like

rational creatures, instead of ﬂattering their

fascinating

graces and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual

childhood and unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to

point out what true dignity and human happiness consist in;

I want to persuade women to aim at strength of mind and

body, and to convince them

•

that the soft phrases

‘susceptibility of heart’

‘delicacy of sentiment’, and

‘reﬁnement of taste’

are almost synonymous with expressions indicating weak-

ness, and

•

that creatures who are the objects only of pity

and the kind of love that has been called ‘pity’s sister’ will

soon become objects of contempt.

So I dismiss those pretty feminine phrases that the men

condescendingly use to make our slavish dependence easier

for us, and I despise the weak elegance of mind, exquisite

sensibility, and sweet docility

[see Glossary]

of manners that

are supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker

sex. I want to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that

the most praiseworthy ambition is to obtain a character as

human being

, whether male or female, and that lesser

ambitions should be tested against that one.

That is a rough sketch of my plan; and

I offer now three

remarks about how I aim to carry it out

(1)

I shall refrain

from pruning my phrases and polishing my style, because

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft Introduction

it is important to me to affect the thoughts and actions of

my readers, and I’ll do that better if I sometimes express my

conviction with the energetic emotions that I feel.

(2)

I shan’t

waste time elegantly shaping my sentences, or fabricating

the turgid bombast of artiﬁcial feelings that come from the

head and therefore never reach the heart; because I want to

persuade by the force of my arguments rather than to dazzle

by the elegance of my language.

(3)

I shall try to avoid the

ﬂowery diction that has slid from essays into novels, and

from novels into familiar letters and conversation; because

I’ll be dealing with things, not words! In all this I’ll be anxious

to turn my sex into members of society who are more worthy

of respect..

These pretty nothings (these caricatures of the

real

beauty

of sensibility) drop glibly from the tongue, spoil one’s sense

of taste, and create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns

away from simple unadorned truth.

[She means ‘delicacy’ in the

sense of pickiness, choosiness; readiness to push things to the edge of

one’s plate.]

A deluge of false sentiments and over-stretched

feelings, stiﬂing the natural emotions of the heart, make

insipid

the domestic pleasures that ought to sweeten the

exercise of the severe duties that prepare a rational and

immortal

[see Glossary]

being for a nobler ﬁeld of action.

[The

adjective ‘immortal’ suggests that the ‘nobler ﬁeld of action’ that MW had

in mind is life after death.]

The education

[see Glossary]

of women has been attended to

more in recent years than formerly; but they’re still regarded

as a frivolous sex, and are ridiculed or pitied by writers

who try to improve them by satire or instruction. It is

acknowledged that they spend many of their earliest years

acquiring a smattering of accomplishments

[see Glossary]

but strength of body and mind are sacriﬁced to libertine

notions of beauty, to the desire to get themselves settled

by marriage—the only way women can rise in the world.

This desire makes mere animals of them, and when they

marry they act as such children can be expected to act: they

dress, they paint, they give nicknames to God’s creatures.

Surely these weak beings are only ﬁt for the seraglio!

[= the

women’s quarters a Turkish palace; she is implying that women are kept

there purely for sexual purposes.]

Can they govern a family with

judgment, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring

into the world?

The present conduct of the

female

sex, its prevalent

fondness for pleasure in place of ambition and the nobler

passions that open and enlarge the soul, are evidence that

the instruction that women have received, with help

from the constitution of civil society, has only tended

to turn them into insigniﬁcant objects of desire, mere

propagators of fools!

If it can be proved that

men, in aiming to bring women to perfection without

cultivating their understandings, take them out of

their sphere of

real

duties and make them ridiculous

and useless when the brief bloom of beauty is over,

I presume that

rational

men will excuse me for trying to

persuade them

[i.e. women]

to become more masculine and

worthy of respect.

Indeed the word ‘masculine’ is only a pointless scare-

word: there’s little reason to fear that women will acquire too

much courage or fortitude, because their visible inferiority in

bodily strength must make them to some extent dependent

on men in the various relations of life; but why should that

dependence be increased by prejudices that

•

give a sex to

virtue

[see Glossary]

and

•

can’t distinguish simple truths from

sensual daydreams?

Women are so much degraded by mistaken notions of

female excellence that this artiﬁcial weakness produces in

them a tendency to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning—

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1: Human right and duties

the natural opponent of strength—which leads them to ex-

ploit those contemptible infantile airs that undermine esteem

even while they excite desire. Let men become more chaste

and modest, and if women don’t become correspondingly

wiser it will be clear that they have weaker understandings.

I hardly need to explain that I am talking about the

female

sex in general. Many individual women have more

sense than their male relatives; some women govern their

husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect

will always govern. Where there’s a constant struggle for an

equilibrium, nothing will swing the scales its way unless it

naturally has greater weight.

Chapter 1:

Human rights and the duties they involve

In the present state of society it seems that we have to go

back to ﬁrst principles in search of the simplest truths, and

to ﬁght against some prevailing prejudice for every inch of

ground. Let me clear my way by asking some plain questions:

the answers to them will probably appear to be as obviously

right as the axioms on which reasoning is based; but when

they are entangled with various motives of action they are

ﬂatly contradicted by men’s words or their conduct.

•

What does man’s pre-eminence over the lower animals

consist in? The answer is as clear as ‘A half is less than the

whole’; it consists in reason.

•

What acquirement raises one being above another? We

spontaneously reply: virtue.

•

For what purpose were we given passions? Experience

whispers the answer:

so that man by struggling with his

passions might achieve a degree of knowledge that the lower

animals can’t have.

So the perfection of our nature and capacity for happiness

must be measured by the degree of reason, virtue, and

knowledge that

•

distinguish the individual and

•

direct the

laws that bind society; and it is equally undeniable that,

taking mankind as a whole, knowledge and virtue naturally

ﬂow from the exercise of reason.

With the rights and duties of man thus simpliﬁed, it

seems hardly necessary to illustrate truths that seem so

incontrovertible. But such deeply rooted prejudices have

clouded reason, and such spurious qualities have taken the

name of ‘virtues’, that it

necessary to track the course

of reason as it has been tangled in error. . . .so that we can

set the simple axiom alongside the deviations from it that

circumstances bring.

Men generally seem to employ their reason to

•

justify

prejudices that they have taken in they can’t tell how, rather

than to

•

root them out. Only a strong mind can resolutely

form its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice

prevails, making many men shrink from the task or do it

only by halves. Yet the imperfect conclusions that are drawn

in this way are often very plausible, because they are built

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1: Human right and duties

on partial experience, on views that are correct

as far as

they go· but narrow.

Going back to ﬁrst principles, vice

[see Glossary]

in all

its native ugliness slinks away from close investigation;

but shallow reasoners are always exclaiming that these

arguments

from ﬁrst principles

‘prove too much’, and that

a given course of conduct is ‘expedient’ even if it is rotten at

the core. Thus

•

expediency is continually contrasted with

•

simple principles, until truth is lost in a mist of words,

virtue is lost in forms

[= ‘in mechanical rules of conduct’]

, and the

tempting prejudices that claim the title ‘knowledge’ suppress

real knowledge.

The most wisely formed society is the one whose constitu-

tion is based on the nature of man

—that statement, in the

abstract, strikes every thinking being so forcibly that it looks

like presumption to try to prove it; but we

need to prove it,

or reason will never be able to make prescription

[see Glossary]

relax its grip. And yet urging prescription as an argument

to justify depriving men (or women) of their natural rights is

one of the absurd sophisms that daily insult common sense.

The bulk of the people of Europe are only very partially

civilized. Indeed, it’s an open question whether they have

acquired

any

virtues in exchange for the innocence

they

have lost

, comparable with the misery produced by the vices

that have been plastered over unsightly ignorance, and the

freedom that has been traded away in exchange for glittering

slavery. The desire to dazzle by riches (the surest route

to pre-eminence!), the pleasure of commanding ﬂattering

yes-men, and many other complicated low calculations of

stupid self-love, have all joined forces in overwhelming the

mass of mankind and making ‘liberty’ a convenient label for

mock patriotism.

For while rank and titles are held to be of the utmost

importance, before which genius ‘must hide its diminished

head’

[quoted from Milton’s Paradise Lost]

, it is almost always

disastrous for a nation when an able man without rank

or property pushes himself into the limelight. When such a

scheming obscure adventurer works to get a cardinal’s hat,

longing to be ranked with princes—or above them, by seizing

the triple crown

worn by Popes

—the events involved in this

bring unheard-of misery to thousands of people.

So much wretchedness has ﬂowed from hereditary hon-

ours, riches, and monarchy, that men of lively sensibility

have been reduced almost to blasphemy in their attempts

to justify God’s management of the world. They have

represented man as

•

independent of his Maker or as

•

lawless planet darting from its orbit to steal the celestial

ﬁre of reason; and the vengeance of heaven. . . .punished his

boldness by introducing evil into the world.

Impressed by this view of the misery and disorder that

pervaded society, and weary from contending with artiﬁcial

fools, Rousseau fell in love with solitude; and in his optimism

he worked with uncommon eloquence to prove that man is

naturally a solitary animal. Misled by his respect for the

goodness of God, who certainly—for what man of sense

[see

Glossary]

and feeling can doubt it?—gave life only in order to

give happiness, he considered evil as. . . .the work of man;

not aware that he was exalting one

divine

attribute at

the expense of another that is equally necessary to divine

perfection.

[Jean-Jacques Rousseau, mentioned many times in his

work, had died fourteen years before the pressent work appeared.]

Constructed on the basis of a false hypothesis,

Rousseau’s arguments in favour of a state of nature are

plausible; but they are unsound, because the assertion that

a state of nature is preferable to the most perfect civilization

there could be is in effect a charge against supreme wisdom.

The paradoxical exclamation:

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1: Human right and duties

•

God has made all things right, and

•

evil has been introduced by the creature whom God

formed, knowing what he was forming

is as unphilosophical as it is impious.

The wise Being who created us and placed us

here. . . .allowed it to be the case—and thus willed it to be the

case—that our passions should help our reason to develop,

because he could see that present evil would produce future

good. Could the helpless creature whom God created out

of nothing break loose from his providence and boldly learn

know good by practising evil

without his permission? No.

How could

Rousseau

, that energetic advocate for immortal-

ity, argue so inconsistently? If mankind had remained for

ever in the brutal state of nature, which even Rousseau’s

magic pen can’t paint as a state in which a single virtue took

root, it would have been clear. . . .that man was born to run

the circle of life and death, and adorn God’s garden for some

purpose that couldn’t easily be reconciled with his

[= God’s]

attributes.

But if the whole divine plan was to be crowned by rational

creatures who would be allowed to rise in excellence through

the use of powers given to them for that purpose; if God in

his goodness thought ﬁt to bring into existence a creature

above the brutes,

one who could think and improve himself;

why should that incalculable

•

gift be openly called a

•

curse?

(A gift? Man was enabled to rise above the state in which

sensations gave him the sort of comfort that lower animals

are capable of; of course it was a gift!)

It might be regarded as a curse if our time in this world

was the whole span of our existence; for why should the

gracious fountain of life give us passions and the power of

reﬂecting, only to embitter our days and inspire us with

mistaken notions of dignity? Why would God lead us from

love of ourselves to the sublime emotions aroused by the

discovery of his wisdom and goodness, if these feelings

weren’t launched so as to improve our nature (of which they

are a part)

and enable us to enjoy a more godlike portion

of happiness? Firmly convinced that no evil exists in the

world that God didn’t intend to occur, I build my belief on

the perfection of God.

Rousseau strains to prove that all

was

right originally;

a crowd of authors argues that all

now right; and I claim

that all will be right.

True to his ﬁrst position which is nearly a state of

nature, Rousseau celebrates barbarism, and in his praise

of Fabricius

[said to be one of the founders of ancient Rome]

forgets that the Romans in conquering the world didn’t

dream of establishing their own liberty on a ﬁrm basis,

or of extending the reign of virtue. Eager to support his

system, he condemns as vicious

[see Glossary]

every effort of

Contrary to the opinion of the anatomists, who argue by analogy from the formation of the teeth, stomach, and intestines, Rousseau denies that man

is a carniverous animal. And, carried away from nature by a love of system, he questions whether man is a gregarious animal, though the long and

helpless state of infancy seems to point him out as especially forced to pair, which is the ﬁrst step towards herding.

Suppose that

•

you asked a mechanic to make a watch that would point out the hour of the day, and

•

to show his ingenuity he added wheels and springs to make it a repeater, as a result of which the mechanism malfunctioned, and

•

you complained, and

•

he replied in self-defence ‘If you hadn’t touched that spring you wouldn’t have known that I had varied the plan; I would have been amusing

myself by making an experiment without doing you any harm’,

what would you say? Wouldn’t you respond, fairly, ‘If you hadn’t added those needless wheels and springs, the accident couldn’t have happened?

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1: Human right and duties

genius; and in praising savage virtues to the skies he raises

to demigod status people who were scarcely human—the

brutal Spartans, who in deﬁance of justice and gratitude

sacriﬁced in cold blood the slaves who had served them well.

[In 424 BCE the Spartans murdered two thousand helots, i.e. slaves

serving as soldiers in the Spartan army. Thucydides wrote: ‘The helots

were invited to select those of their number who claimed to have most

distinguished themselves against the enemy, so that they could be freed.

The object was to test them, thinking that the ﬁrst to claim freedom

would be the most apt to rebel. About two thousand were selected and

rejoiced in their new freedom; but the Spartans secretly killed each of

them.’]

Disgusted with artiﬁcial manners and virtues, Rousseau

didn’t sift through the subject but simply threw away the

wheat with the chaff, not pausing to consider whether

the evils that his ardent soul indignantly rejected were

•

consequences of civilization or

•

vestiges of barbarism. He

saw vice trampling on virtue, and seeming-goodness taking

the place of the real thing; he saw talents bent by power

to sinister purposes; and he never thought of tracing the

gigantic harm back to

•

arbitrary power, back to

•

the heredi-

tary

distinctions that clash with the mental superiority that

naturally

raises a man above his fellows. He didn’t see that

it takes only a few generations for royal power to introduce

idiotism into the noble family line, and that it holds out baits

to make thousands idle and vicious. [MW adds harsh words

about the crimes that bring people to royal status, and about

the feeble passiveness of ‘millions of men’ who have let the

royal criminals get away with it. She continues:]

When the chief director of a society is instructed only in

how to invent crimes, or in the stupid routine of childish

ceremonies, how can it

not

be the case that the society has a

poisonous fog hovering over it?

[MW’s ‘instructed in’ is ambiguous:

she may mean that that’s all he is taught, or that it is all he knows.]. . . .

In circumstances as good as they could possibly be, it

would still be impossible for

any

man to acquire enough

knowledge and strength of mind to perform the duties of

a king who has been entrusted with uncontrolled power.

Think how knowledge and strength of mind must be violated

when

•

the sheer fact that the man does become a king

poses an insuperable bar to his acquiring either wisdom

or virtue, when

•

all his feelings are stiﬂed by ﬂattery, and

when

•

thoughtfulness is shut out by pleasure! Surely it is

madness to make the fate of thousands depend on the whims

of a weak fellow creature whose very position in life puts him

necessarily

below the poorest of his subjects! But one power

should not be thrown down in order to raise up another. Man

is weak, and all power intoxicates him; and the way power

is misused proves that the more equality there is among

men—

and thus the less power of men over men

—the more

virtue and happiness will reign in society. But this. . . .raises

an outcry: ‘If we don’t have absolute faith in the wisdom of

aniquity, the church is in danger’ or‘. . . the state is in danger’.

Those who are roused by the sight of human calamity to be

so bold as to attack human authority are reviled as despisers

of God and enemies of man. These are bitter libels, yet they

were levelled at one of the best of men (Dr. Price), whose

ashes still preach peace, and whose memory demands a

respectful pause when subjects that lay so near his heart are

discussed.

[Richard Price, who died a year or so before the present

work was published, had greatly inﬂuenced Mary Wollstonecraft. He had

been reviled for his writings on the French Revolution. His Review of the

Principal Questions in Morals is on the website from which the present

text came.]

Now that I have attacked the ‘sacred’ majesty of kings,

you won’t be surprised when I add my ﬁrm conviction that

every profession whose power depends on large differences

of rank is highly injurious to morality.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1: Human right and duties

A standing army, for instance, is incompatible with

freedom because strictness and rank are the very sinews

of military discipline; and despotism is necessary to give

vigour to enterprises that have one person in charge. A spirit

inspired by romantic notions of honour—a kind of morality

based on the fashion of the times—can be felt by only a few

ofﬁcers, while the main body must be moved by command,

like the waves of the sea; for the strong wind of authority

pushes the crowd of subalterns forward, they scarcely know

or care why, with headlong fury.

[Then as now, ‘subaltern’ mainly

meant ‘junior ofﬁcer’, so the ‘main body’ presumably refers to the main

body of the ofﬁcers. The rank and ﬁle are not being talked about here.]

And armies are harmful in another way

. Nothing can

damage the morals of the inhabitants of country towns as

much as the occasional residence of a set of idle superﬁcial

young men whose only occupation is gallantry, and whose

polished manners make vice more dangerous by concealing

its ugliness under gay ornamental drapery. An air of

fashion

which is really a badge of slavery, showing that the soul

doesn’t have a strong individual character, awes simple

country people into imitating the vices when they can’t catch

the slippery graces of social polish. Every military body is a

chain of despots who obey and give commands without using

their reason, and become dead weights of vice and folly on

the community. A man of rank or fortune whose connections

guarantee that he will rise has nothing to do but to pursue

some extravagant whim; while the needy

gentleman

who has

to rise ‘by his merit’, as they say, becomes a servile parasite

or a vile pander

[= ‘pimp’, or perhaps merely ‘person whose job it is to

satisfy his superiors’ desires’.]

Sailors, the gentlemen of the navy, can be described in

similar terms, except that their vices

[see Glossary]

are different

and grosser. They are more positively indolent

[= ‘wholly

idle’, ‘idly idle’]

when they aren’t performing the ceremonials

required by their rank, whereas the insigniﬁcant ﬂuttering

of soldiers could be called ‘active idleness’. More conﬁned to

the society of men, sailors acquire a fondness for humour

and mischievous tricks; while soldiers, who are often in the

company of well-bred women, are infected with a ‘sensitive’

whiny way of speaking. But whether someone indulges in

the sailor’s

horse-laugh or

the soldier’s

polite simper,

mind

is equally out of the question.

[This next paragraph refers to the Anglican church, of which MW was

a member. A patron was a person, not himself a cleric, who had sole

control over who became the well-paid rector or senior parson of a

parish; and a curate was a junior parson who did most of the parish

work and received a tiny fraction of the rector’s income.]

Let me extend the comparison to a profession where there is

certainly more

mind

to be found—the clergy. They have bet-

ter opportunities for improvement, but

rank

almost equally

cramps their faculties. The blind submission to forms of

belief that is imposed at college serves as a training for

the curate who most obsequiously respects the opinion of

his rector or patron—or he does if he means to rise in his

profession. There can hardly be a more striking contrast

than between

•

the servile, dependent manner of a poor curate

and

•

the top-of-the-world manner of a bishop. And

MW’s next phrase: the respect and contempt

perhaps meaning: the little respect and great contempt

they inspire makes the work they do in their separate func-

tions equally useless.

It is important to understand that every man’s character

is to some extent formed by his profession. A man with

a good mind may reﬂect his profession only in superﬁcial

ways that wear off as you trace his individuality; while weak,

common men have hardly any character except what belongs

to their profession. . . .

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

As society becomes more enlightened, therfore, it should

be very careful not to establish bodies of men who are bound

to be made foolish or vicious by the very constitution of their

profession.

In society’s infancy when men were just emerging out

of barbarism, chiefs and priests must have had unlimited

inﬂuence because they tapped into the most powerful springs

of savage conduct—hope and fear.

Aristocracy

is of course,

naturally the ﬁrst form of government. But clashing in-

terests soon get out of balance, there is a confusion of

ambitious struggles, and what emerges is a

monarchy

and

hierarchy. . . . This appears to be the origin of monarchical

and priestly power, and the dawn of civilization. But such

combustible materials can’t be held down for long; and

foreign wars and uprisings at home give the

common

people

a chance to acquire some power, which obliges their rulers

to gloss over their oppression with a show of right. Thus

as wars, agriculture, commerce, and literature expand the

mind, despots are forced to use

•

hidden corruption to keep

the power that was initially snatched by open force.

And

this

•

lurking gangrene is spread most quickly by luxury and

superstition, the sure dregs of ambition. The idle puppet of a

royal

court ﬁrst becomes a luxurious monster or fastidious

pleasure-seeker, and the contagion that his unnatural state

spreads becomes the instrument of tyranny.

[In this context,

‘luxury’ and its cognates refer to extreme and dissipated pursuit and

enjoyment of sensual pleasures.]

It is the plague-carrying purple

of royalty

that makes the

progress of civilization a curse, and warps the understanding

until men of good sense doubt whether the expansion of

intellect will bring more happiness or more misery. But the

nature of the poison points out the antidote; if Rousseau

had climbed one step higher in his investigation—or if his

eye could have pierced the foggy atmosphere that he was

hardly willing to breathe—his active mind would have darted

forward to contemplate

•

the perfection of man in the estab-

lishment of true civilization, instead of taking his ferocious

ﬂight back to

•

the night of sensual ignorance.

Chapter 2:

The prevailing opinion about sexual differences

To explain and excuse the tyranny of man, many ingenious

arguments have been presented to prove that in the acquiring

of virtue the two sexes ought to have very different aims; or,

to put it bluntly, women aren’t thought to have enough

strength of mind to acquire virtue properly so-called. But

it would seem that if they have souls there is only one way

appointed by God to lead

mankind

to virtue or to happiness.

Men of abilities scatter seeds that grow and have a great inﬂuence on the development of

•

public opinion; and once

•

that gets the intellectual upper

hand through the exertion of reason, the overthrow of arbitrary power is not very distant.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

If then women are not a swarm of insigniﬁcant ephemera

[insects like mayﬂies, that live for only one day]

, why should they

be kept in ignorance under the pretty label ‘innocence’?

Men complain, with reason, about the follies and whims of

our sex, except when they sharply satirize our headstrong

passions and groveling vices. I would answer: Behold the

natural effect of ignorance! A mind that has only prejudices

to rest on will always be unstable, and the current will run

with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break

its force. Women are told from their infancy, and taught by

their mothers’ example, that

•

a little knowledge of human weakness (properly called

‘cunning’),

•

softness of temperament,

•

outward obedience, and

•

scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety,

will obtain for them the protection of man; and if they are

also beautiful, that’s all they need for at least twenty years.

That is how Milton describes our ﬁrst frail mother,

Eve

;

though when he tells us that women are formed for softness

and sweet attractive grace I don’t understand him unless

in true Moslem fashion he means to deprive us of souls,

insinuating that all we were designed for was to use sweet

attractive grace and docile blind obedience to gratify the

senses of man when he can no longer soar on the wing of

contemplation.

Those who advise us only to turn ourselves into gentle

domestic animals—how grossly they insult us! For instance,

the ‘winning softness’ that is so warmly and frequently

recommended, that ‘governs by obeying’—what childish ex-

pressions! And a being who will sink to the level of governing

by such underhand methods—what an insigniﬁcant being

that must be! Can it be an immortal one? ‘Certainly,’ says

Lord Bacon, ‘man is of kin to the beasts by his body: and

if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and

ignoble creature!’ Men, indeed, seem to me to act in a very

unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good

conduct of women by keeping them always in a state of

childhood. Rousseau was more consistent when he wanted

to stop the progress of reason in both sexes; for if men eat

fruit

of the tree of knowledge, women will come in for a taste,

but the imperfect cultivation that their understandings now

receive will give them only a knowledge of evil.

Children, I agree, should be innocent; but when ‘innocent’

is applied to men or women it is merely a polite word

for ‘weak’. If it is granted that women were destined by

Providence

[= ‘God’]

to acquire human virtues, and to use

their understandings to achieve the stability of character

that is the ﬁrmest ground to rest our future hopes on, then

they must be permitted to look to the fountain of light (

God

)

and not forced to steeer by the twinkling of a mere satellite

(

man

). Milton was of a very different opinion. . . ., but it

would be hard to make consistent two passages that I am

now going to contrast. But then great men often led by their

senses into such inconsistencies.

[In these lines Eve is speaking

to Adam.]

To whom thus Eve with perfect beauty adorned:

My author and disposer, what thou bidst

Unargued I obey; so God ordains,

God is thy law, thou mine; to know no more

Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise.

These are

exactly

the arguments I have used to children!

But then I have added: ‘Your reason is now gaining strength.

Until it arrives at some degree of maturity, you must look up

to me for advice; but when it does arrive there, you ought to

think, and rely only on God.’

Yet, in these next lines, Milton seems to agree with me,

when he makes Adam protest to his Maker like this:

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

Hast thou not made me here thy substitute,

And these inferior far beneath me set?

Among unequals what society

Can sort, what harmony or delight?

Which must be mutual, in proportion due

Given and received; but in disparity

The one intense, the other still remiss

Cannot well suit with either, but soon prove

Tedious alike: of fellowship I speak

Such as I seek, ﬁt to participate

All rational delight. . . .

In discussing the manners of women, therefore, let us set

aside sensual arguments and work out what we should try

to make women in order to co-operate, if the expression isn’t

too bold, with God.

The sense of the word ‘education’ isn’t precisely deﬁned,

so I should explain: by ‘individual education’ I mean

The kind of attention to a child that will slowly

sharpen the senses, form the temperament, regulate

the passions as they begin to bubble up, and set

the understanding to work before the body reaches

maturity; so that the

fully mature

man will only have

•

continue the important task of learning to think

and reason, rather than .having to

•

start it.

I don’t believe that a private education can work the wonders

that some optimistic writers have attributed to it.

[This topic

will be extensively discussed in chapter 12.]

Men and women must

be educated to a large extent by the opinions and manners

of the society they live in. In every age there has been a

stream of popular opinion that has carried everything along

with it, giving to that age a family character, so to speak. So

it’s reasonable to conclude that until society is differently

constituted, not much can be expected from education. All

I need for my present purpose, however, is this: Whatever

effect circumstances have on people’s abilities, everyone

can

become virtuous by the exercise of his or her

[see Glossary]

own reason; for if just one being was

created

with vicious

inclinations—i.e. was created positively bad—what could

save us from atheism? or if we worshipped a god, wouldn’t

we be worshipping a devil?

So the most perfect education, in my opinion, is the

use of the understanding in the way that is most likely to

strengthen the body and form the heart—i.e. to enable the

individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render him

or her independent. To describe as ‘virtuous’ anyone whose

whose virtues don’t result from the exercise of his or her own

reason is a farce. This was Rousseau’s opinion regarding

men: I extend it to women. . . . Still, the royal homage that

•

women receive is so intoxicating that, until manners in

general come to be formed on more reasonable principles, it

may be impossible to convince

•

them that

•

the illegitimate power that they get by degrading

themselves is a curse, and that

•

if they want to enjoy the peaceful satisfaction that

unsophisticated affections impart, they must return

to nature and equality.

But for the present age we must wait until kings and nobles,

enlightened by reason and preferring the real dignity of

man to

their present

childish state, throw off their gaudy

hereditary trappings. If that happens and women still don’t

resign the arbitrary power of beauty, they’ll be showing

that they have

less

mind than man. At the risk of seeming

arrogant, I must declare my ﬁrm belief that

Everyone who has have written about female edu-

cation and manners, from Rousseau to Dr Gregory,

has helped to make women

•

more artiﬁcial, weaker

characters than they would otherwise have been; and

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

consequently

•

more useless members of society.

I could have expressed this conviction in a lower key; but

that would have been an insincere whine and not the faith-

ful expression of my feelings—of the clear conclusion that

experience and reﬂection have led me to draw. When I come

to the right place for that I’ll discuss the passages that I

especially disapprove of in the works of the authors I have

just mentioned

[chapter 5]

; but

this

is the right place to remark

that I object ·not just to isolated passages but· to the whole

purport of those books, which I think tend to degrade one

half of the human species, and make women pleasing at the

expense of every solid virtue.

Reasoning on Rousseau’s premises, we could say this:

If man did achieve a degree of perfection of mind when

his body arrived at maturity, it might be proper—so

as to make a man and his wife

one

—that she should

rely entirely on his understanding. Then the graceful

female

ivy, clasping the

male

oak that supported

it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty

would be equally conspicuous.

But alas! husbands as well as their wives are often only

overgrown children; indeed, thanks to early debauchery they

are hardly grown men in their outward form. We don’t need

a messenger angel fom heaven to tell us what happens when

the blind lead the blind.

In the present corrupt state of society many causes collab-

orate to enslave women by cramping their understandings

and sharpening their senses. One that silently does more

harm than all the rest, perhaps, is their disregard of order.

Do everything in an orderly manner

is a most important

precept, but women, who in general; receive only a disorderly

kind of education

[see the account of education on page 14]

, seldom

attend to it with as much exactness as men do, because men

are from their infancy are broken into method. This negligent

kind of guesswork prevents women from generalizing matters

of fact

[the meaning of this will become clear in the next paragraph]

, so

what they did yesterday they do again today, merely because

they did it yesterday. Guesswork? Well, isn’t that the right

word for the random exertions of a sort of instinctive common

sense, never brought to the test of reason?

This off-hand neglect of the understanding in early life

has worse consequences than is commonly supposed. The

little knowledge acquired by women with strong minds is,

for various reasons, more random and episodic than the

knowledge of men; it is acquired more by

•

sheer observations

of real life than from

•

relating individual observations to the

results of experience generalized by theorizing. . . . What

women learn they learn by snatches; and—because learning

for them is in general only a secondary thing—they don’t

pursue any one branch

of learning

with the persevering

eagerness that is needed to give vigour to the faculties and

clarity to the judgment. In the present state of society, a little

learning is required to support the character of a gentleman;

and boys are obliged to submit to a few years of

intellectual

discipline. But in the education of women the development

of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquiring

of some physical accomplishment; [and yet, MW continues,

on the physical side women don’t acquire the best kind

of grace and beauty, being barred from it by ‘conﬁnement

and false notions of modesty’. She seems to be thinking

of something like the grace and beauty of an accomplished

female athlete.]. . . . Having no serious scientiﬁc study, if

women have natural soundness of judgment it is turned too

soon onto life and manners. They dwell on effects. . . .without

tracing them back to causes; and complicated rules to adjust

behaviour are a weak substitute for simple principles.

As a proof that education gives females this appearance

of weakness, consider the example of military men, who are

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

(as women are) sent into the world before their minds have

been stored with knowledge or strengthened by principles.

The results are similar:

Soldiers acquire a little superﬁcial knowledge,

snatched from the muddy current of conversation;

and by continually mixing with society they gain what

is termed ‘knowledge of the world’.

(This acquaintance with manners and customs has often

been confused with

•

knowledge of the human heart. But

that

•

honourable label can’t be deserved by the crude fruit

of casual observation, never brought to the test of judgment

based on combining experience with theory.) When the edu-

cation has been the same, where is the difference between

the sexes? The only difference I can see comes from the fact

that soldiers are free to see more of life than women are. . . .

Standing armies can never consist of resolute, robust

men; they may be well disciplined machines but they will

seldom contain men moved by strong passions or with very

vigorous faculties. And depth of understanding isn’t found in

an army more often than it is found among women; and the

cause is the same. Furthermore, ofﬁcers are also particularly

attentive to their persons

[see Glossary]

, and fond of dancing,

crowded rooms, adventures, and mockery. As with the ‘fair’

sex, the business of their lives is

gallantry

. They were taught

to please, and they only live to please. Yet they. . . .are still

regarded as superior to women, though it is hard to discover

what their superiority consists in other than what I have just

mentioned.

The great misfortune is that they both acquire

•

manners

before

•

morals, and

•

a knowledge of life before reﬂection

gives them

•

an acquaintance with the grand ideal outline of

human nature. It naturally follows that they, satisﬁed with

common nature, become a prey to prejudices, and blindly

submit to authority, simply believing what they are told. If

they have any sense, it is a kind of instinctive fast uptake

of social situations; but this fails when opinions are to be

analysed or arguments are to be pursued below the surface.

. . . .Riches and hereditary honours have made cyphers of

women. . . .and idleness has produced a mixture of gallantry

and despotism in society, which leads men who are slaves

of their mistresses to tyrannize over their sisters, wives, and

daughters. . . . Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it

and that will bring an end to blind obedience; but because

blind obedience is always sought for by power, tyrants and

sensualists are right to try to keep women in the dark: the

tyrants only want slaves, and the sensualists only want toys.

In fact, sensualists have been the most dangerous tyrants,

and women have been duped by their lovers, as princes are

by their ministers, while dreaming that they reigned over

them!

I am principally thinking of Rousseau,

and speciﬁcally of

his work on education entitled

Émile·

. His character Sophie

in that book

is a captivating one, no doubt, though it strikes

me as grossly unnatural; but what I am planning to attack is

not the superstructure but the foundation of her character,

the principles on which her education was built. Warmly

as I admire the genius

[see Glossary]

of that able writer. . . .,

indignation always takes place of admiration when I read

his voluptuous

[see Glossary]

day-dreams. Is

this

the man who

in his ardour for virtue wants to banish all the soft arts of

peace and almost carry us back to Spartan discipline? Is

this

the man who loves to portray the useful struggles of passion,

the triumphs of good dispositions, and the heroic ﬂights that

carry the glowing soul out of itself? How are these mighty

sentiments lowered when he describes the prettyfoot and

enticing airs of his little favourite!

[That sentence is verbatim MW.]

But I’ll set that aside for just now, and. . . .merely remark

that whoever has cast a benevolent eye on society must

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

often have been gratiﬁed by the sight of humble mutual love,

not digniﬁed by sentiment or strengthened by a union in

intellectual pursuits. The domestic triﬂes of the day have

provided material for cheerful conversation, and innocent ca-

resses have softened toils which didn’t require great exercise

of mind or stretch of thought. But hasn’t the sight of this

middling happiness aroused more tenderness than respect?

It is an emotion like what we feel when we see children are

playing;

whereas the contemplation of the noble struggles

of suffering merit has created admiration and carried our

thoughts to that world where sensation will give place to

reason.

So women are to be considered either as

•

moral beings

or as

•

so weak that they must be entirely subjected to the

superior faculties of men.

Let us examine this question. Rousseau declares that

a woman should never for a moment feel herself to be

independent, that she should be

•

governed by fear to exercise

her ‘natural’ cunning, and

•

made a coquettish slave in order

to make her a more alluring object of desire, a ‘sweeter’

companion to man whenever he chooses to relax himself. He

carries his arguments (which he claims to infer from the indi-

cations of

nature

) still further, and indicates that truth and

fortitude—the corner-stones of all human virtue—should be

cultivated with certain restrictions, because with respect to

the female character obedience is the great lesson which

ought to be impressed

on the woman

with unrelenting

rigour.

What nonsense! When will a great man arise with enough

strength of mind to puff away the fumes that pride and

sensuality have thus spread over the subject? If women are

by nature

inferior to

men, their virtues must be

comparable

with men’s, meaning that they must be

the same in quality

if not in degree. . . .; so their conduct should be based on

the same principles as men’s conduct, and should have the

same aim.

Connected with man as daughters, wives, and mothers,

the moral character of women may be judged by how they

fulﬁll those simple duties; but the great

end

of their exertions

should be to develop their own faculties and acquire the

dignity of conscious virtue. They may try to make their road

pleasant; but they should never forget, as men do, that

life

doesn’t yield the happiness that can satisfy an immortal

soul. I don’t mean to imply that either sex should be so

lost in abstract reﬂections or distant views as to forget the

affections and duties that

•

lie before them and

•

are indeed

the means appointed to produce the fruit of life; on the

contrary, I warmly recommend them even while I say that

they give most satisfaction when they are considered in their

true subordinate light.

[These ‘affections and duties’ are presumably

ones relating to sexual intercourse, the ‘appointed means’ to continuing

the species.]

The dominant opinion that woman was created for man

may have been inferred from Moses’s poetical story; but

presumably very few who have

thought

about the subject

ever believed that Eve was literally one of Adam’s ribs; so that

inference must be dropped—or be admitted only as proving

from the remotest antiquity man found it convenient to exert

•

his strength to subjugate his companion, and

•

his invention

to show that she ought to have her neck bent under the yoke

because she as well as the lower animals was created to do

his pleasure.

Don’t think I that I want to invert the order of things. I

have already conceded that the constitution of men’s bodies

Milton’s pleasing picture of

•

paradisiacal happiness has always raised similar feelings in me; but instead of envying the lovely pair, I have with

conscious dignity (or satanic pride!) turned to

•

hell for more sublime things to think about. . . .

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

(I’m speaking collectively of the whole sex) seem to indicate

that God designed them to attain a greater degree of virtue

[see Glossary] ·

than women

. But I don’t see the faintest reason

to conclude that their virtues are different

in kind ·

from

women’s

. How

could

they be. if virtue has only one eternal

standard? If I am to be consistent in my reasoning, therefore,

I must put as much energy into maintaining

with regard

to male virtue and female virtue

that

•

they have the same

simple direction as I put into maintaining that

•

there is a

God.

It follows from this that I mustn’t set up a contrast

between

•

·female· cunning and ·male· wisdom,

•

little ·female· cares and great ·male· exertions, or

•

insipid

female

softness (varnished over with the label

‘gentleness’) and the

male

fortitude that can only be

inspired by grand views.

I shall be told that

if women aimed at the same virtues as

men

, woman would then lose many of her special graces;

and the line I am taking here might be attacked by quoting

from a well-known poet—Alexander Pope, who has said on

behalf of the whole male sex:

Yet ne’er so sure our passions to create,

As when she touch’d the brink of all we hate.

I’ll leave it to you to decide in what light this joke places men

and women; and in the meanwhile I’ll content myself with

remarking that I can’t discover why females should always be

degraded by being made subservient to love or lust, unless

they are mortal [see Glossary].

Yes, yes—speaking disrespectfully of love is committing

high treason against sentiment and ﬁne feelings! But I want

to speak the simple language of truth, addressing the head

rather than the heart. To try to reason

•

love out of the

world would be pointless and contrary to common sense;

but it appears less wild to try—

as I shall

—to restrain

•

this tumultuous passion, and to prove that it shouldn’t

be allowed to dethrone superior powers or grab the sceptre

[see Glossary]

that should always be wielded, coolly, by the

understanding.

Youth is the season for love in both sexes; but in those

days of thoughtless enjoyment one should prepare for the

more important years of life when reﬂection takes place of

sensation.

[MW was 33 years old when this was published.]

But

Rousseau and most of his male followers have strongly

maintained that the whole tendency of female education

ought to be directed towards one goal—to make women

pleasing.

If you support that opinion, let me reason with you. Do

you imagine that marriage can eradicate the habits of life?

The woman who has only been taught to please will soon ﬁnd

that her charms are oblique sun-beams, and that they can’t

have much effect on her husband’s heart when he sees them

every day and when the summer

of her physical beauty

past and gone. When that happens, she may

have enough energy to look into herself for comfort,

and cultivate the faculties she has idled;

or she may instead

try to please other men, and try in the emotions raised

by the expectation of new conquests to forget how her

love or pride has been humiliated.

Which do you think is more likely? When the husband

has stopped being a lover—and that time will inevitably

come—her desire to please will weaken, or become a spring

of bitterness; and love, perhaps the least durable of all the

passions, will give place to jealousy or vanity.

Now think about women who are restrained by principle

or prejudice.

They

would shrink from an intrigue

[= ‘an

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

extra-marital affair’]

with real abhorrence,

but play with the

idea because

they want to be convinced by the homage of

gallantry that they are cruelly neglected by their husbands;

or they spend days and weeks dreaming of the happiness

enjoyed by souls in harmony, until their health is under-

mined and their spirits broken by discontent. If that is right,

then how can it have been so necessary for them to study

the great art of pleasing? It is useful only to a mistress; the

chaste wife and serious mother should regard

•

her power to

please as merely the polish of her virtues, and

•

the affection

of her husband as merely one of the comforts that make her

task less difﬁcult and her life happier. But whether she is

loved or neglected, her ﬁrst wish should be to make herself

worthy of respect, and not rely for all her happiness on a

being who is subject to inﬁrmities like her own!

The amiable Dr. Gregory fell into a similar error. I respect

his heart, but entirely disapprove of his celebrated

A Father’s

Legacy to his Daughters.

He advises them to develop a fondness for dress, because

this, he says, is ‘natural’ to them. I can’t understand what

he or Rousseau mean in their frequent uses of the vague

word ‘natural’. If they told us that the soul before birth was

fond of dress and brought this inclination with it into a new

body, I would listen to them with a half smile, as I often do

when I hear someone pontiﬁcating about ‘innate elegance’.

But if Gregory meant to say only that using one’s faculties

will give one this fondness

for dress

, I deny it. It is not

natural: it arises, like false ambition in men, from a love of

power.

[MW reports and scornfully rejects Gregory’s recommen-

dation to his daughters that they be careful to hold down

any feeeling that might lead them to be to be too vigorous in

dancing, because that might give men a wrong impression.

She concludes:] I hope that no sensible mother will restrain

the natural frankness of youth by instilling such indecent

cautions. . . .

Women ought to try to purify their hearts; but can they

do so when their undeveloped understandings make them

entirely dependent on their senses for occupation and amuse-

ment

[see Glossary]

, when no noble undertaking raises them

above the day’s little vanities or enables them to curb the

wild emotions that agitate a reed over which every passing

breeze has power?

To gain the affections of a virtuous man, is affectation

necessary?

[In that sentence ‘affectation’ means ‘pretence about what

one’s actual feelings are’.]

Nature has given woman a weaker

body than man; but to ensure her husband’s affections must

a wife lower herself to pretending to be sickly and delicate, in

order to secure her husband’s affection?

It very often really

pretending, on the part of

a wife who, by the exercise of

her mind and body while she was discharging the duties of a

daughter, wife, and mother, has allowed her constitution to

retain its natural strength and her nerves a healthy tone.

Weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant

pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector won’t

please a noble mind that is panting for respect and deserves

to have it. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship!

In a seraglio, I admit, all these arts are necessary [and

she develops this thought through a paragraph that doesn’t

add to the content of the chapter. It repeats that someone

who could settle for such a life cannot be one who ‘has an

immortal soul’.]

Besides, the woman who strengthens her body and exer-

cises her mind will, by managing her family and practising

various virtues, become the friend, and not the humble

dependent, of her husband; and if she deserves his respect

by having such solid qualities, she won’t ﬁnd that she needs

to conceal her affection or pretend to an unnatural coldness

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

of constitution

[meaning ‘pretend to have little interest in sex’]

excite her husband’s passions. Look at history and you’ll

ﬁnd that the women who have distinguished themselves

haven’t been the most beautiful or the most gentle of their

sex.

Nature—or, to speak more accurately, God—has made all

things right; but man has devised many inventions to spoil

God’s work. I’m referring to the part of Dr. Gregory’s book

where he advises a wife never to let her husband know the

extent of her sensibility or affection. . . . That is as ineffectual

as it is absurd! By its very nature love must be transitory.

Searching for a secret that would make it constant is as

wild as searching for the philosopher’s stone

that can turn

lead into gold

or the grand panacea

[that can cure every disease]

;

and if the search succeeded

and something was discovered

that would make love constant

, that would be useless, or

rather

pernicious

, to mankind. The most holy tie of society

is friendship. The shrewd satirist

La Rochefoucauld

was

right when he said that ‘rare as true love is, true friendship

is still rarer’.

This is an obvious truth, and the reason for it is easy to

ﬁnd, because it doesn’t lie deep.

Love, the common passion, in which

chance replaces choice, and

sensation replaces reason,

is felt to some degree by everyone. (I am not talking here

about emotions that rise above love, or ones that sink below

it.) This passion, naturally increased by suspense and

difﬁculties, draws the mind out of its usual state and exalts

the affections; but the fever of love is allowed to subside

by the security of marriage—

its release from the kinds of

suspense and difﬁculties that occur in a love affair

. The

only people who ﬁnd a healthy temperature insipid are ones

who don’t have enough intellect to substitute

•

the calm tenderness of friendship for blind admira-

tion, and

•

the conﬁdence of respect for the emotions of foolish

sensuality.

This is the course of nature; it

has

to be; love is inevitably

followed by either friendship or indifference. And this state

of affairs seems to harmonize perfectly with the how things

go generally in the moral world. Passions are spurs to action,

and open the mind; but when the object has been gained

and the satisﬁed mind relaxes in enjoyment, the passions

sink to the level of mere appetites, a matter of momentary

personal gratiﬁcation. The man who had some virtue while

he was struggling for a crown often becomes a voluptuous

tyrant when he is wearing it; and when the lover continues

to exist in the husband the result is a foolish old man who

•

is a prey to childish whims and foolish jealousies, and

•

neglects the serious duties of life, and by whom

•

the caresses that should arouse conﬁdence in his

children are lavished on the overgrown child, his wife.

In order to fulﬁl the duties of life, and to be able to pursue

with vigour the various employments that form the moral

character, a master and mistress of a family ought not to

continue to love each other with passion. I mean that they

ought not to indulge emotions that disturb the order of

society and engross the thoughts that should be otherwise

employed. A mind that has never been absorbed by one

object lacks vigour; a mind that can be thus obsessed for a

long time is ·downright· weak.

. . . .I haven’t the faintest thought of producing a paradox

when I say: An unhappy marriage is often very advantageous

to a family, and a neglected wife is in general the best mother.

This would almost always be the case if the female mind were

more enlarged; ·let me explain why·.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

God’s plans seem to have ruled that, in most cases, what

we gain in present enjoyment is to be deducted from our

experience, which is the

true

treasure of life; and that

when we are gathering the ﬂowers of the day and revelling

in pleasure, the solid fruit of toil and wisdom is not to be

caught at the same time. The road forks here; we must go

to the right or to the left; and someone who spends his life

bounding from one pleasure to another mustn’t complain

if he acquires neither wisdom nor a character worthy of

respect.

* * * * *

[The preparer of this version is defeated by the following paragraph—not

by its individual episodes but by how it meant to hang together. So it is

passed on to you exactly as Mary Wollstonecraft wrote it. Good Luck!]

Supposing, for a moment, that the soul is not immortal,

and that man was only created for the present scene,—I

think we should have reason to complain that love, infantine

fondness, ever grew insipid and palled upon the sense. Let us

eat, drink, and love, for to-morrow we die, would be, in fact,

the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool

would part with a reality for a ﬂeeting shadow? But, if awed

by observing the improvable powers of the mind, we disdain

to conﬁne our wishes or thoughts to such a comparatively

mean ﬁeld of action, that only appears grand and important,

as it is connected with a boundless prospect and sublime

hopes, what necessity is there for falsehood in conduct, and

why must the sacred majesty of truth be violated to detain

a deceitful good that saps the very foundation of virtue?

Why must the female mind be tainted by coquettish arts to

gratify the sensualist, and prevent love from subsiding into

friendship, or compassionate tenderness, when there are not

qualities on which friendship can be built? Let the honest

heart show itself, and

reason

teach passion to submit to

necessity; or, let the digniﬁed pursuit of virtue and knowledge

raise the mind above those emotions which rather embitter

than sweeten the cup of life, when they are not restrained

within due bounds.

* * * * *

I’m not talking about the romantic passion that is the

concomitant of genius. Who can clip its wings? But that

grand passion is out of proportion to the little enjoyments

of life; what it is true to is only

itself

, what it feeds on is

only itself. The passions that have been celebrated for their

durability have always been unfortunate. They have been

strengthened by absence and by constitutional melancholy.

The imagination has hovered round a dimly seen form of

beauty; familiarity with it might have turned admiration

into disgust—or at least into indifference—and freed the

imagination to start fresh game

[= ‘ﬂush out new foxes or deer or

hares to hunt’]

. According to this view of things, it is perfectly

proper for Rousseau to make the heroine of his novel

Julie

love her tutor when life was fading before her; but this is no

proof of the immortality of the passion.

Of the same sort is Gregory’s advice regarding delicacy of

sentiment. He advises a woman not to acquire sentiment if

she intends to marry. This intention is perfectly consistent

with his former advice, but here he calls sentiment ‘indelicate’

and earnestly persuades his daughters to conceal it even if

it governs their conduct—as if it were

indelicate

to have the

common appetites of human nature!

Noble morality! and consistent with the cautious pru-

dence of a little soul that can’t look further than the present

tiny fraction of

our

existence

[i.e. the part that concerns life before

death, whose extent is tiny compared with the eternal life that awaits us

after death]

•

If all the faculties of woman’s mind are to be

cultivated only with respect to her dependence on man; if

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

when she gets a husband she has reached her goal and. . . .is

satisﬁed with such a trivial crown, let her contentedly grovel

in the dirt, scarcely raised by her employments above the

lower animals. But

•

if she is struggling for the prize of

her high calling

[presumably meaning God’s giving her the task of

becoming as virtuous as possible]

, let her look beyond the present

scene, let her develop her understanding without stopping to

consider what the husband she is going to marry will be like.

If she resolves to acquire the qualities that ennoble a rational

being, without being too anxious about present happiness, a

rough, inelegant husband may shock her taste but he won’t

destroy her peace of mind. She will model her soul not

•

make it ﬁt with her companion’s frailties but

•

to enable it to

put up with them. His character may be a trial, but it won’t

be an impediment to virtue.

If Gregory meant to be talking only about romantic ex-

pectations of constant love and congenial feelings, he should

have remembered that

•

such expectations exist only when

the imagination is kept alive at the expense of reason, that

•

advice can never make them go away, but that

•

experience

can do so.

I admit that many women who have developed in them-

selves a romantic unnatural delicacy of feeling have wasted

their lives in

imagining

how happy they would have been

with a husband who could love them with intense and

increasing affection all day every day. But they might as well

lament married as lament single; they wouldn’t be a jot more

unhappy with a bad husband than they are longing for a good

one. I agree that a proper education—or, more accurately, a

well-stocked mind—would enable a woman to live unmarried

with dignity; but what if she avoids cultivating her taste in

case her

future

husband

if she comes to have one

should

occasionally shock it? That is quitting a substance for a

shadow! The fact is that I don’t know what use an improved

taste

if it’s not to make the individual more independent

of life’s disasters, and to open up new sources of enjoyment

that depend only on the solitary operations of the mind.

People of taste (whether married or single, it makes no

difference) will always be disgusted by various things that

have no effect on less observant minds; but that fact on its

own mustn’t be allowed to disqualify taste. The question is:

in the whole sum of enjoyment

is taste to be counted as a

blessing? Does taste procure more pain or more pleasure?

The answer will settle whether Gregory’s advice was good,

and will show how absurd and tyrannical it is to lay down

a system of slavery

as he does

, or to try to educate moral

beings by any rules other than those deduced from pure

reason, which apply to the whole species.

Gentleness of manners, forbearance, and long-suffering

are such lovable godlike qualities that high-ﬂying poetry has

attributed them to God; and there may be no representation

of his goodness that fastens on the human affections as

strongly as those that represent him abundant in mercy and

willing to pardon. Looked at this point of view, gentleness

has all the marks of grandeur combined with the winning

graces of kindness towards subordinates; but how different

gentleness looks when it is the submissive manner of a

dependent, the support of weakness that loves because it

needs protection, and is forbearing because it must silently

endure injuries, smiling under the lash at which it doesn’t

dare to snarl! This picture of degradation is the portrait of an

accomplished

[see Glossary]

woman, according to the received

opinion of female excellence as something different. . . .from

human excellence. Or they (for example Rousseau and

Swedenborg) kindly give Adam back his rib, making one

moral being of a man and woman, and not forgetting to give

her all the ‘submissive charms’ [that is a phrase from Milton].

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

We aren’t told how women are to exist in a state of affairs

where there is no marriage. Moralists have agreed that the

tenor of life seems to prove that

man

is prepared by various

circumstances for a future state, but they are unanimous in

advising

woman

to provide only for the present. Gentleness,

docility

[see Glossary]

, and spaniel-like affection are consis-

tently recommended as the cardinal virtues of the sex; and

one writer. . . .has declared that it is ‘masculine’ for a woman

to be sad. She was created to be the man’s toy, his rattle,

and it must jingle in his ears whenever he dismisses reason

and chooses to be amused.

It is absolutely correct to recommend gentleness in a

general way. A frail being—

and all humans

are

frail

—

should try to be gentle. But when forbearance confuses

right with wrong, it stops being a virtue. It may be found

agreeable in a companion, but that companion will always be

regarded as an inferior, and will inspire only a ﬂat and lifeless

tenderness which easily degenerates into contempt. Still, if

advice really could make gentle a being to whom such a ﬁne

polish isn’t natural, that would move things on a little in the

direction of true morality; but it’s easy to show that what

such advice actually produces is affectation, pretence, which

puts a stumbling block in the way of personal improvement,

so that the

female

sex gets little beneﬁt from sacriﬁcing

solid virtues to the acquiring of superﬁcial graces, even if for

a few years these graces give the individual a great deal of

power.

As a philosopher, I read with indignation the nice-

sounding descriptions that men use to soften their insults;

and as a moralist, I ask what they mean by such oxymorons

as ‘fair defects’, ‘amiable weaknesses’ and so on.

[In Paradise

Lost Eve is called a ‘fair defect’.]

If there is only one criterion of

morals for men, only one model for them to follow, women

seem to be suspended by destiny. . . .: they don’t have the

unerring instinct of the lower animals, but nor are they

allowed to ﬁx the eye of reason on a perfect model. They

were made to be loved, and must not aim at respect, lest

they should be hunted out of society as ‘masculine’.

Look at this topic now from a different angle. Do passive

idle women make the best wives?

Never mind the after-life

just now

; let us conﬁne our discussion to the present

moment of existence, and ask: How well do such weak crea-

tures perform their part? Do the women who by attaining

a few superﬁcial accomplishments have strengthened the

common prejudice

regarding women

contribute only to the

happiness of

•

their husbands? Do they display their charms

merely to entertain

•

them? And do women who were brought

up on notions of passive obedience have enough character to

manage a family or educate children? So far from it that after

surveying the history of woman I can’t help agreeing with the

severest satirist who regards the ·female· sex as the weaker

as well as the more oppressed half of the species. What

does history reveal except marks of inferiority? How many

women have freed themselves from the humiliating yoke of

sovereign man? So few that the exceptions remind me of

the ingenious conjecture that Newton was probably a being

of a superior order, accidentally caged in a human body!

Following that line of thought I have been led to imagine that

the few extraordinary women who have rushed in various

directions out of the orbit prescribed to their sex were

male

•

spirits conﬁned by mistake in a female body. But if it isn’t

philosophical to think of sex when the

•

soul is mentioned,

the inferiority

of women

must depend on the organs, or else

the heavenly ﬁre that makes the clay develop isn’t distributed

in equal portions.

I am continuing to avoid any direct comparison between

the two sexes collectively; I do frankly acknowledge the

inferiority of woman according to the present appearance of

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

things. And I insist that men have increased that inferiority

until women are almost sunk below the standard of rational

creatures. Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their

virtues to gain strength, and

then

determine where the whole

sex must stand in the intellectual scale. But don’t forget that

for a small number of distinguished women I do not ask for

a place [=? ‘a place on that scale’].

It’s hard for us dim-sighted mortals to say what height

human discoveries and improvements may arrive at when

we are freed from the gloom of despotism that makes us

stumble at every step. But there’s one prediction I am willing

to make without being gifted with a prophetic spirit: it is

that when morality is settled on a more solid basis, woman

will be either man’s friend or his slave. There will be no

question, as there is now, as to whether she is a moral

agent or

rather

the link that unites man with the lower

animals. And if it does then turn out that like the lower

animals women were principally created for the use of man,

he will let them patiently bite the bridle

[= ‘leave them to put up

with their servitude]

and not mock them with empty praise; and

on the other hand

their rationality comes to be proved,

man won’t impede their improvement merely to gratify his

sensual appetites. He won’t use all the graces of rhetoric to

persuade them to submit their understandings uncritically

to the guidance of man. He won’t, when discussing the

education of women, assert that they ought never to have

the free use of reason. . . .

Surely there can be only one rule of right, if morality has

an eternal foundation; and whoever sacriﬁces virtue—strictly

so-called—to present convenience. . . .lives only for the pass-

ing day and can’t be an accountable

[= ‘morally responsible’]

creature.

If that is the category into which women belong

, then the

poet

Matthew Prior

should have dropped his sneer when

he wrote ‘If weak women go astray, / The stars are more in

fault than they.’ Why? Because

if women are like that, then

what he says about them is simply

true

and not a ﬁt topic

for sneering sarcasm

. If it comes to be proved that women

will never

•

exercise their own reason,

•

be independent,

•

rise above opinion,

•

feel the dignity of a rational will that

•

bows only to

God and

•

often forgets that the universe contains any

being but itself and God

then quite certainly they

are

bound by the unbreakable

chain of destiny.

[Let it be confessed that the ﬁnal ‘God’ in the above

indented passage replaces ‘the model of perfection to which its ardent

gaze is turned, to adore attributes that, softened into virtues, may be

imitated in kind, though the degree overwhelms the enraptured mind’.]

I am proceeding by argument. I’m not willing to impress

by rhetoric when reason offers her sober light.

[This is the

ﬁrst time in this work that MW has treated reason as female. There are

two others, on pages 32 and 65.]

If women are really capable of

acting like rational creatures, let them not be treated like

slaves, or like lower animals who depend on the reason of

man when they associate with him. Instead, develop their

minds, give them the salutary, sublime curb of

principle

, and

let them attain conscious dignity by feeling that they depend

only on God. Teach them in common with man to submit to

necessity, instead of trying to make them more pleasing by

giving a sex [see Glossary] to morals.

And if it turns out that they can’t reach the same degree

of strength of mind, perseverance and fortitude

as men can

let their virtues be the same in

•

kind

as men’s

although

they can’t be the same in degree. And man’s superiority

will be equally clear, if not clearer; and truth. . . .would be

common to both. This wouldn’t invert the order of society

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 2: Current views about sexual differences

as it is now. because woman would then have only the rank

that reason assigned to her, and she couldn’t employ her

skills to level the balance, let alone to make it swing the

other way.

These may be called ‘utopian’ dreams,

but I shan’t be

deterred by that. I give

thanks to the Being who impressed

them on my soul, and gave me enough strength of mind

to dare to employ my own reason until—becoming depen-

dent only on him for the support of my virtue—I view with

indignation the mistaken notions that enslave my sex.

I love man as my fellow; but his sceptre doesn’t reign over

me unless I owe homage to the reason of an individual; and

even if I do, what I am submitting to is

•

reason, not to

•

man.

In fact, the behaviour of a

morally

accountable being must

be regulated by the operations of his or her own reason—if

that is wrong, what foundation does the throne of God rest

on?

It seems to me that I have to dwell on these obvious truths

because females have been insulted, as it were; stripped of

the virtues that should clothe humanity, they have been

decked out with artiﬁcial graces that enable them to be

tyrants for a little time. Because in them love takes the place

every nobler passion, their sole ambition is to be beautiful,

to raise emotion instead of inspiring respect; and this ignoble

desire—like the servility in absolute monarchies—destroys

all strength of character. Liberty is the mother of virtue,

and if women are slaves by their very constitution, and not

allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of freedom,

they must always languish like exotics, and be regarded as

beautiful ﬂaws in nature.

The argument about the subjection in which the sex has

always been held can be turned back on man.

[She means

the argument from ‘prescription’; see Glossary, and see also the end of

this paragraph.]

The many have always been subject to the

few; and monsters who have shown almost no perception

of human excellence, have tyrannized over thousands of

their fellow creatures. Why have men with superior gifts

submitted to such degradation? Doesn’t everyone know

that kings, taken as a whole, have always been inferior in

abilities and virtue to the same number of men taken from

the common mass of mankind? Yet haven’t they been—and

aren’t they still—treated with a degree of reverence that is an

insult to reason? China isn’t the only country where a living

man has been made a God.

Men

have submitted to superior

strength so as to enjoy with impunity the pleasure of the

moment, and

women

have only done the same. Therefore

until it is proved that the courtier who servilely gives up his

birthright as a man is not a moral agent, it can’t be argued

that woman is essentially inferior to man because she has

always been subjugated. . . .

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

Chapter 3:

The same subject continued

Bodily strength, once the distinction of heroes, has sunk

into such undeserved contempt that men as well as women

seem to think it unnecessary: women because it detracts

from their feminine graces and from that lovely weakness

that is the source of their undue power; and men because it

seems to conﬂict with the character of a gentleman.

[MW is

probably here using ‘contempt’ in a now obsolete sense, meaning merely

that bodily strength has come to be regarded as negligible.]

It won’t be hard to prove that the two sexes have both

departed from one extreme and run into another; but before I

come to that I should perhaps observe that a certain common

error has come to have some acceptance, and this has given

strength to a false conclusion in which an effect has been

mistaken for a cause.

People of genius have very often impaired their consti-

tutions by study, or by careless inattention to their health,

and. . . .superﬁcial observers have inferred from this that

men of genius have commonly weak—or to use a more

fashionable term,

delicate

—constitutions. But the truth

is the opposite of that, I believe. Diligent inquiry has led me

to the conclusion that strength of mind has in most cases

been accompanied by superior strength of body—natural

soundness of constitution, I mean, not the robust tone of

nerves and vigour of muscles that come from bodily labour

when the mind is at work only in directing the hands.

Dr. Priestley has remarked. . . .that the majority of great

men have lived beyond ·the age of· 45. Now, think about

a great scientist who carelessly lavishes his strength

when investigating his favourite science, wasting the

lamp of life, forgetful of the midnight hour;

or think about

a poet lost in dreams that his imagination has peo-

pled, and his soul disturbed—until it shakes his

constitution—by the passions that his meditation has

raised; passions whose purely imaginary objects fade

before his exhausted eye.

They must have had iron constitutions! Shakespeare himself

didn’t grasp the airy dagger with a nerveless hand, and

Milton didn’t tremble when he led Satan far from the conﬁnes

of his dreary prison.

[MW is referring here to Macbeth’s having a

vision of a dagger and saying ‘Is this a dagger I see before me? Come, let

me clutch thee!’, and to this passage from Paradise Lost: ‘Satan was now

at hand, and from his seat / The Monster moving onward came as fast, /

With horrid strides, Hell trembled as he strode.’]

These were not the

ravings of imbecility, the sickly effusions of unwell brains;

but the exuberance of an imagination that wasn’t continually

reminded of its material shackles when it was wandering ‘in

a ﬁne frenzy’ [Shakespeare’s phrase].

I am aware that this argument would carry me further

than you may think I want to go; but I follow truth, and still

adhering to my ﬁrst position I will admit that bodily strength

seems to give man a natural superiority over woman; and

this is the only solid basis on which the superiority of the

sex can be built. But I still insist that not only the

virtue

but also the

knowledge

of the two sexes should be the same

in nature, if not in degree; and that women, considered not

only as moral but as rational creatures, should try to acquire

human virtues (or perfections) by the same means as men,

instead of being educated like a fanciful kind of

half

-being,

one of Rousseau’s wild inventions.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

·A LONG FOOTNOTE QUOTING ROUSSEAU·

Researches into abstract and speculative truths, the princi-

ples and axioms of sciences—in short, everything that tends

to generalise our ideas—is not the proper province of women.

Their studies should concern points of practice; it is for

them to apply the principles that men have discovered, and

to make observations that direct men to the establishment

of general principles. All the ideas of women that aren’t

immediately relevant to points of duty should be directed

to the study of men, and to the attainment of the pleasant

accomplishments that have to do with taste. Works of genius

are beyond the capacity of women, who don’t have enough

precision or power of attention to succeed in sciences that

require accuracy; and physical knowledge belongs only to

those who are most active, most inquiring, and understand

the greatest variety of things—in short, it belongs to those

who are best able to make judgments about how sensible

beings relate to the laws of nature. A woman who is naturally

weak and doesn’t carry her ideas very far does know how

to make judgments about (and form proper estimates of)

the movements that she gets started in order to aid her

weakness; these movements are the passions of men. The

mechanism she employs is much more powerful than ours,

for all her levers move the human heart. She must have the

skill to incline us to do everything that she needs or wants

and that her sex won’t enable her to do herself. So she ought

to study the mind of man thoroughly,

not abstractly the mind of man in general, but

concretely

the dispositions of the men she is subject

to by the laws of her country or by the force of opinion.

She should learn to discover their real sentiments from their

conversation, actions, looks and gestures. She should also

work out how to communicate—by her own conversation,

actions, looks, and gestures—the sentiments that are agree-

able to those men, without seeming to intend it. Men will

argue more philosophically about the human heart, but

women will read the heart of man better than they do. It

is women’s role to form an experimental morality, so to

speak, and to reduce the study of man to a system. Women

have more wit, men have more genius; women observe, men

reason. The two together give us the clearest light and the

most perfect knowledge that the human mind is capable

of attaining unaided. In one word, from this source we

acquire the most intimate acquaintance with ourselves and

with others that we are capable of; and that is how art

has a constant tendency to perfect the endowments that

nature has bestowed. The world is the book of women. (from

Rousseau’s Émile)

·END OF ROUSSEAU FOOTNOTE·

I hope my readers still remember the comparison I made

between women and ofﬁcers.

But if bodily strength is (with some show of reason)

something men boast of having, why are women so foolish as

to be proud of

weakness, which is

a defect? Rousseau has

provided them with a plausible excuse that could only have

occurred to a man whose imagination had been allowed to

run wild in a search for ways of making impressions of the

senses seem more reﬁned—to give him a pretext for yielding

to a natural appetite without violating a romantic sort of

modesty that gratiﬁes his pride and his libertinism.

Women, deluded by these sentiments, sometimes

boast

of their weakness, cunningly obtaining power by playing on

the weakness of men,. . . .and coming to have, like Turkish

generals, more real power than their masters. But this

involves sacriﬁcing

•

virtue to

•

temporary gratiﬁcations, and

sacriﬁcing

•

a life worthy of respect to

•

the triumph of an

hour.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

[MW begins this next paragraph by saying, rather ob-

scurely, that her objection is not to women’s having this

power over men but to how they obtain it, namely by a

method that is degraded and harmful to society in general.

Then:] So I will venture to assert that until women are

more rationally educated, the progress of human virtue

and improvement in knowledge is bound to meet continual

obstacles. If you accept that woman was not created merely

to gratify the appetite of man, to be the upper servant who

provides his meals and takes care of his linen, then you

ought to grant also that

mothers or fathers who are serious about the educa-

tion of females should have as their ﬁrst concern: if

not to strengthen the body, at least not to destroy the

girl’s physical

constitution by mistaken notions of

beauty and female excellence; and girls should never

be allowed to absorb the pernicious notion that some

chemical process of reasoning can turn a defect into

an excellence!

On this matter I am happy to ﬁnd that the author of one

of the most instructive books our country has produced for

children thinks as I do. . . .

·QUOTATION FROM THOMAS DAY’S Sandford and Merton·

A respectable old man gives the following sensible account of

how he went about educating his daughter Selene. ‘I tried to

give to both her mind and her body a degree of vigour that is

seldom found in the female sex. As soon as she was strong

enough to be capable of light work in the garden and around

the farm, I employed her as my constant companion. Selene

soon became dexterous in all these rustic jobs, which gave

me equal amounts of pleasure and admiration. If women

are in general feeble in body and mind, that arises less from

nature than from education. We encourage a bad slackness

and inactivity, which we falsely call “delicacy”; instead of

hardening their minds by the severer principles of reason

and philosophy, we train them in useless arts that lead only

to vanity and sensuality. In most of the countries I had

visited, they are taught nothing of a higher nature than a

few modulations of the voice or useless postures of the body;

their time is taken in idleness or triﬂes, and triﬂes become

the only pursuits capable of interesting them. We seem to

forget that our own domestic

•

comforts and the

•

education

of our children must depend on the qualities of the female

sex. And what

•

comforts or

•

education can we expect from

a race of beings who are corrupted from their infancy and

know nothing of the duties of life? The only arts cultivated

by women in most of the polished nations I had seen were

touching a musical instrument with useless skill, exhibiting

their natural or artiﬁcial graces to the eyes of idle and

debauched young men, and wasting their husbands’ wealth

in riotous and unnecessary expenses. And the consequences

are always just what you would expect to come from such

polluted sources—private misery and public servitude.

‘Selene’s education was regulated by different views, and

conducted on severer principles—if you can call “severe”

something that opens the mind to a sense of moral and

religious duties, and arms it most effectively against the

inevitable evils of life.’

·END OF QUOTATION FROM Sandford and Merton, VOL. 3·

Suppose it were proved that woman is naturally weaker

than man, how does it follow that it is natural for her to

try to become even weaker than nature intended her to be?

Arguments of this sort are an insult to common sense, and

have a whiff of passion about them. I hope that in this

enlightened age the divine right of husbands, like the divine

right of kings, can be challenged without danger

to the

challenger

; and although conviction may not silence many

boisterous disputants, still when any prevailing prejudice is

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

attacked the wise will

think about it

and leave thoughtless

and noisy scolding to the narrow-minded.

A mother who wants to give her daughter true dignity of

character must ignore the sneers of ignorance and proceed

on a plan diametrically opposite to the one Rousseau has

recommended with all the deluding charms of eloquence

and philosophical trickery. His eloquence makes absurdities

plausible, and when his dogmatic conclusions are considered

by people who aren’t able to refute them, they produce

puzzlement but no conviction.

Throughout the whole animal kingdom every young crea-

ture requires almost continual exercise, and the infancy of

children should similarly be spent in harmless play that

exercises the feet and hands without requiring very precise

direction from the head or the constant attention of a gov-

erness. In fact, the care necessary for self-preservation is the

ﬁrst natural exercise of the understanding, as inventive little

pastimes stretch the imagination. But these wise designs of

nature are counteracted by mistaken fondness or blind zeal.

The child is not left for a moment to its own direction, partic-

ularly a girl, and is thus made dependent—and dependence

is called natural.

To preserve personal beauty—woman’s glory!—the girls’

limbs and faculties are cramped with worse-than-Chinese

bands; and the sedentary life they are condemned to live,

while boys play in the open air, weakens their muscles and

slackens their nerves.

[MW is referring to the Chinese practice of

binding girls’ feet very tightly so as to keep them fashionably small, with

the result that the adult woman could only hobble.]

As for Rousseau’s

remarks, since echoed by many writers, that

girls have naturally, i.e. from their birth and indepen-

dent of education, a fondness for dolls, dressing, and

talking,

they are too puerile to merit a serious refutation. If a girl

is condemned to sit for hours listening to the idle chat of

weak governesses or to be present at her mother’s toilet, it is

indeed very natural for her to

•

try to join the conversation,

and

•

to imitate her mother or aunts and to amuse herself

[see Glossary]

by adorning her lifeless doll, as they amuse

themselves in dressing her, poor innocent babe! Men of the

greatest abilities have seldom been strong enough to rise

above the surrounding atmosphere; and if the page of genius

[see Glossary]

has always been blurred by the prejudices of the

times, some allowance should be made for

the members of

a sex who—like kings!—always see things through a false

medium.

Thus, we can easily explain women’s conspicuous fond-

ness for dress without supposing it to come from a desire to

please

the members of

the sex on which they are dependent.

In short, the supposition that

a girl is naturally a coquette, and her behaviour

expresses a desire connected with nature’s impulse

to propagate the species, even before an improper

education has, by heating the imagination, created

the desire prematurely

absurd

. It’s so unphilosophical that such an intelligent

observer as Rousseau wouldn’t have adopted it if he hadn’t

been accustomed to pushing his desire for uniqueness ahead

of reason, and pushing a favourite paradox ahead of truth.

To give a sex

[see Glossary]

mind

in this way was not

very consistent with the principles of a man who argued

so warmly and so well for the immortality of the soul. But

truth is a weak barrier when it stands in the way of an

hypothesis! Rousseau respected virtue—he almost adored

it—and yet he allowed himself to love with sensual fondness.

His imagination constantly prepared combustible fuel for

his combustible senses; but, in order to reconcile

his other

views with

his respect for self-denial, fortitude and those

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

heroic virtues that a mind like his could not coolly admire,

he tries to invert the law of nature, and launches a doctrine

that is pregnant with harm and derogatory to the character

of God.

His ridiculous stories that aim to show that girls are

naturally

attentive to their persons. . . .are beneath contempt.

[She quotes one such story and says that it belongs ‘with

the anecdotes of the learned pig’; this presumably refers to

The Story of the Learned Pig

, an anonymous work that had

appeared not long before, questioning whether Shakespeare

wrote the plays attributed to him. MW continues:]

I have probably had more opportunity to observe girls in

their infancy than J. J. Rousseau has. I can recollect my own

feelings, and I have looked steadily around me

[for a while she

had earned her living as a governess]

; and far from sharing his view

about the ﬁrst dawn of the female character, I will venture

to say that a girl whose spirits haven’t been damped by

inactivity, and whose innocence hasn’t been tainted by false

shame, will always be a romp

[= ‘a lively playful girl’]

, and the

doll will never interest her unless conﬁnement allows her no

alternative. Girls and boys would play harmlessly together

if the difference between the sexes hadn’t been drilled into

them long before nature makes any difference. Among the

women I have known—this is a matter of plain objective

fact—the ones who have acted like rational creatures, or

shown some vigour of intellect, are ones who

had this kind

of freedom in their youth, or

in the language of some of

the elegant experts on the fair sex, had been ‘allowed to run

wild’.

The evils that ﬂow from inattention to

bodily

health

during infancy and youth extend further than is supposed;

dependence of body naturally produces dependence of mind,

and how can someone be a good wife or mother if most of

her time is spent guarding against or enduring sickness?

And it can’t be expected that a woman will resolutely try to

strengthen her constitution, abstaining from indulgences

that would harm her health, if her motives of action were at

an early age entangled with artiﬁcial notions of beauty and

false descriptions of sensibility. Most men sometimes have

to put up with bodily troubles, and occasionally to go out

into bad weather; but genteel women are, literally speaking,

slaves to their bodies—and they glory in their subjection.

I once knew a weak woman. . . .who was more than com-

monly proud of her delicacy and sensibility. [MW contemp-

tuously gives details; she is clearly remembering a real case;

the details don’t add to the content of the work as a whole.

She follows this with a paragraph saying that although the

Roman emperors were ‘depraved by lawless power’, kings in

Europe have generally been at least somewhat restrained,

and she contrasts this with ‘the destructive blast

[an intensely

hot wind]

that desolates Turkey, and makes the men as well

as the soil unfruitful’.]

Women are in this deplorable state everywhere, because

truth is hidden from them so as to preserve their ‘innocence’

(the polite name for ignorance), and they are made to take on

an artiﬁcial character before their faculties have acquired any

strength. Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s

sceptre

[see Glossary]

, the mind shapes itself to the body, and

roaming around in its gilt cage it only seeks to adorn its

prison. Men have various employments and pursuits that

engage their attention, and give a character to the opening

mind; but women, conﬁned to one pursuit and having their

thoughts constantly directed to the most insigniﬁcant part of

themselves, seldom extend their view beyond the triumph of

the hour. But if their understanding were emancipated from

the slavery to which the pride and sensuality of man and

their short sighted desire. . . .has subjected them, we would

probably read of their weaknesses with surprise.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

Let me pursue the argument a little further. If there were

an evil being who, in the allegorical language of scripture

[1 Peter 5:8] ‘went about seeking whom he should devour’, he

could not more effectively degrade the human character than

by giving a man absolute power. This argument branches

off in various directions. Birth, riches, and every intrinsic

advantage that

raise a man above

his fellows, without any

mental exertion, really

sink him below

them. In proportion

to his weakness, he is manipulated by designing men, until

the bloated monster loses all traces of humanity. And tribes

of men like ﬂocks of sheep quietly follow such a leader!—that

is a blunder that can only be explained by narrowness of

understanding and a desire for present enjoyment. Educated

in slavish dependence and weakened by luxury and sloth,

where can we ﬁnd men who will stand up and

•

assert the

rights of man, or

•

claim the privilege of moral beings, who

should have only one road to excellence? Slavery to monar-

chs and ministers, whose deadly grasp stops the progress

of the human mind, is not yet abolished and won’t be for a

long time.

[MW now argues that men who contend ‘that woman

ought to be subjected because she has always been so’ are

using the very argument that ‘tyrannical kings and venal

ministers’ use to justify their subjection of everyone else,

men included. Men who go on about the folly of women, she

says, should bear in mind the folly of men.]

It is obviously true that when women obtain power by

unjust means they lose the rank appropriate to their having

reason, and become either abject slaves or capricious tyrants.

In acquiring power they lose all simplicity, all dignity of mind,

and act as we see men act when they have been exalted by

the same wrong means.

·MOVING INTO A DISCUSSION OF GOD’S ATTRIBUTES·

It is time to bring about a revolution in female manners, time

to restore their lost dignity to them and to make them, as

a part of the human species, work to reform the world by

reforming themselves. It is time to separate unchangeable

•

morals from local

•

manners. If men are demi-gods, then

let us indeed serve them! And if the dignity of the female

soul is as disputable as that of animals, if their

[= women’s]

reason doesn’t give enough light to direct their conduct but

they don’t have unerring instinct either, they are surely the

most miserable of all creatures; bent beneath the iron hand

of destiny, they must submit to being a

beautiful defect

creation. In that case, God has made half of mankind at

once morally accountable

because they have reason

and

yet not accountable

because they don’t have enough reason

I challenge moral theologians to point out some conclusive

reason for God to behave like that!

The only solid foundation for morality appears to be

the character of the Supreme Being; the harmony of that

character arises from a balance of attributes; and. . . .one

attribute seems to imply the

necessity

of another: God must

be just because he is wise, he must be good because he is

omnipotent. To exalt one attribute at the expense of another

equally noble and necessary one bears the stamp of warped

human reason. . . . Man, accustomed to bow down to power

in his savage state, can seldom get rid of this barbarous

prejudice—

this attaching of weight to physical power

—even

when civilization ﬁxes how greatly mental strength is supe-

rior to bodily strength; and his reason is clouded by these

crude opinions, even when he is thinking about God. His

omnipotence is made to swallow up or preside over his other

attributes, and mortals who think

as I do

that his power

must be regulated by his wisdom are accused of

irreverently

limiting his power.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

There is a kind of ‘humility’ that investigates nature but

stops short of nature’s Author. I disclaim that.

God

, the

high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, no doubt has

many attributes of which we can form no conception; but

•

reason tells me that those attributes can’t clash with the

divine attributes that ﬁll me with loving wonder, and I am

compelled to listen to

•

her voice.

It seems natural for man to search for excellence, and

either to

•

ﬁnd it in the object that he worships or

•

blindly

clothe that object with perfection. But what good effect

can the blindly-clothing type of worship have on the moral

conduct of a rational being? He bends to power; he stands

in wonder before a dark cloud, which may

•

open a bright

prospect to him, or

•

burst in angry fury on his doomed head

without his knowing why. And if God does act on the basis of

the vague impulse of an undirected will, what is man to do?

He must either follow his own will, or act according to rules

derived from principles that he rejects as

irreverent

. This is

a dilemma into which both fanatics and cooler thinkers have

fallen when trying to free men from the wholesome restraints

imposed by a correct conception of God’s character.

It isn’t impious to scan God’s attributes: we

have to

do it

if we are to exercise our faculties. For someone wanting to

acquire either virtue or knowledge, the only

useful

worship

consists in loving God as the fountain of wisdom, goodness,

and power. A blind unsettled affection may, like human

passions, occupy the mind and warm the heart,

but that

has no moral beneﬁt because it can happen

while ‘doing

justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God’

[Micah 6:8]

are forgotten. I shall resume this subject when I

consider religion in a light opposite to that recommended

by Dr. Gregory, who treats it as a matter of sentiment or

taste—·a question of how you feel or what you like·.

·END OF DISCUSSION OF GOD’S ATTRIBUTES·

Returning now from this apparent detour: It is desirable

that women’s affection for their husbands should be based

on the same principle that

religious

devotion ought to rest

on. Nowhere in the world is there any other ﬁrm base. Let

women beware of the misleading light of ‘sentiment’, which

is often used as a softer phrase for

sensuality

. So it follows,

I think, that from their infancy women should either be

•

shut up like eastern princes or

•

educated in a manner that

enables them to think and act for themselves.

Why do men halt between two opinions, and expect

impossibilities? Why do they expect virtue from a slave,

or from a being who has been made weak—or worse—by the

constitution of civil society?

Still, I know that eradicating the ﬁrmly rooted prejudices

that sensualists have planted will take a long time; and it

will also take time

•

to convince women that they are acting contrary to

their real long-term interests when they value weak-

ness or pretend to have it, under the name of ‘delicacy’,

and

•

to convince the world that the poisoned source of

female vices

[see Glossary]

and follies. . . .has been the

sensual homage paid to beauty.

I’m talking about beauty of features; for a German writer has

shrewdly observed that a

pretty

woman is an object of desire

for men of all descriptions, whereas a

ﬁne

woman, who

inspires more sublime emotions by displaying intellectual

beauty, may have no attraction for men who ﬁnd their

happiness in the gratiﬁcation of their appetites.

I can see an obvious retort that may be made, namely:

For as long as man goes on being as imperfect as he

appears to have been so far, he

will

be pretty much the

slave of his appetites; and it is always the case that the

women who get the most power are those who gratify

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

a predominant appetite; so the sex is degraded by a

physical if not by a moral necessity.

[The last clause is

verbatim MW. It means something like this: ‘The female sex will

be degraded—this isn’t morally right, but it is inevitable.’]

This objection has some force, I admit; but

it is based on

the idea that if we can see that something is inevitable we

shouldn’t waste our energy trying to change it; and that idea

is open to question

. In the light of the sublime precept ‘be

pure as your heavenly father is pure,’ it would seem that

God. . . .hasn’t set any limits to the virtues of man, and that

man may press forward without considering whether he is

stepping out of his sphere

[= ‘getting out of line’]

by harbouring

such a noble ambition

as to be as pure as God is

. . . .

•

Matter yields to the great governing spirit by following

the causal laws that he has established; but an immortal

•

soul, not restrained by mechanical laws and struggling

to free itself from matter’s shackles, doesn’t disturb the

order of creation—indeed it contributes to it—when it tries

in co-operation with the Father of spirits to govern itself by

the invariable rule. . . .by which the universe is regulated.

Besides, if women are educated for dependence, i.e. to

act according to the will of another fallible being, and to

submit to power, whether it is right or wrong, where are we

to stop? Are they to be considered as vice-regents—

deputy

monarchs

—allowed to reign over a small domain, and an-

swerable for their conduct to a higher tribunal that is as

liable to error as they are?

It won’t be hard to prove that such deputies will act like

men who are held down by fear, and will make their children

and servants endure their tyrannical oppression. As they

submit without reason, so also

they will govern without

reason

: having no ﬁxed rules against which to judge their

conduct, they will be kind or cruel as the mood takes them;

and it won’t be surprising if sometimes, chaﬁng under their

heavy yoke, they take a mean pleasure in resting it on weaker

shoulders.

·THE CASE OF ONE WIDOW·

Consider this case:

A woman who has been trained up to obedience

marries a sensible man, who directs her judgment

without making her feel the servility of her subjection.

He helps her to act by this reﬂected light with as much

propriety as can be expected when reason is taken

at second hand, but she can’t ensure the life of her

protector; he dies and leaves her with a large family.

She now has a double duty: to play both the mother’s and

the father’s part in educating her children, forming their

principles and securing their property. But she has never

thought for herself, much less acted for herself. She has only

learned to please men, to depend gracefully on them; but how

with her burden of children is she to obtain another protector,

another husband to supply the place of reason? A rational

man—we aren’t treading on romantic ground!—though he

may think her a pleasing docile creature won’t choose to

marry a

family

for love when the world contains many

creatures who are prettier than she is. What then is to

become of her? She either

•

falls an easy prey to some mean

fortune hunter who defrauds her children of their paternal

inheritance and makes her miserable, or

•

becomes the victim

of discontent and blind indulgence. Unable to educate her

sons or get them to respect her. . . ., she suffers under the

anguish of impotent regret. The serpent’s tooth enters into

her very soul, and the vices of lawless youth bring her with

sorrow—and perhaps also with poverty—to the grave.

[MW is

echoing King Lear’s words ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To

have a thankless child.’]. . . .

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

It seems likely that someone who has been taught only

to please must still ﬁnd her happiness in pleasing; and if

that is true of this woman, what an example of folly—and

even vice—she will be to her innocent daughters! The mother

will be lost in the coquette, and instead of making friends

of her daughters she will view them with suspicion because

they are her rivals, the cruellest rivals because they invite

a comparison and drive her from the throne of beauty—she

who has never thought of a seat on the bench of reason.

It doesn’t require a lively pencil. . . .to sketch the domestic

miseries and petty vices which such a mistress of a family

spreads around her. Yet she is only acting as a woman ought

to act if she has been brought up according to Rousseau’s

system. She can’t be reproached for being ‘masculine’ or

stepping out of her sphere; indeed she may conform to his

rules well enough to be reckoned a good kind of woman. Yet

in what respect can she be termed good? It’s true that she

abstains, without any great struggle, from committing gross

crimes; but how does she fulﬁl her duties? Duties!—

she has

no time or energy for duties, when

she has enough to think

about in adorning her body and nursing a weak constitution.

With regard to religion, she never presumed to judge for

herself. As a dependent creature should, she conformed

to the ceremonies of the church she was brought up in,

piously believing that wiser heads than her own have settled

that business

[MW’s phrase]

; and her idea of perfection in

religious matters is

not to doubt

. So she makes her little

weekly payment to the church, and thanks her God that she

is not as other women are. These are the blessed effects of a

good education! these are the virtues of man’s helpmate. I

must relieve myself—

give myself a break from my rage and

sadness·—by drawing a different picture.

·THE CASE OF ANOTHER WIDOW·

Now let us imagine a woman with a fairly good understanding

(I don’t want to deal with extremes), whose constitution,

strengthened by

physical

exercise, has allowed her body

to acquire its full vigour; while her mind has gradually

expanded itself to understand the moral duties of life and

what human virtue and dignity consist in. Formed in this

way by the duties she has because of her position in life,

she marries from affection, without losing sight of prudence;

and. . . .she secures her husband’s respect before there’s any

need to exert low tricks to please him and feed a dying ﬂame

of love

. Nature dooms

that

to expire when the loved one

becomes familiar, when friendship and forbearance take the

place of a more ardent affection. This is the natural death

of love; and

in the marriage I am describing here

domestic

peace is not destroyed by struggles to prevent the death

from happening. I am also supposing the husband to be

virtuous. . . .

Fate, however, breaks this tie. She is left a widow, without

enough to live on comfortably, but she is not desolate! The

pang of nature is felt; but after time has softened sorrow

into sad resignation, her heart turns to her children with

redoubled fondness, and in her anxiety to provide for them

her affection presents her maternal duties as sacred and

heroic. She thinks that her virtuous efforts are seen by the

eye of God, from whom all her comfort now must ﬂow and

whose approval is life; and her imagination, a little abstracted

and exalted by grief, lets her hope that. . . .her husband’s eyes

still see how she subdues every wayward passion in order to

fulﬁl the double duty of being father as well as mother to her

children. Raised to heroism by misfortunes, she represses

the ﬁrst faint dawning of a natural inclination before it

ripens into love; and in the bloom of life she forgets her sex

[see Glossary]

—forgets the pleasure of an awakening passion

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued

which might again have been inspired and returned. . . . Her

children have her love, and her brightest hopes are beyond

the grave, where her imagination often strays.

I think I see her surrounded by her children, reaping the

reward of her care. . . . Health and innocence smile on their

chubby cheeks; and as they grow up, the cares of

her

life

are lessened by their grateful attention. She lives to see the

virtues that she tried to tried implant in her children through

•

principles become ﬁxed in them as

•

habits, and to see her

children achieve enough strength of character to be able to

endure adversity without forgetting their mother’s example.

The task of life thus fulﬁlled, she calmly waits for the

sleep of death. When she rises from the grave she can say

God

‘Behold, you gave me a talent, and here are ﬁve talents’.

[This is a variant on a story in Matthew 25; a talent was a coin.]

* * * * *

I want to sum up what I have said in a few words: I here

throw down my gauntlet

[= ‘pose a challenge to anyone who wants to

oppose me’]

and deny that there is any way for a woman to be

virtuous that isn’t also a way for a man to be virtuous—and

modesty

is not an exception to that. If I understand the

meaning of the word,

truth

must be the same for man and

for woman; yet the fanciful female character that poets and

novelists draw so prettily demands the sacriﬁce of truth and

sincerity; and so virtue becomes a relative idea, based on

nothing but utility, and men set themselves up as judges of

utility, shaping it to their own convenience.

Women may have different duties to fulﬁll, but they are

human

duties, and I ﬁrmly maintain that the principles that

should regulate the performance of them must be the ones

that hold for all human beings.

To become worthy of respect, women must use their

understandings; there is no other basis for independence

of character. I mean explicitly to say that they must only

bow to the authority of reason, instead of being the

modest

slaves of opinion.

In the upper ranks of life we seldom we meet with a man

of superior abilities, or even one whose abilities are about

average! The reason seems to me clear: the state they are

born in was an unnatural one. The human character has

always been formed by the employments the individual or

class pursues; and if the faculties are not sharpened by

necessity, they must remain obtuse

[= ‘blunt’]

. The same line

of thought can fairly be extended to women.

[MW is saying that

women in general tend to be dim in the way that men who have titles or

high rank or great wealth tend to be dim.]

That is because most of

them have no

serious

occupations; they are left to the pursuit

of pleasure, which gives to their character the triviality that

makes the society of the

great

so insipid. The lack of ﬁrm-

ness, produced by a similar cause, forces them both—

‘great’

men and all women

—to ﬂy from themselves

[MW’s phrase]

noisy pleasures and artiﬁcial passions, until vanity takes

place of every social affection, and the characteristics of

humanity almost disappear from sight. The blessings of civil

governments as they are at present organized operate in

such a way that wealth and female softness equally tend

to debase mankind, and are produced by the same cause.

If women are rational creatures they should be urged to

acquire virtues that they can call their own, for how can a

rational being be ennobled by anything that is not obtained

by his or her own efforts?

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

Chapter 4:

The state of degradation to which woman is reduced by various causes

It is clear, I think, that woman is

•

naturally weak or

•

degraded by a combination of circumstances. I shall lay

this alongside a conclusion that I have often heard sensible

men assert in favour of an aristocracy, namely:

The mass of mankind are a sort of nothing; if they

weren’t—

if there anything to them

—the obsequious

slaves who patiently allow themselves to be impris-

oned would have a sense of their own worth and would

throw off their chains. Men everywhere submit to

oppression, when they have only to lift up their heads

to throw off the yoke; yet, instead of asserting their

birthright, they quietly lick the dust and say ‘Let us

eat and drink, for to-morrow we die’.

Women, I argue from analogy, are degraded by the same

inclination to enjoy the present moment and eventually to

despise the freedom that they haven’t enough virtue

[see

Glossary] to struggle to get. But I must be more explicit.

·WHAT THE NEXT PARAGRAPH SEEMS TO MEAN·

As regards people’s ability to manage and develop their

feelings, no-one thinks that males are ahead of females,

or vice versa. But we do have to reckon with the view that

males are ahead of females when it comes to intellectual

powers.

The only positive feature that woman is credited

with having

absolutely

is loveliness; as for rationality, the

fraction of

that

that’s conceded to her is a tiny one; for when

she has been denied high-level intellect and judgment, what

is there left to count as her intellect?

·WHAT MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT ACTUALLY WROTE:·

With respect to the culture of the heart, it is unanimously

allowed that sex is out of the question; but the line of

subordination in the mental powers is never to be passed

over. [footnote] Only ‘absolute in loveliness’

[Milton’s phrase]

the portion of rationality granted to woman is, indeed, very

scanty; for, denying her genius

[see Glossary]

and judgment, it

is scarcely possible to divine what remains to characterize

intellect.

What immortality is

for

is the perfectibility of human

reason. If man were created perfect, or if when he reached

maturity a ﬂood of knowledge broke in on him and preserved

him from error, I’m not sure that his existence would con-

tinue after the death of his body. But as things are, every

difﬁculty in morals that eludes human solution—that bafﬂes

the investigation of profound thinking and the lightning

glance of genius—is part of my case for believing in the

What inconsistencies men fall into when they argue without a compass! Women, weak women, are ·teasingly· compared with angels; yet a superior

order of beings ·such as angels· should be supposed to have more intellect than man—if they don’t, what makes them superior? In a similar spirit,

and not teasingly, women are credited with having more goodness of heart, piety, and benevolence ·than men·. This is meant as a compliment, but I

doubt that it is true, unless ignorance is the mother of invention! I am quite convinced that people’s virtue is nearer than is usually thought to being

(on average) proportional to their knowledge.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

immortality of the soul. Thus, reason is the simple power of

improvement

—or, more accurately, of

recognising truth

. . . .

The nature of reason must be the same in everyone, if

reason is an emanation of divinity, the tie that connects the

creature with the Creator; can

•

a soul be stamped with the

heavenly image if

•

it isn’t perfected by the exercise of its own

reason? Yet. . . .the soul of woman is not allowed to have this

distinction; with man always placed

between

her and reason,

she is always represented as only created to see through a fog

and to believe what she is told. But. . . .if woman has reason,

which for a moment I will take for granted, she wasn’t created

merely to be the solace of man, and her sexual character

should not destroy her human character.

Men have probably been led into this error by viewing

education

[see Glossary]

in a false light, seeing it not as

•

the

ﬁrst step in forming a being who will advance gradually

toward perfection (not strictly the right word, but I can’t

ﬁnd a better one), but rather as merely

•

a preparation for

life. That is the basis on which the false system of female

manners been built, robbing the whole sex of its dignity and

classing women with the smiling ﬂowers that only adorn the

land. This has always been the language of men, and even

highly intelligent women adopt the same sentiments for fear

of departing from the character they are supposed to have

just as women. Thus

understanding

strictly so-called has

been denied to woman; and

instinct

—reﬁned into wit and

cunning for the purposes of life—has been put in its place.

The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehen-

sive conclusions from individual observations, is the only

thing an immortal being can have that really deserves to

be called ‘knowledge’. Merely to observe, without trying to

explain anything, may serve (very incompletely) as everyday

common sense; but where is the store laid up that is to

clothe the soul when it leaves the body?

Women have been said not to have this power, and some

writers have insisted that it is nearly always inconsistent with

their sexual character. Let men prove

this

and I’ll admit that

woman only exists for man. In fact the power of

•

generalizing

ideas to any great extent is not very common among men

or women. But

•

this activity is the true cultivation of the

understanding; and everything works together to make the

cultivation of the understanding harder in the female than

in the male world.

This remark naturally leads into the main subject of the

present chapter: I shall now try to point out some of the

causes that degrade the

female

sex and prevent women

from generalizing their observations.

I shan’t go back to ancient times to trace the history of

woman. All I need to say is that she has always been either

a slave or a despot, and that both these roles hold back

the progress of reason. It has always seemed to me that

the great source of female folly and vice is narrowness of

mind; and the very constitution of civil governments has

put almost insuperable obstacles in the way of developing

the female understanding

and thus curing the narrowness

of the female mind

; yet virtue can be built on no other

foundation! The same obstacles are thrown in the way of the

rich, with the same results.

The proverb has it that

necessity is the mother of inven-

tion

; it is also the mother of virtue. Virtue is an acquisition

to which pleasure must be sacriﬁced; and no-one sacriﬁces

available pleasure unless his or her mind has been opened

and strengthened by adversity, or the pursuit of knowledge

goaded on by necessity. It is a good thing for people to

have the cares of life to struggle with; for these struggles

prevent them from becoming a prey to enervating vices purely

through idleness! If men and women are born into a tropical

zone, where the mid-day sun of pleasure shines directly

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

down on them, how can they adequately brace their minds

to discharge the duties of life, or even to enjoy the affections

that carry them out of themselves?

Pleasure is the business of a woman’s life, according to

society’s present estimate; and for as long as that continues

to be so, not much can be expected from such weak beings.

Inheriting the sovereignty of beauty in a lineal descent from

Eve

, the ﬁrst ‘fair defect’ in nature, they have maintained

their power by resigning the natural rights that the exercise

of reason might have given them, and chosen to be short-

lived queens rather than labour to have the sober pleasures

that arise from equality. Exalted by their inferiority (this

sounds like a contradiction) they constantly demand homage

as women, though experience should teach them that the

men who pride themselves on the scrupulous exactness

with which they pay this insolent respect to the sex are the

ones who are most inclined to tyrannize over and despise

the very weakness they cherish. They often repeat Hume’s

sentiments, when he alludes to women in the course of

comparing the French and Athenian characters:

But what is more singular in this whimsical nation,

the French

, (I say to the Athenians) is that a frolic

of yours during the Saturnalia when the slaves are

served by their masters is seriously continued by them

through the whole year, and through the whole course

of their lives. . . . Your sport elevates for only a few days

those whom fortune has thrown down, and whom she

might in sport really elevate forever above you. But

the French gravely exalt those whom nature has made

subject to them, and whose inferiority and inﬁrmities

are absolutely incurable. The women, though without

virtue [see Glossary], are their masters and sovereigns.

Ah! why do women (I write with affectionate solicitude)

lower themselves to receive attention and respect from

strangers? I mean: attention and respect that goes beyond

the two-way civility that the dictates of humanity and the

politeness of civilization authorise between man and man. . . .

Conﬁned in cages, like birds, they have nothing to do but to

plume themselves and stalk with mock-majesty from perch

to perch. They are provided with food and clothing and

don’t have to work to get them, but they give up health,

liberty and virtue in exchange. But

actually it isn’t sur-

prising that women do this

. Who among mankind has ever

had enough strength of mind to give up these adventitious

prerogatives, rising with the calm dignity of reason to a

level above that of common opinion, and daring to be proud

of the privileges inherent in man?

[That sentence contrasts

beneﬁts that are

•

‘adventitious’, i.e. are available because of facts about

one’s circumstances, with beneﬁts that are

•

‘inherent in man’, and thus

available to every human being in any circumstances.]

And there’s

no point in waiting for this to change—not while hereditary

power chokes the affections and nips reason in the bud.

In this way men’s passions have placed women on

thrones; and until mankind become more reasonable women

will avail themselves of the power

•

that they get with the

least exertion, and

•

that is the most indisputable. They will

smile; yes, they will smile even if they are told that

In beauty’s empire is no mean,

And woman either slave or queen,

Is quickly scorn’d when not ador’d’.

But the adoration comes ﬁrst, and the scorn is not antici-

pated.

Louis XIV, in particular, spread artiﬁcial manners and

used their glitter to catch the whole nation in his web:

establishing a carefully contrived chain of despotism, he

brought it about that it was the in the interests of each

French person to respect his position and support his power.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

And women, whom he ﬂattered by a childish attention to

the whole sex, obtained during his reign the prince-like

distinction that is so fatal to reason and virtue.

A king is always a king, and a woman always a woman. . . .

His authority and her sex always stand between them and

rational discourse. She

should

be like this with a lover, I

agree, and in that relationship her sensibility will naturally

lead her to try to arouse emotion to gratify not her vanity

but her heart. I don’t count this as coquetry; it is the

uncalculated impulse of nature; I exclaim against the sexual

desire for conquest only when the heart doesn’t come into it.

This desire isn’t conﬁned to women; ‘I have endeavoured’,

says

•

Lord Chesterﬁeld, ‘to gain the hearts of twenty women

whose persons

[see Glossary]

I would not have given a ﬁg for.’

The libertine who in a gust of passion takes advantage of

some woman’s

unsuspecting tenderness is a

saint

when

compared with

•

this cold-hearted rascal. . . . Yet only taught

to please, women are always on the watch to please, and

with true heroic ardour they try to gain hearts that they will

give up or kick aside once it is clear that they have won the

victory.

Now I must get into the details of the subject.

I lament the fact that women are systematically degraded

by receiving the trivial attentions that

•

men think it manly

to pay to the

female

sex, when in fact

•

they are insultingly

supporting their own superiority. There is nothing graceful

about bowing to an inferior,

which is what a man must

think he is doing when he bows to a woman

. Indeed,

these ceremonies strike me as so ludicrous that I can hardly

control my muscles

[ = ‘can hardly stop myself from laughing’]

when

I see a man jump up with eager and serious solicitude to

lift a handkerchief or shut a door, when the

lady

could have

done it herself if she moved a pace or two.

A wild wish has just ﬂown from my heart to my head,

and I won’t stiﬂe it although it may arouse a horse laugh

[= ‘may make you roar with laughter’]

. Except in cases where love

animates the behaviour,

I do earnestly wish to see the

distinction of sex confounded in society

—

that is, I wish

things could be managed in such a way that it was usually

not clear whether a given person was male or female

. For

this sorting into two sexes is, I am ﬁrmly persuaded, the

basis for the weakness of character ascribed to woman;

is the cause why

•

the understanding is neglected while

accomplishments

[see Glossary]

are acquired with care, and

why women prefer the graceful virtues to the heroic ones.

Every human being wishes to be loved and respected

for

something

; and the common herd will always take the

shortest road to the fulﬁllment of their wishes. The respect

paid to wealth and beauty is the surest and least ambiguous

road, and as a matter of course it will always attract the eye

of common minds. For men to rise from

•

the middle rank of

life into

•

prominence, they absolutely must have abilities and

virtues; and this explains the well-known fact that the middle

rank contains most virtue and abilities. In one social rank at

least, men have therefore an opportunity to exert themselves

with dignity, and to rise by efforts of kinds that really do

improve a rational creature; but the whole female sex are,

until their character is formed, in the same condition as

the rich: for they are born. . . .with certain sexual privileges,

and while those are freely available to them not many of

them will ever think of works of supererogation as a means

to getting the esteem of a small number of superior people.

[Works of supererogation are acts of benevolence or charity that go above

and beyond the call of duty.]

When do we hear of women who begin in obscurity and

boldly claim respect on account of their great abilities or

daring virtues? Where are they to be found? ‘To be observed,

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy,

satisfaction and approval are all the advantages that they

seek.’ True! my male readers will probably exclaim; but

before they draw any conclusion they should remember that

this was written originally as descriptive not of women but

of the rich! In Adam Smith’s

Theory of Moral Sentiments

have found a general characterisation of

•

people of rank and

fortune that I think very thoroughly applies to

•

the female

sex. . . . Let me quote a passage from that book, to add

strength to an argument that I intend to insist on as the

most conclusive argument against a sexual character

[i.e.

against there being any such thing as female nature or male nature, as

distinct from human nature]. ·The argument goes like this·:

Apart from warriors, no great men of any sort have

ever appeared among the nobility. From this fact

we can reasonably infer that their local situation

swallowed up the man, and produced a character

similar to that of women, who are

localised

, so to

speak, by the rank they are placed in as a matter

of courtesy.

[An unstated premise in MW’s argument about

nobles is that pretty often someone gets a noble rank because

of something excellent that he has done. Then the fact that we

don’t ﬁnd excellence among the nobility is evidence that

•

the

excellence was extinguished by

•

the circumstances of having

that rank—i.e.

•

the man was swallowed up by

•

the local situ-

ation.]

Women, commonly called Ladies, are not to be

contradicted in company, are not allowed to exert any

manual strength. When any virtues are expected from

them they are negative ones—patience, docility, good-

humour, and ﬂexibility—virtues incompatible with any

vigorous exercise of intellect. Besides, by living more

with each other and seldom being absolutely alone,

they are more under the inﬂuence of sentiments than

of passions. Solitude and reﬂection are necessary

to give wishes the force of passions, enabling the

imagination to enlarge the object and make it the

most desirable. The same holds for the rich; they

don’t deal in general ideas, collected by level-headed

thinking or calm investigation—don’t deal with them

enough

to acquire the strength of character on which

great resolves are built.

But now hear what an acute observer,

Adam Smith

, says

about the great.

·ADAM SMITH ON ‘THE GREAT’·

Do the great seem unaware of how easily they can get

the admiration of the public? or do they seem to think

that, for them as for anyone else, their rank must have

been purchased either by sweat or by blood? If the young

nobleman is instructed in how to support the dignity of

his rank, and to make himself worthy of the superiority

over his fellow-citizens that he has acquired through the

virtue of his ancestors,

what

accomplishments is he told to

acquire for this purpose? Is he to make himself worthy of

his rank by knowledge, hard work, patience, self-denial, or

any other kind of virtue? Because his least move is

noticed

he acquires a habit of care over every detail of ordinary

behaviour, and tries to perform all those small duties with

the most exact propriety. Being conscious of how much he

is observed, and of how much people are disposed to allow

him to have whatever he wants, he acts—even in utterly

ordinary situations—with the freedom and loftiness that

are naturally inspired by the thought of how the populace

view him. Everything about his conduct marks an elegant

and graceful sense of his own superiority—something that

those who are born lower down the social scale can hardly

ever achieve.

These

are the arts

[here = ‘the devices’ or even

‘the tricks’]

by which he proposes to make mankind more

easily submit to his authority and govern

their

inclinations

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

according to

his

wishes; and in this he usually succeeds. . . .

During most of his reign Louis XIV

of France

was widely

regarded as the most perfect model of a great prince. What

were the talents and virtues by which he acquired this great

reputation? The scrupulous and inﬂexible rightness—the

danger and difﬁculty—the tireless energy—of everything he

did? His broad knowledge, his exquisite judgment, his

heroic valour? It was none of these. What he

did

have

was the status of the most

powerful

prince in Europe, which

gave him the highest rank among kings; and then, says his

historian. . . [and Smith gives a long quotation (MW includes

some of it) about Louis XIV’s grand and imposing personal

manner, his ﬁne voice, his handsomeness, and so on. Then:]

These trivial accomplishments—supported by his rank and

no doubt by some degree of other talents and virtues, though

not an outstanding degree—established this prince in the

esteem of his own age and later generations’ respect for his

memory. Compared with this kingly manner, no other virtue

appeared to have any merit. . . . Knowledge, industry, valour,

and beneﬁcence were abashed, trembling, and lost all dignity

before them.

·END OF QUOTATION FROM ADAM SMITH·

In the middle rank of life (to continue the comparison)

men in their youth are prepared for professions, and mar-

riage is not considered as the grand feature in their lives;

whereas women have no other scheme to sharpen their

faculties. It is not business, extensive plans, or any of the ex-

cursive ﬂights of ambition that engross their attention. . . . To

rise in the world and be free to run from pleasure to pleasure,

they must marry advantageously, and their time is sacriﬁced

and their persons

[see Glossary]

often legally prostituted

[MW’s

word]

to this objective. When a man enters a profession, he

has his eye steadily ﬁxed on some future advantage (and the

mind gains great strength by having all its efforts directed

to one point) and. . . .he regards pleasure as mere relaxation;

while women seek pleasure as the main purpose of existence.

In fact, from the education they receive from society, the love

of pleasure may be said to govern them all; but does this

prove that there is a sex

[see Glossary]

in souls? It would be

just as rational to declare that the courtiers in France, where

a destructive system of despotism had formed their character,

were not men because liberty, virtue, and humanity were

sacriﬁced to pleasure and vanity—fatal passions that always

domineered over the whole race!

The same love of pleasure, encouraged by the over-all

trend of their education, has a trivialising effect on women’s

conduct in most circumstances: for instance, they are

always anxious about secondary things, and on the watch

for adventures instead of being occupied by duties.

[MW develops this thought in a contrast between a man’s

thoughts and a woman’s at the start of a journey: he is

thinking about the journey’s purpose, she is thinking about

clothes, how she will impress people, troubles that may be

met on the road. She continues:] In short, women in general

and the rich of both sexes have acquired all the follies and

vices of civilization, and missed its useful fruit. (Here as

always in my generalisations about women, I mean to be

allowing for a few exceptions.) Their senses are inﬂamed

and their understandings neglected; so they become the prey

of their senses—delicately called their ‘sensibility’—and are

blown around by every momentary gust of feeling. Thus,

civilised women are so weakened by false reﬁnement that

their moral condition is much lower than it would have been

if they had been left in a state nearer to nature,

i.e. in

a less ‘civilised’ state

. Always restless and anxious, their

over-used ‘sensibility’ makes them not only uncomfortable in

themselves but also troublesome (to put it mildly) to others.

All their thoughts are about things that are likely to arouse

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

emotion; their conduct is unstable because they

feel

when

they should

reason

; and their opinions are wavering because

of contradictory emotions (quite different from the wavering

produced by deliberation or development in one’s thinking).

By ﬁts and starts they are eager in many pursuits, but this

eagerness is never concentrated into perseverance, and soon

exhausts itself. Sometimes it just wears itself out; sometimes

it meets with some other ﬂeeting passion to which reason has

never given any speciﬁc gravity, so that neutrality ensues.

[That is a joke involving physics. When one moving body collides with

another, their post-collision movements depend in part on their speciﬁc

gravities; but a trivial passion doesn’t have any speciﬁc gravity—reason

hasn’t supplied it with one—so that when two of them collide they both

come to a halt right there.]

Miserable, indeed, must someone

be whose cultivation of mind has tended only to inﬂame

his or her passions! (Don’t confuse inﬂaming passions with

strengthening them.) When the passions are pampered in

this way while the judgment is left unformed, what can be

expected to ensue? Undoubtedly, a mixture of madness and

folly!

These remarks don’t apply only to the ‘fair’ sex; but at

present I am talking only about them.

Novels, music, poetry and gallantry all tend to make

women the creatures of sensation, and their character is thus

formed during the time they are acquiring accomplishments

[see Glossary]

, the only improvements that their place in society

motivates them to acquire. This overstretched sensibility

naturally relaxes the other powers of the mind, preventing

the intellect from achieving the sovereignty that it needs

to attain to make a rational creature useful to others and

content with his or her own role in life; because as one grows

older the only natural method for calming the passions is

through the exercise of reason. . . .

Will moralists claim that

this

is the condition in which

half the human race should be encouraged to remain, with

listless inactivity and stupid acquiescence? Kind instructors!

what were we created for? ‘To remain innocent’ they may

say—meaning to remain in a state of childhood. We might as

well never have been born, unless our creation was needed

for

man

to be able to acquire the noble privilege of

•

reason,

•

the power of distinguishing good from evil, while

lie in

the dust from which we were taken, never to rise again.

It would take for ever to trace the variety of meannesses,

cares, and sorrows that women are plunged into by the

prevailing opinion that they were created feel rather than

to reason, and that the only way they can obtain any

power is through their charms and weakness: ‘Fine by

defect, and amiably weak’!

[Pope, Of the Characters of Women]

And having been made by this ‘amiable weakness’ entirely

dependent. . . .on man not only for protection but also for

advice, is it surprising that women,

neglecting the duties that only reason points out

and shrinking from trials that would be likely to

strengthen their minds, exert themselves only to give

their defects a graceful covering that may serve to

•

heighten their charms in the eye of the voluptuary,

though it sinks them below the scale of moral excel-

lence?

Fragile

in every sense of the word, they’re obliged to look

up to man for every comfort. In the most trivial dangers

they cling to their support with a parasite’s grip, piteously

demanding help; and their

natural

protector extends his arm

or raises his voice to guard the lovely trembler—from what?

Perhaps the frown of an old cow, or the jump of a mouse;

rat

would be a serious danger! In the name of reason

and even of common sense, what can save such beings from

contempt, even if they are soft and fair?

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

When these fears are genuine they may be very pretty,

but they show a degree of imbecility that degrades a rational

creature in a way women are not aware of—for love is a very

different thing from esteem.

I’m sure that we would hear no more of these infantile

airs if girls were allowed to have enough

physical

exercise

and weren’t conﬁned in close rooms until their muscles are

relaxed and their powers of digestion destroyed. I would

go further: if fear in girls, instead of being valued and

perhaps created, were treated in the same way as cowardice

in boys, we would quickly see women looking more digniﬁed.

It’s true that they couldn’t then be described as ‘the sweet

ﬂowers that smile in the walk of man’, but they would be

more respect-worthy members of society, performing the

important duties of life by the light of their own reason.

‘Educate women like men,’ says Rousseau, ‘and the more

they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.’

That is exactly the point I am making; I don’t want women

to have power over men; I want them to have power over

themselves.

Similarly, I have heard men argue against instructing

the poor. . . . ‘Teach them to read and write,’ they say,

‘and you take them out of the role in life assigned them

by nature.’ An eloquent Frenchman has answered them; I

will borrow from him. They don’t realise that if they make

man a lower animal they can expect to see him at any

moment transformed into a ferocious beast.

[An aristocrat

named Riqueti, who supported the revolution, said in the Constitutional

Assembly: ‘You have loosed the bull—do you expect that he won’t use his

horns?’] Without knowledge there can be no morality!

Ignorance is a frail basis for virtue! Yet woman was

built to be ignorant, according to the writers who have most

energetically argued in favour of the superiority of man. They

mean this to be a superiority in essence,

in kind

, not merely

in degree; though to soften the argument they have tried with

chivalrous generosity to prove that the sexes ought not to be

compared:

man was made to reason, woman to feel; and

together—spirit and ﬂesh—they make the most perfect

[see Glossary]

whole, by happily blending reason and

sensibility into one character.

And what is sensibility? ‘Quickness of sensation; quickness

of perception; delicacy.’ That is how Dr. Johnson deﬁnes

it; and all I get from the deﬁnition is an idea of the most

exquisitely polished instinct. I don’t see a trace of the image

of God in either sensation or matter. Reﬁned seventy times

seven, they are still material; intellect dwells not there. and

ﬁre won’t turn lead into gold!

I come around to my old argument; if woman has an

immortal soul she must have—as the employment of her

life—an understanding to improve. And when. . . .she is in-

cited by present gratiﬁcation to forget her grand destination,

then

•

nature is counteracted or else

•

woman was born only

to procreate and to rot.

[In that sentence, ‘to rot’ is a vivid way of

saying ‘to be mortal’ (see Glossary).]

Or here is another possibility:

All the lower animals have a soul, though not a rea-

sonable one; and their use of instinct and sensibility

is the step they have to take in this life towards the

attainment of reason in the next.

If that is how thing stand,

and if in this respect woman is

in the same boat as the lower animals

, she and they will

be one step behind man through all eternity; and we can’t

explain why man was enabled to attain reason in his ﬁrst

mode of existence.

When I discuss the special duties of

•

women in the way

that I would discuss the special duties of a

•

citizen or a

•

father, you’ll see that I don’t mean to imply that women in

general should be taken out of their families. Bacon says:

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

He who has

•

wife and

•

children has given hostages

to fortune; for

•

they are impediments to great enter-

prises, good and bad. Certainly the achievements that

have done the most public good have been the work

of unmarried or childless men.

I say the same of women. But the welfare of society isn’t built

on extraordinary efforts; and if society were more reasonably

organized there would be still less need for great abilities or

heroic virtues. In running a family and educating children

one has a special need for strength both of body and of

mind. . . ., and yet the men who in their writings have worked

hardest to domesticate women have tried. . . .to weaken their

bodies and cramp their minds. But even if these writers

really

persuaded

women—by working in an underhand way

on their feelings—to stay at home and fulﬁl the duties of a

mother and mistress of a family, this would be a bad way of

getting women to do the right thing—bad because it would

be an insult to reason. I appeal to experience to conﬁrm that

if by neglecting the understanding women are actually more

detached from these domestic duties than they could be by

the most serious intellectual pursuit. . . ., I may be allowed to

infer that reason is absolutely necessary to enable a woman

to perform any duty properly, and I’ll say it again: sensibility

is not reason.

The comparison with the rich still occurs to me: when

men neglect the duties of humanity, women will follow their

example; a common stream hurries them both along with

thoughtless speed. Riches and honours prevent a man from

enlarging his understanding, and slacken all his powers

by reversing the order of nature, which has always made

true pleasure the reward of labour. Pleasure—enervating

pleasure— is similarly within woman’s reach without earning

it. But until hereditary possessions are distributed through-

out society, how can we expect men to be proud of virtue?

And until they are, women will govern them by the most

direct means, neglecting their dull domestic duties so as to

catch the pleasure that is on the wing of time. . . .

Another argument that has had a great weight with me,

must, I think, have some force with every considerate benev-

olent heart. Girls who have been thus weakly educated are

often cruelly left by their parents without any provision

[MW

means that through a cruelty of fate they become penniless orphans]

and of course are then dependent not only on the reason

but also on the generosity of their brothers. In the best

cases these brothers are good men, and they give as a

favour what children of the same parents had an equal right

to. An easy-going female may fairly comfortably remain for

some time in this ambiguous and humiliating situation; but

when the brother marries, as he probably will, the sister will

move from being considered as the mistress of the family to

being viewed as an intruder, an unnecessary burden on the

benevolence of the master of the house and his new partner.

Who can describe the misery that many unfortunate

beings, whose minds and bodies are equally weak, suffer in

such situations—unable to work and ashamed to beg? The

wife is likely to be a cold-hearted, narrow-minded woman;

for the present style of education doesn’t tend to enlarge the

heart any more than to enlarge the understanding. This wife

will be jealous of the little kindness that her husband shows

to his relations; and because her sensibility doesn’t rise to

the level of humanity, she will be displeased at seeing

her

children’s property being lavished on a helpless sister.

These are matters of fact that I have seen for myself

again and again. The upshot is obvious: the wife resorts to

cunning to undermine the habitual affection

of her husband

for his sister

, which she is afraid to oppose openly; she uses

tears and caresses relentlessly, until ‘the spy’ is worked

out of her home, and

•

thrown on the world, unprepared for

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

its difﬁculties; or—as a great effort of generosity, or from

some regard to propriety—

•

sent with a small pension and an

uncultivated mind into joyless solitude.

These two women—

the sister and the wife

—may be

much on a par with regard to reason and humanity; and it

may be that if their situations had been switched so would

their behaviour have been. But if they had been differently

educated [see Glossary] the upshot would also have been very

different. The wife wouldn’t have had the sensibility of which

self is the centre, and reason might have taught her not

to expect—and not even to be ﬂattered by—her husband’s

affection if it led him to violate pre-existing duties. She would

want to love him not merely because he loved her but on

account of his virtues; and the sister might have been able

to struggle for herself instead of eating the bitter bread of

dependence.

I am convinced that the heart, as well as the understand-

ing, is opened by cultivation

[i.e. has its scope widened by being

developed and attended to]

, and also by strengthening the organs,

though that is less obvious. I’m not talking of momentary

ﬂashes of sensibility, but of ·durable· affections. And in the

education of both sexes it may be that the most difﬁcult

task is to adjust the instruction in such a way that

the

understanding and the affections are in a proper balance.

That involves· not letting the understanding

•

be narrowed while the heart is warmed by the gener-

ous juices of spring. . . ., or

•

engage itself in investigations that are remote from

life, thereby drying up the feelings.

When women get a careful education, they come out of it

either as

•

ﬁne ladies, brimful of sensibility, and teeming with

capricious fancies, or as

•

mere notable women.

[This uses ‘no-

table’ in a now obsolete sense in which it means ‘capable and industrious

in household management’.]

The latter are often friendly, honest

creatures, and have a shrewd kind of good sense joined with

worldly prudence—a combination that often makes them

more useful members of society than the ﬁne sentimental

lady although they don’t have any greatness of mind or of

taste. The intellectual world is shut against them; take them

out of their family or neighbourhood and they come to a

halt, ﬁnding nothing for their minds to do; for they have

never tried to enjoy the fund of amusement that literature

provides; often they have despised it. The sentiments and

taste of more cultivated minds appear ridiculous, even in

those whom chance and family connections have led them to

love; but in mere acquaintance they think it all affectation.

If a man of sense

[see Glossary]

loves a woman like that, it

can only be on account of her sex, and if he respects her it is

because she is a trusty servant. To preserve his own peace

he lets her scold the servants, and go to church in clothes

made of the best materials. A man with only her level of

understanding would probably not suit her so well, because

he might wish to encroach on her territory and manage some

domestic concerns himself. Yet women, whose minds are not

enlarged by cultivation, or in whom the natural selﬁshness

of sensibility hasn’t been expanded by reﬂection, are very

unﬁt to manage a family, because they always stretch their

power and use tyranny to maintain a superiority that rests

on nothing but the arbitrary distinction of fortune. The evil

is sometimes more serious than that, and domestic servants

are deprived of innocent pleasures and made to work beyond

their strength, in order to enable the notable woman to keep

a better table, and outshine her neighbours in ﬁnery and

parade. If she attends to her children, it is usually to dress

them expensively—and whether she does this out of vanity

or out of fondness for the children, it is pernicious either

way.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

Many women of this sort pass their days, or at least their

evenings, discontentedly. Their husbands acknowledge that

they are good managers, and chaste wives; but they leave

home to seek for more agreeable and stimulating society;

and the patient drudge who fulﬁls her task like a blind horse

in a mill is defrauded of her just reward, for the wages due to

her are the caresses of her husband; and women who have

so few resources in themselves don’t patiently bear being

deprived of a natural right in this way.

A ﬁne lady on the other hand has been taught to look

down with contempt on common vulgar

[see Glossary]

employ-

ments of life; though

she is in no position to be so haughty,

because

the only accomplishments she has been motivated

to acquire are ones with next to no intellectual content; for

even bodily accomplishments can’t be acquired with any

precision unless the understanding has been strengthened

by exercise. Without a foundation of principles, taste is

superﬁcial; and grace must arise from something deeper

than imitation.. . . .

[In case you are interested, the ellipsis at the end of that paragraph

replaces the sentence: ‘The imagination, however, is heated, and the

feelings rendered fastidious, if not sophisticated; or, a counterpoise of

judgment is not acquired, when the heart still remains artless, though it

becomes too tender.’]

These women are often amiable; and their hearts are

more sensitive to general benevolence, more alive to the

feelings that civilize life, than the sturdy family drudge; but

because they are deﬁcient in reﬂection and self-government,

they only inspire love; and for as long as they have

any

hold

on their husbands’ affections it is as their mistresses. . . .

These women are the ‘fair defects’ in nature—the women

who seem to be created not to enjoy the fellowship of man,

but

•

to save him from sinking to the merely animal level

•

rubbing off the rough angles of his character; and

•

give some dignity to the appetite that draws man to them by

•

playful teasing. Gracious Creator of the whole human race!

have you created such a being as woman—who can trace

your wisdom in your works, and feel that you alone are by

your nature exalted above her—for no better purpose than

this? Can she believe that she was made only to submit to

man, who is her equal—a being sent into the world to acquire

virtue, as she was? Can she consent to be wholly occupied

in pleasing him; merely to adorn the earth when her soul

is capable of rising to you? And can she slackly depend on

man for reason, when she ought to climb the difﬁcult slopes

of knowledge alongside him?. . . .

To fulﬁl domestic duties one needs a serious kind of

perseverance that requires a ﬁrmer support than emotions

can give, however lively and true to nature they are.

Order

is the soul of virtue; to give an example of it a person has

to adopt some austerity of behaviour, and this can hardly

be expected from a being who, from his or her infancy, has

been made the weathercock of his or her own sensations.

Whoever rationally means to be useful must have a plan of

conduct; and in performing the simplest duty we are often

obliged to act

against

the present impulse of tenderness

or compassion. Severity is often the clearest. . . .proof of

affection; and the lack of this power over the feelings, and

of the digniﬁed affection that makes a person prefer the

future good of the beloved object to a present gratiﬁcation, is

the reason why so many fond mothers spoil their children.

Which is more damaging—negligence or indulgence? I am

inclined to answer ‘Indulgence’.

Mankind seem to agree that children should be left under

the management of women during their childhood. Judging

by what I have seen, women of sensibility—

i.e. women in

whom feelings are uppermost

—are the least ﬁt for this

task because they are bound to be carried away by their

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

feelings, and spoil a child’s temperament. The management

of the temperament, the ﬁrst and most important branch

of education, requires the sober steady eye of reason

as to form and stick with

a plan of conduct that is equally

distant from

•

tyranny and

•

indulgence. Yet

•

these are the

extremes that people of sensibility fall into—ﬁrst on one side,

then on the other, always shooting beyond the mark. These

thoughts and the further development of them that I have

gone through lead me to conclude that a person of genius

[see Glossary]

is the least suitable person to be employed in

education, whether public or private. Minds of this rare

species see things too much in masses, and seldom if ever

have a good temperament. The habitual cheerfulness that

we call ‘good humour’ is perhaps as seldom united with great

mental powers as it is with strong feelings. And people who

admiringly follow the ﬂights of

•

genius, or with cooler ap-

proval drink in the instruction elaborately prepared for them

•

a profound thinker, ought not to be upset if they ﬁnd

•

the former bad-tempered and

•

the latter gloomy; because

liveliness of imagination and a tenacious comprehension

of mind are hardly compatible with the smooth politeness

which leads a man at least to

•

bend to the opinions and

prejudices of others instead of

•

roughly confronting them.

[MW now switches abruptly from thoughts about highly intelligent

people as teachers to the question of what should be done about them

as pupils.]

When we are thinking about education or man-

ners, minds of a superior class can be left to take care of

themselves. It is the middlingly able multitude who need

instruction and

are at risk because they

catch the colour

of the atmosphere they breathe

[those eight words are MW’s]

This body of men and women should be respected, and

should not have their sensations heightened in the hot-bed

of luxurious idleness at the expense of their understanding;

for unless there’s a ballast of understanding they will never

become virtuous or free.

Why won’t they be free? Because

an aristocracy based on property or on solid talents will

always overwhelm the alternately timid and ferocious slaves

of feeling.

I now switch to look at our topic from a different angle.

Men have used countless arguments in support of morally

and physically degrading the

female

sex. The arguments

are brought forward with a show of reason, because they are

supposed to be derived from

nature

. I must discuss a few of

them.

The female understanding has often been spoken of with

contempt, as reaching maturity sooner than the male. I

shan’t answer this argument by mentioning the early proofs

of reason—and indeed genius—in Cowley, Milton, Pope and

many others. I merely appeal to experience to decide whether

young men who are early introduced into company. . . .don’t

acquire the same precocity. . . .

Some natural scientists have said that men don’t attain

their full growth and strength until thirty, whereas women

reach maturity by twenty. I think they are reasoning on false

premises, having been led astray by the male prejudice that

regards beauty as the perfection of woman, taking ‘beauty’

in the everyday sense in which it refers only to features

and complexion, while male beauty is regarded as having

some connection with the mind. Strength of body, and the

facial character that shows maturity and moral strength,

is something that women don’t acquire before thirty, any

more than men do. The artless little tricks of children are

indeed particularly pleasing and attractive; but when the

pretty freshness of youth has worn off, these ‘artless’ graces

become careful poses, and they disgust every person of taste.

In the faces of girls we look only for vivacity and bashful

modesty; but when the springtide of life is over we look for

a more sober sense in the face, and for traces of passion,

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

instead of the dimples of animal spirits, expecting to see

individuality of character, which is the only thing that can

fasten the affections.

We then want to converse, not to

fondle; to give scope to our imaginations as well as to the

sensations of our hearts.

. . . .The French, who admit more

mind

into their notions

of beauty, give the preference to women of thirty. This means

that they allow women to be in their most perfect state when

vivacity gives way to reason and to the majestic seriousness

of character which signiﬁes maturity. . . . Between twenty

and thirty the solid parts of the body become denser and the

ﬂexible muscles grow more rigid, giving character to the face;

i.e. they trace the operations of the mind with the iron pen

of fate, and tell us not only what powers the person has but

how they have been employed.

Animals who arrive slowly at maturity are the longest

lived, and of the noblest species. But men can’t claim any

natural superiority from the grandeur of longevity, for in this

respect nature has not distinguished the male.

Polygamy is another physical degradation, a custom that

blasts every domestic virtue; and a plausible argument for

it is drawn from the well-attested fact that in the countries

where polygamy is established more females are born than

males.

[This was widely believed at MW’s time; it isn’t true.]

Nature

seems to be telling us something here, and apparently

reasonable theories must yield capitulate to nature. And

a further conclusion obviously presents itself: if polygamy

is necessary, woman must be inferior to man, and made for

him.

We know very little about the formation of the foetus in the

womb, but it seems to me probable that an accidental physi-

cal cause may explain this phenomenon

of the unbalanced

birth ratio

, proving it not to be a law of nature. [She quotes

a writer who says that the birth ratio results from polygamy,

not vice versa: it comes from the fact that in the countries

in question ‘the men are enervated by the use of so many

women’, and the women have a ‘hotter’ constitution partly

because they are aggrieved at not having their husbands to

themselves. ‘So the necessity of polygamy does not appear’,

MW writes, and then in mid-sentence she launches on a new

aspect of the degradation of women, namely seduction.]

When a man seduces a woman, I think this should be

called ‘a left-handed marriage’, and the man should be

legally

obliged to support the woman and her children unless

adultery—a natural divorce—cancels the obligation. And this

law should remain in force for as long as women’s weakness

causes the word ‘seduction’ to be used as an excuse for

their frailty and lack of principle—indeed, for as long as

they depend on man for subsistence, instead of earning it

by the use of their own hands or heads. But these women

shouldn’t be called ‘wives’ in the full sense of that word;

otherwise the very purpose of marriage will be subverted,

and all those endearing charities that ﬂow from

personal

ﬁdelity

would melt into selﬁshness.

[MW builds into that sentence

that the ‘endearing charities’ in question ‘give the marriage tie a sanctity

even where there is neither love nor friendship between the parties’.]

woman who is faithful to the father of her children demands

respect, and shouldn’t be treated like a prostitute; though

I readily grant that if it is necessary for a man and woman

to live together in order to bring up their offspring, nature

never intended any man to have more than one wife.

Still, highly as I respect marriage as the foundation of

almost every social virtue, I can’t help feeling the most lively

compassion for the unfortunate females who are broken off

The strength of an affection is generally proportional to the extent to which, in the beloved object, the character of the

•

species is lost in the character

of the

•

individual.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

from society, and by one error torn from all those affections

and relationships that improve the heart and mind. In

many cases it doesn’t even deserve to be called an ‘error’;

because many innocent girls become the dupes of a sin-

cere affectionate heart, and even more girls are—to put it

vigorously—ruined before they know the difference between

virtue and vice. Their education has prepared them to

become infamous, and that is exactly what they do. Refuges

and shelters are not the proper remedies for these abuses.

what the world is short of is not charity but justice!

A woman who has lost her honour imagines that she can’t

fall any lower, and as for recovering her former status—that

is impossible; no exertion can wash away this stain. Losing

thus every motivation, and having no other means of support,

prostitution becomes her only refuge, and her character

is quickly depraved by circumstances over which the poor

wretch has little power unless she is uncommonly intelligent

and high-spirited. Necessity never makes prostitution the

business of men’s lives, but countless women are rendered

systematically vicious in this way. But this arises largely

from the state of idleness in which women are educated—

always taught to look up to man for maintenance, and to

consider their persons

[see Glossary]

as the proper payment

for his exertions to support them. . . . It is usually thought

that when chastity is lost everything worthy of respect in a

woman is lost. Her character depends on one virtue, but the

only passion fostered in her heart is love.

Indeed, a woman’s honour is not even made to depend

on her will. When

in his novel

Clarissa·

Richardson makes

Clarissa tell Lovelace that

by raping her

he has robbed her

of her honour, he must have strange notions of honour and

virtue. The condition of someone who could be degraded

without his or her

[see Glossary]

own consent is miserable

beyond all names of misery!. . . .

Most of life’s evils arise from a desire for present enjoy-

ment that gallops out of control. The obedience required of

women in the marriage state comes under this description.

[That is verbatim MW: she presumably means that a wife’s obedience

consists in reining in her desires for present enjoyment.]

A mind that

is naturally weakened by depending on authority never exerts

its own powers, so that the obedient wife is turned into a

weak, idle mother. And even if this doesn’t happen,

there

is a different kind of moral degradation inherent in this

situation

. When only negative virtues are cultivated, almost

no thought is given to a future state of existence,

i.e. to

life after death

. Writers on morals, especially when writing

about women, have too often considered virtue in a very

limited way, basing it solely on what will produce beneﬁts in

this

life; indeed, the stupendous structure that is

virtue

has

been given an even more fragile base, in that the wayward

ﬂuctuating feelings of men have been made the standard of

virtue.. . . .

[MW writes now about the ‘vain absurdities ’ of men

who degrade the sex that they claim is the source of their

chief pleasure. She targets men who—turning away from

prostitutes either because they

•

prudently want to avoid

diseases or because they

•

are worn out from all their uses of

prostitutes—get married in order to have ‘a safe companion’,

viewing their wives (MW implies) as merely safer and more

convenient prostitutes.]

Love considered as an animal appetite can’t feed on itself

for long without dying. This

extinction in its own ﬂame

could

be called the violent death of love. But a wife who has been

made licentious in this way will probably try to ﬁll the void

left by the loss of her husband’s attentions; because after

being treated like a goddess she won’t settle for becoming

merely an upper servant. She is still handsome, and instead

of transferring her fondness to her children she only dreams

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

of enjoying the sunshine of life. Besides, many husbands

are so lacking in sense and parental affection that during

the ﬁrst effervescence of voluptuous fondness they refuse to

let their wives breast-feed their children. . . .

Personal attachment is a ﬁne basis for friendship; but

when two young people marry—even virtuous ones—it might

also be ﬁne if some circumstance checked their passion;

if the memory of some prior attachment or disappointed

affection made it, on one side at least, a match based on

esteem rather than love. That would have them looking

beyond the present moment, trying to make the whole of life

worthwhile by making plans to regulate a friendship which

ought to last until death.

Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all

affections, because it is based on principle and cemented

by time. The very reverse may be said of love. In a great

degree, love and friendship can’t exist together in the same

heart: even when it’s love for one person and friendship for

someone else, they weaken or destroy each other; and for

just one person you can’t have love and friendship at the

same time—they have to take turns. The vain

•

fears and

foolish

•

jealousies—when managed with wisdom or cunning

they are the winds that fan the ﬂame of love—are

•

both

incompatible with the tender conﬁdence and sincere respect

of friendship.

·A PARAGRAPH ABOUT LOVE AS POR TRAYED BY GENIUS·

Love of the kind that the glowing pen of genius has de-

scribed doesn’t exist anywhere on earth except perhaps in

the exalted, feverish imaginations that have sketched such

dangerous pictures. Dangerous? Yes, because they not only

•

provide a plausible excuse for the voluptuary who disguises

sheer sensuality under a sentimental

[see Glossary]

veil, but

also

•

spread insincerity and detract from the dignity of virtue.

•

Virtue should have an appearance of seriousness, if not

austerity; and to try to doll

•

her up in the garb of pleasure

because ‘virtue’ has been used as another name for pleasure,

is to raise

•

her up on a foundation of quicksand; a most

underhand attempt to hasten her fall by apparent respect.

Virtue and pleasure are not in fact as closely related in this

life as some eloquent writers have tried to prove. Pleasure

prepares the fading wreath, and mixes the intoxicating cup;

but the fruit that virtue gives is the reward for hard work; and

when it is seen as it gradually ripens, all it provides is calm

satisfaction—indeed, appearing to be the result of the natural

tendency of things, it is hardly noticed.

Bread

, the common

food of life and seldom thought of as a blessing, supports

the constitution and preserves health; but

feasts

delight the

heart of man although disease and even death lurk in the cup

that elevates the spirits or the morsel that tickles the palate.

The lively heated imagination likewise. . . .draws the picture

of love, as every other picture, with the glowing colours stolen

from the rainbow by a daring hand that is directed by a mind

condemned, in a world like this, to prove its noble origin

by panting after unattainable perfection; always pursuing

what it admits to be a ﬂeeting dream. An imagination of

this vigorous cast can give existence to unsubstantial forms,

and stability to the shadowy day-dreams which the mind

naturally falls into when it is bored by reality. It can then

depict love with heavenly charms, and dote on the grand

ideal object; it can imagine

a degree of mutual affection that will reﬁne the

soul. . . .and make it absorb every less noble affection

and desire. In each other’s arms, as though in a

temple with its summit lost in the clouds, the world

is to be shut out and along with it every thought

and wish that doesn’t nurture pure affection and

permanent virtue.

Permanent virtue! alas! Rousseau, good visionary! your

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

paradise would soon be violated by the entrance of some

unexpected guest. Like Milton’s, it would contain only

angels and men sunk below the dignity of rational creatures.

Happiness is not material, it cannot be seen or felt! Yet the

eager pursuit of the good that everyone imagines for himself

proclaims man to be the lord of this lower world, and to be a

thinking creature whose role is not to

•

be given happiness

but to

•

acquire it. So those who complain of the delusions

of passion forget that they are exclaiming against a strong

proof of the immortality of the soul.

I shall leave superior minds to correct themselves, and

pay dearly for their experience! What I want to guard

the female heart against by

getting women to

exercise

the understanding is not

•

strong, persevering passions but

•

romantic, wavering feelings—daydreams that result from

idleness more often than from a lively imagination.

[MW blames women’s education for their tendency to be

‘romantic and inconstant’, because it takes them away from

‘nature and reason’. But, she continues:] their reason will

never be strong enough to be able to regulate their conduct

while the ﬁrst wish of the majority of mankind is

to make

an appearance in the world

[Note: the majority of mankind.]

The

natural affections and the most useful virtues are sacriﬁced

to this weak wish. Girls marry merely to ‘better themselves’

(to borrow a signiﬁcant common phrase), and they have

such perfect power over their hearts that they don’t allow

themselves to ‘fall in love’ until a wealthy man shows up. I’ll

say more about this in a later chapter; at present I need only

to drop a hint. . . .

From the same source comes the opinion that young

girls ought to spend much of their time on needle-work,

though this contracts their faculties more than any other

that could have been chosen for them, by conﬁning their

thoughts to their bodies. Men order their clothes to be made,

and have done with the subject; women make their own

clothes—both the

•

necessary and the

•

ornamental—and are

continually talking about them; and their thoughts follow

their hands. What weakens the mind is not the making of

•

necessaries but the

•

frippery of dress. When a woman in

the lower rank of life makes her husband’s and children’s

clothes, she is doing her duty: this is part of her business.

But when women sew only so that they can dress better

than they could otherwise afford, it is worse than sheer

loss of time. For the poor to become virtuous, they must

be employed, and

•

women in the middle rank of life could

employ them while

•

they managed their families, instructed

their children, and exercised their own minds. They could,

but they don’t, because they are aping the fashions of

the nobility without having the nobility’s means to have

those fashions easily. Gardening, experimental science and

literature would provide them with subjects to think and

talk about—subjects that would give some exercise to their

understandings. French women are not so rigidly nailed to

their chairs. . . .; their conversation is often superﬁcial but

it’s not half as insipid as the conversation of those English

women who spend their time making caps, bonnets, and

the whole nonsense of trimmings, not to mention shopping,

bargain-hunting, etc. These practices are most degrading to

decent, prudent women, because the motive of the practices

is simply vanity. The wanton, who exercises her taste to

make her person alluring, has something more in view.

[To

make sure that these two sentences are understood: Martha and Mary

are both making clothes for themselves. Martha is a prudent decent

woman, doing something whose only point is to satisfy vanity—a thin,

trivial project, unworthy of her. Mary is a promiscuous woman who

is doing something to make herself sexually more attractive—a more

contentful motive than mere vanity, and a better ﬁt for Mary than vanity

is for Martha.]

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman

[Admitting that she is repeating herself, MW says that

how a person thinks affects his or her character. Her present

topic has been one special case of this general truth, namely

the harm that women do to themselves by spending so

much time thinking about ‘their persons’, e.g. what sort

of effect they will have when they next appear in public.]

Women of quality

[MW’s phrase]

seldom do any of the actual

dress-making: all they exercise is their taste. And because

they think less about the ﬁnery, when the business of their

toilet is over they can

put it behind them and

be at ease in

a way that is usually not open to women who dress merely

for the sake of dressing. In fact, the observation that the

middle rank

of society

is the one in which talents thrive

best doesn’t apply to women.

[If MW means her own observation

on page 39, then she isn’t quite accurate. What she referred to back

there was the well-known fact that ‘the middle rank contains most virtue

and abilities’.]

Women of the superior class do at least pick

up a smattering of literature, and they converse more with

men on general topics, so they acquire more knowledge

than the women who ape their fashions and faults without

sharing their advantages. As for

virtue

(using the word in

a comprehensive sense): I have seen most virtue in low life.

Many poor women maintain their children by the sweat of

their brow, and keep together families that the vices of the

fathers would have scattered; but gentlewomen are too lazy

to be actively virtuous, and are softened rather than reﬁned

by civilization. Indeed the good sense I have met with among

poor women who have had few advantages of education yet

have acted heroically has strongly conﬁrmed my opinion that

trivial activities have made women trivial. . . .

In tracing the causes that I think have degraded woman,

I have conﬁned myself to ones that universally act on the

morals and manners of the whole sex; and it seems clear

to me that they all arise from lack of understanding. Does

this weakness of the faculties arise from physical or from

accidental causes?

[That is: is it causally determined by the constitu-

tions of women as such, or is it caused by their circumstances?]

Time

alone can tell. I shan’t lay any great stress on the example of

a few women

who were given a masculine education from

which they acquired courage and resolution; I only contend

that

men

who have been placed in similar situations have

acquired a similar character. . . .

Sappho, Héloise, Catherine Macaulay, Catherine the Great of Russia, Madame d’Eon, etc. These and many more can be counted as ‘exceptions’; and

aren’t all heroes and heroines exceptions to general rules? I want to see women neither as heroines nor as lower animals, but as reasonable creatures.

[Catherine Macaulay was a contemporary of MW’s, a much respected thinker and writer; Madame d’Eon was in fact a man who passed as a woman

through most of his life.]

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

Chapter 5:

Writers who have rendered women objects of pity, bordering on contempt

We now have to examine the opinions on the female character

and education that have been plausibly argued for in some

modern publications, and have given the tone to most of

the briefer and more casual things said about the sex

[see

Glossary].

1: Rousseau

I shall begin with Rousseau, giving a sketch of the character

of women in his own words and interspersing comments and

reﬂections. My comments will all spring from a few simple

principles, and could be derived from what I have already

said; but his argument has been constructed with so much

ingenuity that I think I have to attack it in a more detailed

manner, and make the application

of my principles

myself

·rather than leaving it to the reader·.

Sophie, says Rousseau, should be as perfect a woman as

Émile is a man, and to make her so he has to examine the

character that nature has given to the ·female· sex.

He then proceeds to argue that woman ought to be weak

and passive because she has less bodily strength than man;

from which he infers that she was formed to please him and

be subject to him, and that making herself

agreeable

to her

master is the grand purpose of her existence. Still, to give a

little mock dignity to lust he insists that when a man goes

to a woman for pleasure he should not use his strength and

should depend on her will.

[In quotations from Rousseau’s Émile, three centered asterisks mean that

the next quotation comes from a few pages later than the preceding one.]

·ROUSSEAU·

So we deduce a third conclusion from the different constitu-

tions of the sexes, namely: The stronger should be master

•

in appearance but should depend on the weaker

•

in fact. . . .

This is because of an invariable law of

•

nature, which goes

like this:

Nature gives woman a greater ability to arouse desires

in man

than it has given man to satisfy them; so

it—

nature

—makes the man dependent on the good

pleasure of the woman, and forces him to try to please

her in his turn,

in order to obtain her consent that he

should be stronger.

On these occasions, the most delightful circumstance that

a man ﬁnds in his victory is to be unsure whether she has

yielded to his superior strength or whether her inclinations

spoke in his favour. The females are usually artful enough to

leave this in doubt. Women’s understanding in this matter

corresponds exactly to their constitution: far from being

ashamed of their weakness, they glory in it; their tender

muscles make no resistance; they pretend to be unable to lift

the smallest burdens, and would blush to be thought robust

and strong. What is the purpose of all this? Not merely for

the sake of appearing delicate, but. . . .also to prepare the

way for being feeble whenever that suits their purposes.

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

. . . .If Rousseau is right about woman’s duty—if

pleasing man

is the iron bed of fate that her character should be made to ﬁt,

stretching or contracting it regardless of moral and physical

What nonsense! [That is MW interrupting; and it was she who put that last clause in italics.]

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

distinctions—then it does indeed follow that woman ought to

sacriﬁce every other consideration to make herself agreeable

to man. . . . But I think it can be shown that practical rules

built upon this ignoble base would undermine the purposes

of even this life

as distinct from the after-life

; and that gives

me room to doubt whether woman

was

created for man.

This means, of course, that I don’t accept every sentence

of the Bible as literally true. But

if the cry of ‘irreligion’

or even ‘atheism’ is raised against me, I will simply declare

that if an angel from heaven told me that Moses’ beautiful,

poetical account of the beginning of the world cosmogony

and of the fall of man is literally true, I

still

couldn’t believe

what my reason told me was derogatory to the character of

the Supreme Being. And having no fear of the devil before

my eyes, I venture to call this a suggestion of reason, instead

of resting my weakness on the broad shoulders of the ﬁrst

seducer of my frail sex.

·ROUSSEAU·

Once it has been demonstrated that man and woman

aren’t and oughtn’t to be constituted alike in temperament

and character, it follows of course that they should not be

educated in the same manner. In pursuing the directions of

nature they ought indeed to act in concert

[= ‘their sexual

intercourse ought to be a collaborative joint enterprise’]

, but they

shouldn’t be engaged in the same employments: the ﬁnal

goal of their activities should be the same, but the means

they take to accomplish them, and thus their tastes and

inclinations , should be different.

* * *

. . . .Men depend on women only because of their desires;

women depend on men because of their desires and also

because of their needs. We could survive without them

better than they could without us.

* * *

For this reason, the education of women should always be

relative to men. To

please us,

be useful to us,.

make us love and esteem them,

educate us when we are young,

take care of us when we are grown up,

advise us,

console us,

make our lives easy and agreeable—

those are the duties of women at all times, and what they

should be taught in their infancy. Whenever we lose touch

with this principle, we run wide of the mark and all the

precepts that are given to them contribute neither to their

happiness nor to ours.

* * *

Girls are from their earliest infancy fond of dress. Not

content with

•

being pretty, they want to

•

be thought to be

pretty. . . . They are to be governed by talking to them of what

‘people will think’ of their behaviour; this thought—

this

control-device

—works with them almost as early as they are

capable of understanding anything that is said to them. But

it. . . .doesn’t have the same effect with boys. They don’t care

much what people think of them, as long as they can pursue

their amusements without interference. Time and care are

necessary to get boys to be motivated by the thought of what

‘people will think’.

This ﬁrst lesson, wherever girls get it from, is a very good

one. As the body is in a way born before the soul, our ﬁrst

concern should be to care for the body; this order—

body

ﬁrst, then soul

—is the same for both sexes, but the object

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

of that care is different. In the male sex it is the development

of bodily powers; in the female sex, the development of

personal charms. I’m not saying that either strength or

beauty should be conﬁned exclusively to one sex, but only

that the priorities for them should be reversed in the two

sexes. Women certainly need enough strength to be able to

move and act gracefully, and men need enough address

[see

Glossary] to be able to act with ease.

* * *

[A paragraph about the kinds of play that children like: tops,

drums, and carts for one sex, mirrors, trinkets and dolls for

the other.]

* * *

Here then we see a basic propensity ﬁrmly established; all

you

as a parent

need to do is to go with it and regulate it.

The little girl will doubtless want to know how to dress up

her doll, to make its sleeve knots, its ﬂounces, its head-dress,

etc. She needs a lot of help from members of the household;

so much help that it would be much more agreeable to her

to do all this for herself. That provides a good reason for the

ﬁrst lessons that are usually taught to these young females:

in which we seem not to be setting them a task but doing

them a favour by instructing them in something immediately

useful to themselves. They nearly all learn

with reluctance

to read and write, but they

very readily

apply themselves to

the use of their needles. They imagine themselves already

grown up, and think with pleasure that such qualiﬁcations

will enable them to decorate themselves.

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

This is certainly an education only of the body; but Rousseau

isn’t the only man who has indirectly said that merely

the person

[see Glossary]

of a young woman—without any

mind. . . .—is very pleasing. To make it weak and what

some may call ‘beautiful’, the understanding is neglected

and girls are forced to sit still, play with dolls, and listen

to foolish conversations; the effect of

•

habit is insisted on

as an undoubted indication of

•

nature. I know it was

Rousseau’s opinion that the ﬁrst years of youth should be

employed in forming the body, though in educating Émile

he deviates from this plan. But the body-strengthening on

which strength of mind largely depends is very different from

the body-strengthening that enables the person to move

easily.

Rousseau’s observations. . . .were made in a country

where the art of pleasing. . .

how MW went on:

. . . was reﬁned only to extract the gross-

ness of vice. He did not go back to nature, or his ruling

appetite disturbed the operations of reason, else he would

not have drawn these crude inferences.

what she seems to have meant:

. . . was developed only so

as to make vice

[see Glossary]

more elegant. He wouldn’t

have drawn these crude conclusions if he had gone back

to nature and his thinking about it hadn’t been disturbed by

his dominating sex-drive.

In France boys and (especially) girls are educated only to

please, to manage their persons, and regulate their exterior

behaviour; and their minds are damaged at an early age

by the cautions—some worldly, some pious—that they are

given to guard them against immodesty. In past times, the

confessions that mere children were obliged to make, and

the questions asked by the confessors (I have good authority

for this), were enough to impress a sexual character—

i.e.

to reinforce the society’s idea of femininity in the girls,

and its idea of masculinity in the boys

. The education

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

of society was a school of ﬂirting and art

[here = ‘the skillful

management of the other sex’]

. At the age of ten or eleven—even

sooner, indeed—girls began to ﬂirt, and to talk (without being

reproved for it) of establishing themselves in the world by

marriage.

In short, almost from their very birth they were treated

women

, and were given compliments instead of instruc-

tion. Compliments weaken the mind. When society treated

girls in this way, it was assuming that

•

Nature acted like a

step

-mother when

•

she formed this after-thought of creation.

Not allowing them understanding, however, it was only

consistent to subject them to authority independently of

reason; and to prepare them for this subjection Rousseau

gives the following advice:

·ROUSSEAU·

As well as being active and diligent, girls should be early

subjected to restraint. This misfortune, if that’s what it is,

is inseparable from their sex; and if they

ever

throw it off

they will suffer evils much crueller than that. They must

throughout their lives be subject to the most constant and

severe restraint, which is that of

decorum

; so they must

get used to it early, so that it won’t hit them too hard later

on. They should also get used to the suppression of their

caprices, so that they will be readier to submit to the will of

others

later on

; even if it is work that they are most fond of,

they should be sometimes compelled to lay it aside. If their

upbringing is too permissive, their basic propensities will

give rise to dissipation, levity, and inconstancy. To prevent

this abuse, we should teach them above all things to restrain

themselves properly. Our absurd institutions reduce the

life of a modest woman to a perpetual conﬂict with herself,

though it is fair that this sex should share in the sufferings

arising from the evils it has caused us.

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

And

why

is the life of a modest woman a perpetual conﬂict?

Because this very system of education makes it so. Modesty,

temperance, and self-denial are the sober offspring of reason;

but when sensibility is developed at the expense of the under-

standing, such weak beings must be restrained by arbitrary

means

[i.e. not by nature but by rules devised by humans]

, and so

be subjected to continual conﬂicts. If you give more scope

to their activity of mind, nobler passions and motives will

govern their appetites and sentiments;

and this government

will be less conﬂicting because it will come from within the

woman rather than from outside·. . . .

·ROUSSEAU·

Women ought not to have much liberty. When something is

permitted to them, they are apt to indulge in it excessively.

Addicted in everything to extremes, they are even more

carried away in their diversions than boys.

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

Well, slaves and mobs have always gone to excesses in that

way once they have broken loose from authority. The bent

bow straightens with violence when the hand that is forcibly

holding it is suddenly relaxed; and sensibility, the plaything

of outward circumstances, must be subjected to authority or

moderated by reason. Rousseau continues:

·ROUSSEAU·

This habitual restraint makes women tractable in a way

that they’ll need throughout their lives: they are constantly

under subjection either to the men

who are their partners

or husbands

or to the opinions of mankind, and they are

never permitted to set themselves above those opinions. The

most important qualiﬁcation in a woman is good-nature

or sweetness of temperament. Formed to obey such an

imperfect being as man is—often full of vices and always full

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

of faults—she ought to learn even to suffer injustice and to

bear her husband’s insults without complaint. This is for

her sake, not his: if she becomes stubborn and hostile this

will make her husband worse. . . .

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

. . . .The being who patiently endures injustice and silently

puts up with insults will soon become unjust, i.e. unable

to tell right from wrong. Anyway, the factual premise is

wrong: this is

not

the true way to form or improve the

temperament; for in general men have better temperaments

than women because they are occupied in pursuits that

interest the head as well as the heart, and the head’s

steadiness gives a healthy temperature

[MW’s word]

to the

heart. People of sensibility seldom have good temperaments.

The formation of the temperament is the cool work of reason,

which brings helpful skill to bear on bringing together jarring

elements. I never knew a weak or ignorant person who

had a good temperament, though the constitutional good

humour and the docility that fear causes in the behaviour

if often

called

‘good temperament’. Note: ‘causes in the

behaviour

’—because genuine meekness reaches the heart

or mind only as an effect of reﬂection. The simple restraint

arising from fear

produces a number of unpleasant moods

in domestic life, as many sensible men would agree after

ﬁnding some of these gentle irritable creatures to be very

troublesome companions. Rousseau goes on to argue:

·ROUSSEAU·

Each sex should preserve its own special tone and manner: a

meek husband may make a wife behave badly, but mildness

of disposition on her part will always bring him back to

reason—at least if he isn’t absolutely a brute—and will

sooner or later triumph over him.

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

Perhaps the mildness of reason might sometimes have this

effect; but abject fear always inspires contempt, and tears

are eloquent only when they ﬂow down fair cheeks.

A heart that can melt when insulted, and instead of

revolting at injustice can kiss the rod—what materials can

it be made of? If a woman can caress a man with true

feminine softness at the very moment when he treats her

tyrannically, isn’t it fair to infer that her virtue is built on

narrow views and selﬁshness? Nature has never dictated

any such insincerity. You may call prudence of this sort a

virtue; but morality becomes vague when any part of it is

supposed to rest on falsehood. These are mere expedients,

and expedients are only useful for the moment

whereas the

good in virtues is everlasting·.

Let the husband beware of trusting too completely in this

servile obedience; for if his wife can sweetly

•

caress him when

she is and ought to be angry. . . .she may

•

do the same after

parting with a lover. These are all preparations for adultery!

If fear of the world or of hell restrains her desire to please

other men when she can no longer please her husband, what

alternative is there for this being who was formed by nature

and art only to please man? What can compensate her for

this privation? Where is she to look for a fresh employment?

Where can she ﬁnd sufﬁcient strength of mind to decide to

begin the search, when her habits are ﬁxed and her chaotic

mind has long been ruled by vanity?

But this biased moralist

Rouseau

makes a plausible

case, based on his own system, in favour of cunning.

·ROUSSEAU·

Daughters should always be submissive, but their mothers

should not be inﬂexible. To make a young person tractable,

she shouldn’t be made unhappy; to make her modest, she

shouldn’t be made stupid. On the contrary, I wouldn’t be

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

displeased at her being permitted to use some skill not

to escape punishment if she has disobeyed but to exempt

herself from the necessity of obeying. . . . Subtlety is a talent

that is natural to the

female

sex; and in line with my

view that all our natural inclinations are right and good in

themselves, I hold that subtlety should be cultivated as well

as the others. All we need is to prevent it from being abused.

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

A little later he triumphantly proclaims: ‘Whatever is is right.’

Granted; but perhaps no aphorism ever contained a more

paradoxical assertion than this. It is a solemn truth with

respect to God. He. . . .sees the whole at once; but man,

who can inspect only the disconnected parts, ﬁnds many

things wrong; and it is. . . .right that he should try to alter

what appears to him to be wrong, even while bowing to his

Creator’s wisdom and respecting the darkness he is working

to disperse.

Given the principle that whatever is is right, Rousseau is

correct in what he infers from it.

·ROUSSEAU·

The female sex’s superiority in

•

address is a very fair

pay-back for their inferiority in

•

strength: without this

superiority

woman would be man’s slave, not his com-

panion. Her superior skill and ingenuity lets her preserves

her equality, and governs man while she pretends to obey.

Woman has everything against her—our faults as well her

own timidity and weakness. She has nothing in her favour

except her subtlety and her beauty. Isn’t it very reasonable

that she should cultivate both?

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

Greatness of mind can never cohabit with cunning or address

[see Glossary]

. Those words really refer to

insincerity

and

falsehood

; but I shan’t go on about that, and merely point

out that if any class of mankind is so created that it has to

be educated by rules that aren’t strictly deducible from truth,

then virtue is an affair of convention. . . .

Men have superior strength of body; but if it weren’t for

mistaken notions of beauty, women would become strong

enough

•

to be

able to earn enough to live on

, which is the

true deﬁnition of ‘independent’; and

•

to bear the bodily

inconveniences and exertions that are needed to strengthen

the mind. . . .

·ROUSSEAU·

Beauty can’t be acquired by dress, and ﬂirting is an art not

so early and speedily attained. But even when girls are young

they can work to have

•

agreeable gestures,

•

a pleasing tone of voice,

•

an easy way of walking and moving, and

•

skill in gracefully suiting their looks and attitudes to

time, place, and occasion.

. . . .I would like a young Englishwoman to cultivate her

agreeable talents in order to please her future husband with

as much care and persistence as a young Circassian woman

cultivates hers so that she will be ready to be in the harem

of an Eastern potentate.

The tongues of women are very voluble; they speak earlier,

more readily, and more agreeably than the men. They are

accused also of speaking much more; but so they should,

and I am willing to convert this reproach into a compliment.

Their lips and eyes have the same activity

as men’s

, and for

the same reason. A man speaks of what he knows, a woman

of what pleases her; the man’s speech requires knowledge,

the woman’s requires taste; a man’s discourse should aim

mainly at being useful, a woman’s at being agreeable. Their

different conversations should have nothing in common but

truth.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

We should restrain the prattle of boys with the severe

question ‘What is the purpose of what you are saying?’, but

for girls’ prattle we need a different though equally difﬁcult

question, ‘How will what you are saying be received?’ In

infancy, when they can’t yet tell good from evil, girls ought

to observe it as a law never to say anything that the listener

will ﬁnd disagreeable. Not an easy law to obey, and made all

the harder by having always to be subordinate to the former

law against ever telling an untruth.

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

[She has introduced Rousseau’s ‘The tongues of women’

passage with the words: ‘To make women completely insignif-

icant, he adds. . . ’.]

To govern the tongue in this manner must require great

address indeed; and it is too much practised both by men

and women. How few people speak out of the abundance of

the heart! So few that I, who love simplicity, would gladly

give up

•

politeness for a quarter of the virtue that has been

sacriﬁced to

•

it. Politeness is an equivocal quality which at

most should only be the polish of virtue.

But to complete the sketch:

·ROUSSEAU·

It’s easy to see that if male children can’t form any true

notions of religion, those ideas must be thoroughly out of

the reach of female children. For that very reason, I would

begin talking to them about religion earlier; if we waited

until they were able to discuss such profound questions in

a disciplined way we would risk never speaking to them on

this subject. Reason in women is

practical

reason: it enables

them to use skill in ﬁnding the means of achieving a known

end, but could never enable them to discover that end itself.

The social relations between the sexes are truly admirable:

what results from their union is a moral person, of which

woman could be called ‘the eyes’ and man ‘the hand’—from

the man the woman learns what she is to see, and from

the woman the man learns what he ought to do. If woman

could get back to the ﬁrst principles of things as well as man,

and if man could go into details as well as woman, neither

would depend on the other for anything; they would live in

perpetual discord, and their union could not survive. But

in the harmony that in fact naturally exists between them,

their different abilities tend to one common end, and it’s

hard to say which of them contributes more: each follows

the impulse of the other; each is obedient and both are

masters.

Just because a woman’s conduct is subservient to public

opinion, her faith in matters of religion should be subject to

authority. Every daughter ought to be of the same religion as

her mother, and every wife to be of the same religion as her

husband. Even if the religion she acquires is false, God does

not see her acceptance of it as wrong behaviour, because of

the docility that induces the mother and daughter to submit

to the order of nature.

As they can’t judge for themselves,

they ought to abide by the decision of their fathers and

husbands as conﬁdently as by that of the church.

. . . .There’s no great need to explain to women the rea-

sons for their

religious

belief, but there is a need to state

precisely the tenets they are to believe: a creed that presents

only obscure ideas to the mind will lead to fanaticism; and a

creed that presents absurdities will lead to loss of faith.

MW interjects: What if the mother’s and husband’s religions happen to be different? An ignorant person cannot be

•

reasoned out of an error, and

if she is merely

•

persuaded to give up one prejudice for another her mind will be unsettled. And what if the husband doesn’t have any religion to

teach her? In that case she ·won’t have any religion, and therefore· will lack something she need to support her virtue independently of worldly

considerations.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

·WOLLSTONECRAFT·

[MW comments brieﬂy on this, in a manner you could now

predict from what she has said up to here. What follows—at

a length that would occupy about four pages of the present

version—is a series of shorter quotations from Rousseau

interspersed by MW’s comments. Their over-all theme is the

conﬂict between

•

Rousseau’s wish to make women physi-

cally attractive and obedient and

•

MW’s wish that women

should above all be thoughtful and self-controlled. She

ﬁercely attacks his emphasis on the need for a woman to

be physically attractive so that she can be her husband’s

‘mistress’

[see Glossary]

, especially in the light of his thesis

that

relationship won’t last for long in the marriage. She

speaks of this whole emphasis in Rousseau as ‘the reveries

of fancy and reﬁned licentiousness’, meaning roughly that he

is supplying himself with soft pornography. She continues:]

The man who can be contented to live with a pretty and

useful companion who has no mind has lost in voluptuous

[see Glossary]

gratiﬁcations a taste for more reﬁned pleasures;

he has never felt the calm and refreshing satisfaction. . . .of

being loved by someone who could understand him. In

the society of his wife he is still alone, except when the

man is sunk in the brute

[here ‘brute’ = ‘lower animal’; she means

‘except when the man uses her for sexual satisfaction’]

. ‘The charm

of life’, says a grave philosophical reasoner

[Adam Smith]

, is

‘sympathy; nothing pleases us more than to observe in other

men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast.’

But, according to the line of thought by which women are

kept from the tree of knowledge,

the important years of youth,

the usefulness of age, and

the rational hopes of a future life

are all to be sacriﬁced to making woman an object of desire

for a short time. Besides, how could Rousseau expect them

to be virtuous and constant when they aren’t allowed to base

their virtue on reason or direct their inquiries towards truth?

Rousseau’s errors in reasoning all arose from sensibility

[see Glossary]

, and women are very ready to forgive sensibility

to their charms! When he should have reasoned he became

impassioned, and his thoughts inﬂamed his imagination

instead of enlightening his understanding. Even his virtues

led him astray: born with a warm constitution and lively

imagination, he was naturally drawn toward the other sex

with such eager fondness that he soon became lascivious.

If he had given way to these desires, the ﬁre would have

extinguished itself in a natural manner; but virtue and a

romantic kind of delicacy made him practise self-denial; but

when he was restrained

in his behaviour

—by fear, delicacy,

or virtue—he let his imagination run riot, and the glowing

images that it came up with sank deep into his soul.

. . . .And so warmly has he painted what he forcibly felt

that readers’ hearts have been drawn in and their imagina-

tions inﬂamed; the stronger the readers’ imaginations are,

the more sure they are that they have been convinced of

something intellectually, when really they have only shared

the feelings of a poetic writer who skilfully exhibits the

objects of sense, voluptuously shadowed or gracefully veiled;

and by thus making us

•

feel when we think we are

•

reasoning

he leaves a deposit of error in the mind.

Why was Rousseau’s life divided between

•

ecstasy and

•

misery? It has to be because the effervescence of his imagi-

nation produced

•

both. If he had allowed his imagination to

cool, he might have acquired more strength of mind.. . . .

But peace to his spirit! I am at war not with his ashes

but with his opinions. I am ﬁghting only the sensibility

that led him to degrade woman by making her the slave

of love. Let us, my dear contemporaries, rise above such

narrow prejudices! If wisdom is desirable on its own account,

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

if virtue properly so-called must be based on knowledge,

then let us try to strengthen our minds by reﬂection, until

our heads become a balance for our hearts; let us not

conﬁne all our thoughts to everyday trivial occurrences,

or our knowledge to an acquaintance with our lovers’ or

husbands’ hearts; rather, let the carrying-out of every duty

be subordinate to the grand duty of improving our minds

and preparing our affections for a more exalted state!. . . .

If we really were created only to ﬂutter our hour out

and then die, then let us give full play to sensibility and

laugh at the severity of reason! But even then

this wouldn’t

be satisfactory, because

we wouldn’t have strong bodies

or minds, and life would be lost in feverish pleasures or

wearisome idleness.

But the system of education that I earnestly want to see

exploded seems to presuppose something that ought never

to be taken for granted.

·WHAT MW SAYS IN THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH·

The presupposition has two parts.

(1)

A woman who is well

brought up by the standards of the system I am attacking

will be protected from any mishaps; Fortune, the blindfolded

goddess, will take off her blindfold and smile on this woman,

bringing her an admirable male partner.

(2)

A woman who

is devoted to virtue (and thus isn’t well brought up by those

standards) will get beneﬁts only to her own frame of mind;

she is likely to have to cope with serious worldly difﬁculties,

and to put up with the vices and moods of people she can

never regard as friends.

·HOW MW SAID THIS (VERBATIM)·

. . . .namely, that virtue shields us from the casualties of life;

and that fortune, slipping off her bandage, will smile on a

well-educated female, and bring in her hand an Émile or

a Telemachus. Whilst, on the contrary, the reward which

virtue promises to her votaries is conﬁned, it seems clear,

to their own bosoms; and often must they contend with

the most vexatious worldly cares, and bear with the vices

and humours of relations for whom they can never feel a

friendship.

[The next paragraph continues the statement of the ‘presupposition’

that MW has been attacking, by saying more about the misfortunes of

(2) the woman who devotes herself to virtue.]

Many women, instead of being supported by the reason

and virtue of their fathers and brothers, have strengthened

their own minds by struggling with their vices and follies; but

they have never met with a hero in the shape of a husband.

If they did have a husband, he might. . . .manage to bring

their reason back to its natural dependent state, and restore

man

the privilege of rising above opinion—the privilege

that had been usurped ·by the woman·.

[

•

The second woman isn’t rewarded much by virtue, although she is

devoted to it. The upshot for the ﬁrst woman is better, and we understand

its being brought by fortune, luck; but it’s not clear why in the verbatim

passage it is also said to be worked by virtue.

•

In the second paragraph

MW says that a husband might ‘pay the debt that mankind owed’ to the

woman. . . etc. But Rousseau & co. don’t think that mankind owes the

second woman anything. Perhaps MW meant ‘. . . paying the debt that

the woman thinks mankind owes her’.]

2: Fordyce

[James Fordyce, a Scottish Presbyterian minister and poet,

had written two enormously popular books about the up-

bringing of young women. MW makes no secret of her

contempt for these works—both for their overlap with

Rousseau’s views and for their style. He isn’t worth dis-

cussing, she says; but he has to be attended to because he

is so inﬂuential. This section would run to about ﬁve pages,

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

but it won’t be presented here. A sense of why Fordyce

isn’t worth quoting, and of what MW thought of him, can be

gathered from a few of her expressions regarding him:

—a most sentimental rant

—I have heard rational men use the word ‘indecent’ when

they mention Fordyce’s writings

—a display of cold artiﬁcial feelings. . . .the mark of a little

vain mind

—lover-like phrases of pumped-up passion

—The lover has a poetic licence. . . .but why should a

grave preacher interlard his discourses with such

fooleries?]

3: Gregory

[Dr John Gregory, a Scottish physician, wrote A Father’s Legacy to his

Daughters, for the beneﬁt of his motherless daughters; it was published

posthumously two decades before the present work.]

Dr Gregory’s legacy to his daughters is full of such pa-

ternal care that I embark on the task of criticism with

affectionate respect. But just because this little volume

has many attractions to recommend it to the notice of the

most respect-worthy part of my sex, I can’t silently let pass

some arguments in it that make a plausible case for opinions

that I think have had the most harmful effect on the morals

and manners of the female world.

His easy familiar style is particularly suited to the over-all

line of his advice, and the melancholy tenderness which his

respect for the memory of a beloved wife diffuses through

the whole work brings us onto its side; but our sympathy

is disturbed by the trim elegance of many passages in the

book—passages where, expecting to meet the

•

father, we are

suddenly confronted by the

•

author.

Another drawback is that he has two purposes and

doesn’t often stay steadily with either of them. He wants

to make his daughters lovable; but he doesn’t want to give

them sentiments that might make them unhappy by drawing

them out of the track of common life without enabling them

to act with appropriate independence and dignity. So he

checks the natural ﬂow of his thoughts, and advises neither

one thing nor the other.

In the preface he tells them a sad truth: ‘At least once

in your lives you will hear the genuine sentiments of a man

who has nothing to gain from deceiving you.’

[Presumably the

‘once’ is the occasion of reading their father’s book; what is sad is the

implication that this may be the only occasion.]

Hapless woman! what can be expected from you when

the beings on whom you are said naturally to depend for

reason and support all have something to gain from deceiving

you! This is the root of the evil that has shed a corroding

mildew on all your virtues. Blighting in the bud your opening

faculties, it has made you the weak thing that you are! This

divergence of interests—

this difference between what brings

gain to a male and what brings gain to a female

—is an

insidious state of warfare that undermines morality and

divides mankind!

If love has made some women wretched, how many more

have been made vain and useless by the cold unmeaning

interplay of ‘gallantry’! Yet this heartless attention to the

female

sex is regarded as so manly, so polished, that I’m

afraid this vestige of gothic manners won’t be replaced by

a more reasonable and affectionate mode of conduct until

society is very differently organized. Also, to strip

•

‘gallantry’

of its imaginary dignity, I should point out that in the most

civilized European states

•

this lip-service is most prevalent

where morals are extremely dissolute. I’m thinking of Portu-

gal, where gallantry takes the place of the most serious moral

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

obligations—for in that country it seldom happens that a

man is assassinated when he is in the company of a woman!

The savage hand of murder is unnerved by this chivalrous

spirit; and if the stroke of vengeance can’t be delayed, the

killer asks the lady to pardon the rudeness and to leave in

peace, perhaps spattered with her husband’s or brother’s

blood.

I shall pass over what Dr Gregory says about religion,

because I mean to give religion a chapter to itself.

[In the

upshot, she didn’t. Perhaps the chapter was to have been in a projected

second volume, which didn’t get written.]

Although many of the remarks about behaviour are very

sensible

[see Glossary]

, I entirely disapprove of them all, be-

cause they strike me as starting at the wrong end, so to

speak. A cultivated understanding and an affectionate heart

won’t have any need for starched rules of decorum; without

such rules they will lead to something more substantial than

seemliness

[= ‘conventional properness of behaviour’]

. And on the

other hand, obedience to such rules without understanding

would be outright pretence.

In Gregory’s scheme of things

decorum is the one thing that is needed! Decorum is to

supplant nature, and banish all simplicity and variety of

character out of the female world. But what good can

come of this superﬁcial advice? It is easier

•

to list modes of

behaviour

that are required or forbidden

than

•

to set reason

to work; but once the mind has been stored with useful

knowledge and strengthened by being

used

, the regulation

of the behaviour may safely be left to its guidance

without

the aid of formal rules·.

Consider for example this caution that Gregory gives to

his daughters:

Be cautious even in displaying your good sense.

you don’t

, you’ll be seen as regarding yourself as

superior to the rest of the company. And if you

happen to have any learning, keep it a profound

secret—especially from men, who generally look with

a jealous and malignant eye on any woman who has

knowledge, skill and a cultivated understanding.

Why should that warning be given, when artfulness of every

kind must contaminate the mind; and why entangle the

grand motives of action—motives supported by reason and

religion equally—with pitiful worldly devices and sleight-of-

hand tricks to gain the applause of gaping tasteless fools?. . .

If it were always proper to adopt the tone of the company

one is in, there would be no end to rules for behaviour. With

the key changing all the time

in tune with the company

it would often happen that a

ﬂat

was taken to be a

natural

note.

[The adjectives are meant in their musical sense—e.g. mistaking

a b[ for a b\.]

Surely it would have been wiser to advise women to

improve themselves until they rose above the fumes of vanity;

and then let the public opinion come around

to seeing them

for what they are. If they have to adjust themselves to the

company they are in

, where are rules of accommodation to

stop? The narrow path of truth and virtue doesn’t veer to

the right or the left: it is a straightforward business, and

those who are earnestly travelling this road can leap across

many. . . .prejudices without leaving modesty behind. Make

the heart clean, and give the head work to do, and I predict

that there will be nothing offensive in the behaviour.

The air of fashion that many young people are so eager to

achieve always strikes me as being like the studied attitudes

[MW’s phrase]

of some modern prints, copied slavishly and

tastelessly from ancient works of art: the soul is left out,

and none of the parts are tied together by

character

properly

so-called. This varnish of fashion. . . .may dazzle the weak;

but leave nature to itself,

unvarnished

, and it will seldom

disgust the wise. Besides, when a woman has enough sense

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

not to pretend to anything that she doesn’t understand in

some degree, she has no need to hide her talents; let things

take their natural course, and all will be well.

It is this system of pretence all through Dr Gregory’s book

that I despise. Women are always to

seem

to be this and

that; but virtue might speak in Hamlet’s words: ‘Seems! I

know not seems!—Have that within that passeth show!’

In another place, after indiscriminately recommending

delicacy, he adds:

The men will complain of your reserve. They will

assure you that a franker behaviour would make

you more lovable. But, trust me, they aren’t sincere

when they tell you that. I acknowledge that on some

occasions it

[= a more open and forthright manner]

might

make you more agreeable as companions, but it would

make you less lovable as women. And that is an

important distinction, which many of your sex are not

aware of.

This desire of always being women is the very frame of

mind that degrades the

female

sex. Except with a lover,

it would (I repeat) be well if they were

only

agreeable or

rational companions. But in this respect Gregory’s advice is

inconsistent with something else he says, which I now quote

with strong approval:

The view that a woman may allow all innocent free-

doms provided her virtue is secure is both grossly

indelicate and dangerous, and has proved fatal to

many of your sex.

I agree with this. A man or woman of any feeling must

always wish to convince a beloved object that what he or she

is getting and returning with pleasure are caresses of the

individual, not of the sex; and that the heart is moved rather

than the senses. Without this natural delicacy, love becomes

a selﬁsh personal gratiﬁcation that degrades the character.

I take this view further. When love is out of the ques-

tion, affection authorises many personal endearments that

ﬂow naturally from an innocent heart and give life to the

behaviour; but the personal interplay of appetite, gallantry,

or vanity, is despicable. Suppose a man is helping a pretty

woman into a carriage—a woman he doesn’t know—and he

squeezes her hand: if she has any true delicacy she will

regard this impertinent freedom as something like an insult,

rather than being ﬂattered by this meaningless homage to

beauty. . . .

Wanting to feed the affections with what is now the food

of vanity, I would like to persuade my sex to act from simpler

principles. Let them merit love, and they will obtain it,

though they may never be told that.

I like Dr Gregory’s

remark

: ‘The power of a ﬁne woman over the hearts of very

able men is beyond what she conceives.’

I have already remarked on the narrow cautions Gregory

offers relating to deceit, female softness, delicacy of constitu-

tion; for these are the themes that he keeps endlessly coming

back to. He handles them in a more decorous manner than

Rousseau does; but basically he agrees with Rousseau on

these matters, and if you take the trouble to analyse these

opinions

of Gregory’s

you’ll ﬁnd that the ﬁrst principles are

not quite so delicate as the superstructure!

You’ll see in due course that my views about friendship,

love, and marriage are non-trivially different from Gregory’s.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself and talk about that

now, important as it is. I want here merely to remark on

the over-all spirit of Gregory’s treatment of them, on his

cautious family prudence, on his limited views of partial

unenlightened affection. These views exclude pleasure and

improvement by vainly wanting to fend off sorrow and error—

and by thus guarding the heart and mind, destroy all their

energy. It is far better to be often deceived than never to

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

trust; to be disappointed in love, than never to love; to lose a

husband’s fondness, than forfeit his esteem.

It would be a good thing for the world—and for individuals,

of course—if all this useless care to attain a limited and

limiting worldly happiness were turned into an anxious

desire to improve the understanding.

—Wisdom is the principal thing: therefore get wisdom;

and with all thy gettings get understanding. (

Proverbs

4:7)

—How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity and

hate knowledge? (Proverbs 1:22)

That is Wisdom speaking to the daughters of men!

4: Some women

I shan’t mention all the writers who have written on the

subject of female manners—it would in fact be only beating

over the old ground, for they have in general said the same

things; but I’m on the attack against man’s. . . .

iron sceptre of

tyranny, and I declare against all power built on prejudices,

however ancient.

If women’s submission is to be based on justice, that is

the highest court of appeal, for God is justice itself. So let

us as children of the same parent. . . .reason together and

learn to submit to the authority of

•

reason when

•

her voice

is distinctly heard. And if it is proved that this throne of

prerogative rests on nothing but a chaotic mass of prejudices

that aren’t kept together by

•

any inherent principle of order, or

•

any elephant or tortoise or even

•

the mighty shoulders of a son of the earth,

anyone who escapes from it—braving the consequences—will

not be guilty of a breach of duty, will not be sinning against

the order of things. . . .

[The middle one of those three refers to an

old Indian theory about what holds the world up, and the third refers to

Greek myths about Atlas.]

The being who can govern him- or herself

[see Glossary]

has

nothing to fear in life; but if anything is dearer to someone

than his or her own respect, the price

for that

must be paid

to the last farthing. Virtue, like everything valuable, must

be loved for herself alone or she won’t come to live with us.

She won’t impart the peace ‘which passeth understanding’

[Philippians 47]

if she is

•

used merely as the stilts of reputation

and

•

respected with pharisaical exactness because ‘honesty

is the best policy’.

It can’t be denied—and it never

denied—that the plan

of life that enables us to carry some knowledge and virtue

into the after-life is the plan with the best chance to ensure

contentment in this life; yet few people act according to this

principle. This sober conviction is swept aside by present

pleasure or present power. . . . How few—how very few!—have

enough foresight or resolution to endure a small evil at the

moment so as to avoid a greater evil hereafter.

Woman in particular, whose virtue is built on changeable

prejudices, seldom attains to this greatness of mind; so

that she becomes the slave of her own feelings and is thus

easily subjugated by the feelings of others. When it is thus

degraded, her reason—her misty reason!—is employed in

polishing her chains rather than breaking them. I have

indignantly heard women argue along the same lines as men,

and adopt the sentiments that treat them as animals, doing

this with all the stubborn persistence of ignorance. I shall

illustrate this assertion with a few examples.

[MW then brieﬂy discusses things that had been said

about women by three women: these discussions add noth-

ing to what she has already said, and they are mostly omitted

here. The women in question are

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

Hester Piozzi

, who before her second marriage was the Mrs

Thrale who is still remembered for her long, close friendship

with Samuel Johnson.

Baroness de Staël

, who has been described as ‘the ﬁrst

woman of Europe’; prominent for literary and political ac-

tivities, and for her personal life—one of her lovers was

Talleyrand. As a young woman she had written a tribute to

Rousseau, and that is what MW fastens on here.

Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis

, wife of an aristocrat who was

beheaded during the Terror; author of, among other things,

books for children. MW’s main complaint concerns Madame

Genlis’s ‘absurd manner of making parental authority sup-

plant reason’; and she also throws in this: ‘I shall pass

over her vehement argument in favour of the eternity of

future punishments, because I blush to think that a human

being should ever argue vehemently in such a cause. She

concludes this section with a tribute to:]

Catherine Macaulay

, who is certainly the woman of the

greatest abilities that this country has ever produced. Yet

she has been allowed to die without sufﬁcient respect being

paid to her memory. But posterity will be more just, and

will remember that Catharine Macaulay was an example of

intellectual acquirements supposed to be incompatible with

the weakness of her sex. No sex appears in her style of

writing, for it is like the sense it conveys, strong and clear.

I won’t say that she has a ‘masculine’ understanding,

because I don’t accept that there is anything masculine

about reason; but I contend that her understanding was

sound and that her judgment—the mature fruit of profound

thinking—was a proof that a woman can acquire

judgment

in the full extent of that word. . . . She writes with sober

energy and tightness of argument; yet her sympathy and

benevolence draw us to her side, and the vital heat of her

arguments that forces the reader to weigh them.

When I ﬁrst thought of writing the present work, I antic-

ipated Mrs Macaulay’s approval with a little of the hopeful

eagerness that it has been the business of my life to suppress;

then I heard that she had died—hearing this with the sickly

spasm of disappointed hope and the steady seriousness of

regret.

5: Chesterﬁeld

. . . .Lord Chesterﬁeld’s

Letters to his Son

must not be silently

passed over. Not that I mean to analyse his unmanly,

immoral system, or even to select any of the useful shrewd

remarks that occur in his letters. No, all I intend to offer are a

few thoughts about the purpose that the author says the let-

ters have, namely

the art of acquiring an early knowledge

of the world

. This is an art that

•

preys secretly, like the

worm in the bud, on the

young person’s

expanding powers,

and

•

turns to poison the abundant juices that should mount

with vigour in the youthful frame, inspiring warm affections

and great resolves.

[There is no further mention of Chesterﬁeld, by

name or description, in this work.]

·AGAINST EARLY EDUCATION IN THE WAYS OF THE WORLD·

‘For everything there is a season’, says the wise man

[Eccle-

siastes 3:1]

; and who would look for the fruits of autumn

during the genial months of spring? But this is mere

rhetoric

on my part

, and I mean to

reason

with those

worldly-wise instructors who, instead of cultivating the

young person’s

judgment, instil prejudices and

•

harden the

heart that gradual experience would only have

•

cooled. An

early confrontation with human inﬁrmities—what is called

‘knowledge of the world’—is in my view the surest way to

shrink the heart and dampen the natural youthful ardour

which produces not only great talents but great virtues. The

vain attempt to bring forth the fruit of experience before the

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

sapling has come into leaf only exhausts its strength and

prevents it from taking on a natural form. . . . Tell me, you

who have studied the human mind, isn’t it a strange way to

ﬁx principles by showing young people that principles are

seldom stable? And how can they be strengthened by habits

when they are shown examples in which the habits work

out badly? Why is the ardour of youth thus to be damped,

and the luxuriance of imagination cut right back? It’s true

that this dry caution

about how badly people sometimes

behave

· may

guard a character from worldly mischances, but

certainly will

rule out excellence in virtue and in knowledge.

The stumbling-block thrown across every path by suspicion

will prevent any vigorous exertions of genius

[see Glossary]

benevolence, and life will be stripped of its most alluring

charm long before its calm evening when man should retire

to contemplation for comfort and support.

A young man who has grown up in a family who are his

friends, and has stored his mind with as much theoretical

knowledge as can be acquired by reading and the natural

reﬂections that youthful outbursts of animal spirits and

instinctive feelings inspire, will enter the world with warm

and erroneous

expectations. But this seems to be the course

of nature; and in morals as well as in works of taste we

should obey nature’s sacred pointers, and not presume to

lead when we ought humbly to follow.

Few people act from principle; the grand springs of action

are present feelings and early habits; but the feelings would

be deadened, and the habits turned into rusting fetters, if

young people were shown the world just as it is. What will

make them uncensorious and forgiving is the knowledge of

mankind and of their own hearts that can be slowly obtained

through experience. If they have that, they will see their

fellow creatures as frail beings, like themselves, condemned

to struggle with human inﬁrmities; sometimes displaying the

light side of their character and sometimes the dark, giving

rise to alternate feelings of love and disgust. But the

early

warning

system guards them against their fellow creatures,

as against beasts of prey, until every enlarged social feeling

is eradicated, i.e. until their humanity was eradicated.

In life, on the other hand, as we gradually discover the

imperfections of our own nature we also discover virtues; and

various circumstances attach us to our fellow creatures when

we mix with them and view the same objects—circumstances

that are never thought of in acquiring a hasty unnatural

knowledge of the world

such as Lord Chesterﬁeld’s in-

doctrination

. We see a folly swell into a vice by almost

imperceptible degrees, and we pity the person while we

also blame him or her; but, if the hideous monster—

the

vice

—burst suddenly on our sight, our fear and disgust

would make us more severe than man ought to be, and might

lead us in our blind zeal to put ourselves in God’s place and

pronounce damnation on our fellow mortals, forgetting that

we can’t read

•

their hearts and that we have seeds of the

same vices lurking in

•

our own.

We expect more from instruction (I repeat) than mere

instruction can produce. Instead of preparing young people

to confront life’s evils with dignity, and to acquire wisdom

and virtue through the use of their own faculties, precepts

are heaped on precepts and blind obedience to them is

required, when conviction should arise from the use of

reason.

Suppose, for instance, that a young person in the ﬁrst

ardour of friendship

deiﬁes

the beloved object

[i.e. regards

him or her as a god]

—what harm can arise from this mistaken

enthusiastic attachment?

It may indeed be better than

merely harmless, because

it may be necessary for virtue to

appear ﬁrst in a

•

human form to impress youthful hearts;

the

•

ideal model, which a more mature and elevated mind

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

looks up to and shapes for itself, would elude their sight. ‘He

who loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he

love God?’ asked the wisest of men [1 John 4:20].. . . .

Our trees are now allowed to spread with wild luxuriance,

and we don’t expect by force to combine the majestic marks

of time with youthful graces; rather, we wait patiently until

the trees have driven their roots down deep and braved many

a storm. Well, then, is the mind. . . .to be treated with less

respect? To argue from analogy: everything around us is

in a progressive state; and when an unwelcome knowledge

of life gives us a sense of having had almost enough of

life, and we discover by the natural course of things that

everything that happens under the sun is vanity

[Ecclesiastes

1:14]

, we are drawing near to the awe-inspiring close of the

drama. The days of activity and hope are over, and as for

the opportunities that our early years gave us for advancing

in the scale of intelligence—we have nearly reached their

bottom line. A knowledge of the futility of life is very useful

at this late stage of our lives—or earlier, if it is obtained

through experience. Useful because it is natural; but when

a frail

young, inexperienced

being is shown the follies and

vices of man so as to teach him to

•

guard prudently against

the common casualties of life by

•

sacriﬁcing his heart—that’s

the wisdom of this world, contrasted with the nobler fruit of

piety and experience.

·THE BELIEF IN LIFE AFTER DEATH: ITS EFFECTS ON OUR

THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS·

I will venture a paradox. . . .: if men were born only to form

a circle of life and death, it would be wise to take every

possible step to make life happy. Moderation in every pursuit

would then be supreme wisdom; and the prudent voluptuary

[= ‘the sexually energetic person who takes care of his own interests]

might enjoy a degree of contentment although he didn’t

cultivate his understanding or keep his heart pure. If we were

mortal, prudence would be true wisdom; or, to put the point

more explicitly, prudence would yield the greatest portion

of happiness, considering the whole of life; but knowledge

about anything other than the conveniences of life would be

a curse,

or at any rate the pursuit of it would be a curse, as

I now proceed to explain·.

Why should we injure our health by close study? The

exalted pleasure that intellectual pursuits provide would

hardly compensate for the hours of exhaustion that follow,

especially if we take into account the doubts and disap-

pointments that cloud our researches. Every inquiry ends

with empty hands and annoyance, because the cause that

we particularly wanted to discover recedes before us as we

advance, like the horizon. . . . Yet, disappointed as we are in

our researches, the mind is strengthened through exercise,

perhaps becoming strong enough to comprehend the answers

which, at another stage of existence, it may receive to the

anxious questions it asked

back in its earthly life

when

the understanding with feeble wing was ﬂuttering round the

visible effects ·and hoping· to dive into the hidden cause.

The passions also, the winds of life, would be useless or

even harmful if the substance that composes our thinking

being died with our bodies. The appetites would meet all

our earthly needs and would produce more moderate and

permanent happiness

than our passions do

. But the

powers of the soul

that are of little use in this life, and probably disturb

our animal pleasures even while conscious dignity

makes us glory in having them,

prove that

this

life is merely an education, a state of

infancy, to which the only hopes worth cherishing should

not be sacriﬁced. The conclusion I draw from this is that

we ought to have a precise idea of what we want to attain

by education.

•

The immortality of the soul is contradicted

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

by the

educational

activities of many people who ﬁrmly

announce that they believe in

•

it!

If what you primarily want

for your child

is ease and

prosperity on earth, leaving the after-life to provide for itself,

then you are acting prudently in giving your child an early

insight into the weaknesses of human nature. You may not

turn him into a vicious scoundrel, but don’t think that he

will stick to more than the letter of the law after taking in at

a very early age a view of human nature as very low-down;

nor will he think he needs to rise much above the common

standard. He may avoid gross vices, because ‘honesty is the

best policy’, but he will never aim at attaining great virtues.

The example of writers and artists will illustrate this remark.

‘It is always wise to regulate one’s passions’—this has

been thought to be an axiom in morals, but I think it is

a dogmatic assertion made by men who have coolly seen

mankind through the medium of books. And I don’t believe

it: I say in direct contradiction to it that the regulation of the

passions is

not

always wisdom. On the contrary, one reason

why men have better judgment and more endurance than

women is that they give a freer scope to the grand passions,

and by more frequently going astray they enlarge their minds.

If then their use of their own reason leads them to settle

on some stable principle, they have probably to thank the

force of their passions

•

nourished by

false

views of life and

permitted to jump across the boundary that guarantees

contentment. If at the start of life we could soberly survey

the scenes before us as. . . .and see everything in its true

colours, how could the passions get enough strength to

unfold the faculties?

Let me now, as from a mountain-top, survey the world

stripped of its false delusive charms. The clear atmosphere

lets me to see each object in its true point of view, and I have

no passions. I am as calm as the prospect on a morning

when the mists are slowly dispersing and silently unveiling

the beauties of nature, refreshed by rest.

What will the world look like now? I rub my eyes and

think perhaps that I am just awaking from a lively dream.

I see the sons and daughters of men pursuing shadows,

and anxiously squandering their powers to feed passions

that have no adequate object. . . .

[In case you are interested, that last ellipsis replaces the words:

—if the very excess of these blind impulses pampered by that

lying, yet constantly-trusted guide, the imagination, did not, by

preparing them for some other state, render short sighted mor-

tals wiser without their own concurrence; or, what comes to the

same thing, when they were pursuing some imaginary present

good.

The two pages on the view from the mountain-top have a lot of that sort

of obscurity, and are omitted from this version except for the striking

half-sentence with which they end:]

. . . the governing passion

implanted in us by the Author of all good, to call forth and

strengthen the faculties of each individual, and enable it to

attain all the experience that an infant can obtain, who does

certain things, it cannot tell why.

I descend from my mountain-top, and mixing with my

fellow creatures I feel myself being hurried along the common

stream; ambition, love, hope, and fear exert their usual

power, although we are convinced by reason that their

present and most attractive promises are only lying dreams.

But if the cold hand of circumspection

[= ‘cautiously looking

around’]

had damped each warm feeling before it had left any

permanent mark or ﬁxed some habit, what could be expected

other than selﬁsh prudence and reason barely rising above

instinct? Anyone who has read with a philosophical eye

Dean Swift’s disgusting description of the Yahoos, and his

insipid account of the Houyhnhnms, must see the futility

of degrading the passions or making man settle for being

merely contented.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt

The youth should

act

. If he had the experience of a grey

head, he would be ﬁtter for death than life; his virtues,

residing in his head rather than his heart, could produce

nothing great; and his understanding, prepared for

•

this

world, wouldn’t embark on noble ﬂights showing that it had

a right to

•

a better ·world·.

Besides, you can’t give a young person a just view of life;

he must have struggled with his own passions before he

can estimate the force of the temptation that betrayed his

brother into vice. Those who are entering life see the world

from such a different point of view from that of those who

are departing that they can seldom think alike, unless the

unﬂedged reason of the former never attempted a solitary

ﬂight.

When we hear of some daring crime, it comes full upon

us in the deepest shade of wickedness and raises our in-

dignation; but the eye that saw the darkness gradually

thicken—

i.e. saw the psychological process that led to

the commission of the crime’

—must observe it with more

compassionate forbearance. The world can’t be seen by

an unmoved spectator: we must mix in the throng, and

feel as men feel, before we can judge of their feelings. In

short, if we mean to live in the world in order to grow

wiser and better, and not merely to enjoy the good things

of life, we must acquire a knowledge of others at the same

time that we become acquainted with ourselves—knowledge

acquired any other way only hardens the heart and puzzles

the understanding.

I may be told that knowledge acquired in this way is

sometimes purchased at too high a price. I can only answer

that I very much doubt whether any knowledge can be

acquired without labour and sorrow; and those who wish

to spare their children both shouldn’t complain if they are

neither wise nor virtuous. All the parents aimed at was to

make their children prudent; and prudence, early in life,

is simply the cautious craft of ignorant self-love. I have

observed that young people to whose education particular

attention has been paid have usually been very superﬁcial

and conceited, and far from pleasing in any respect; that is

because they had neither the unsuspecting warmth of youth

nor the cool depth of age. I can’t help thinking that the main

cause of this unnatural condition is the hasty premature

instruction that leads them to repeat, conﬁdently, all the

crude notions they have taken on trust, so that the careful

education they have been given makes them life-long slaves

of prejudices. . . .

[MW now offers a couple of pages on prejudices, which

she takes to be beliefs of long-standing that are held by

people who have no reasons for them. This is aimed at

theorists—she mentions Burke—who defend certain princi-

ples on the grounds that they are of great antiquity. She

closes the chapter with a brief restatement of her basic view

about education, followed by some remarks on religion:]

The senses and the imagination give a form to the char-

acter during childhood and youth; and in later years the

understanding gives ﬁrmness to the ﬁrst fair purposes of

sensibility—until virtue, arising from the clear conviction

of reason rather than the impulse of the heart,

creates a

morality that stands on a rock against which the storms of

passion beat in vain.

I hope I shan’t be misunderstood when I say that reli-

gion won’t have this condensing energy—

giving ﬁrmness,

establishing a rock

—unless it is based on reason. If it is

merely the refuge of weakness or wild fanaticism, and not a

governing principle of conduct drawn from self-knowledge

and a rational belief about the attributes of God, what can

it be expected to produce? The ‘religion’ that consists in

warming the affections and exalting the imagination is only

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 6: Effects of the early association of ideas

the poetical part

of religion

; it may give pleasure to the

individual, but it won’t make him or her a more moral being.

It may be a substitute for worldly pursuits, but

it is no

good because

it narrows the heart instead of enlarging it.

Virtue must be loved as something inherently sublime and

excellent, and not for the advantages it brings or the evils

it averts, if any great degree of excellence be expected. Men

will not become moral when they only build airy castles in

a future world to compensate for the disappointments that

they meet with in this

world

—turning their thoughts from

relative duties to religious daydreams.

Most prospects in life are harmed by the shufﬂing worldly

wisdom of men who try to blend contradictory things, forget-

ting that they can’t serve God and mammon. If you want to

make your son rich, pursue one course; if all you care about

is making him virtuous, you must take another; but don’t

imagine that you can jump across from one road to the other

without losing your way.

Chapter 6:

The effect that an early association of ideas has on the character

Educated in the enervating style recommended by the writers

I have been criticising, and being deprived by their subor-

dinate social status from recovering their lost ground, is it

surprising that women everywhere appear to be a defect in

nature? When we consider what a deﬁnite effect an early

association of ideas has on the character, is it surprising

that women neglect their understandings and turn all their

attention to their persons? [see Glossary]

Storing the mind with knowledge naturally brings great

advantages, as is obvious from the following considerations.

The association of our ideas is either habitual or instan-

taneous; and instantaneous association seems to depend

on the mind’s original temperature

[MW’s word]

rather than

on the will. When the ideas and matters of fact are once

taken in, they are stored for

subsequent

use, until some

chance happening makes the information dart into the mind

with illustrative force—this being information that has been

received at very different periods of our lives. Many recollec-

tions are like lightning: one idea assimilates and explains

another, with astonishing rapidity. I am not now talking

about the quick perception of truth which is so intuitive

that it bafﬂes research, and leaves us at a loss to discover

whether what has opened the dark cloud is

•

reminiscence or

•

thinking which we don’t detect because of its speed. Over

those

instantaneous associations we have little power: when

the mind is enriched in some way, the raw materials will

to some extent

arrange themselves

. The understanding, it

is true, may keep us from going out of drawing when we

group our thoughts, or transcribe from the imagination the

warm sketches of fancy; but the

•

animal spirits

[see Glossary]

the individual character, give the colouring. We have little

power over this

•

superﬁne electric ﬂuid, and our reason has

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 6: Effects of the early association of ideas

little control over that power! These ﬁne intractable spirits

appear to be the essence of genius, and shining in its eagle

eye they produce in the highest degree the happy energy

of associating thoughts that surprise, delight, and instruct.

These are the glowing minds that concentrate pictures for

their fellow-creatures, forcing them to take an interest in

objects reﬂected from the impassioned imagination—objects

that they hadn’t attended to in nature.

Let me explain. Most people cannot see or feel

poetically

;

they lack imagination, so they ﬂy from solitude in search of

objects they can sense; but when an author lends them his

eyes, they can see as he saw, and be entertained by images

that they couldn’t select

for themselves

, although they were

lying before them.

Education thus only supplies the man of genius with

knowledge to give variety and contrast to his associations;

but there is an habitual association of ideas that develops

along with us, and has a great effect on the moral charac-

ter of mankind. Such associations give the mind a slant

that commonly remains throughout life. So ductile is the

understanding, and yet so stubborn, that the associations

that depend on chance happenings before the body arrives

at maturity can seldom be disentangled by reason. One idea

calls up another, its old associate, and memory—faithful to

the ﬁrst impressions, especially when the intellectual powers

are not employed to cool our sensations—retraces them with

mechanical exactness.

This habitual slavery to ﬁrst impressions has a more

harmful effect on the female character than on the male,

because business and other dry employments of the under-

standing tend to deaden the feelings and break associations

that do violence to reason. But females—who are

•

turned

into women when they are mere children, and

•

brought

back to childhood when they ought to leave the go-cart

forever—haven’t enough strength of mind to erase the overlay

of art that has smothered nature.

Everything they see or hear serves to ﬁx impressions, call

up emotions, and link ideas, giving the mind its feminine

character. . . . And the ﬁrst idea-associations that are forced

on them by every surrounding object are allowed to run

wild instead of being examined.

Given how females are

educated

, how could they attain the vigour that is needed to

be able to throw off their factitious character

[= ’free themselves

from the character-traits that have been constructed for them’]

? Where

could they ﬁnd the strength to resort to reason and rise

above a system of oppression that blasts the fair promises

of spring? This cruel association of ideas, which everything

conspires to twist into all their habits of thinking (or, more

accurately, of feeling) receives new force when they begin to

act a little for themselves; for that’s when they see that their

only route to pleasure and power is through their skill in

arousing emotions in men. Besides, the ﬁrst impressions on

their minds come from

•

books that offer to instruct them,

and

•

they all teach the same lessons. It is unreasonable as

well as cruel to scold women for faults that they—educated

as they are in worse-than-Egyptian bondage—can hardly

avoid, unless there are some who have a degree of native

vigour that very few among mankind are blessed with.

[The

idea is that native vigour would be built into the person’s constitution,

making it safe from being undermined by education.]

For instance, the severest sarcasms have been levelled

against the

female

sex, ridiculing them for repeating ‘a

set of phrases learnt by rote’

[Swift]

when nothing could be

more natural, considering

•

the education they receive, and

•

the widespread opinion

that their ‘highest praise is to

obey, unargued’

[Milton]

the will of man. If they aren’t allowed

to have enough reason to govern their own conduct then

of course everything they learn must be learned by rote!

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 6: Effects of the early association of ideas

And when they are led to spend all their ingenuity on their

clothes, ‘a passion for a scarlet coat’

[Swift]

is so natural that

it never surprises me; and supposing that Pope’s summary of

their character is just, namely ‘that every woman is at heart

a rake’, why should they be bitterly censured for seeking

a congenial companion and preferring a rake to a man of

sense?

[A rake is a person—usually a man—whose way of living is

stylish and fashionable but also morally lax and dissolute.]

Rakes know how to work on women’s feelings, while the

modest merit of reasonable men has less effect on their

feelings and can’t reach their heart via the understanding,

because they—

men and women

—have few sentiments in

common.

It seems a little absurd to deny women the uncontrolled

use of their reason while still expecting them to be more

reasonable than men in their

likings

. When do men

fall in

love

with sense? When do they, with their superior powers

and advantages, turn from the person to the mind? And how

can they then expect women, who are only taught to observe

behaviour and to acquire manners rather than morals, to

despise what they have spent their lives struggling to ac-

quire? Where are they suddenly to ﬁnd judgment enough

to weigh patiently the sense of an awkward virtuous man,

when. . . .his conversation is cold and dull because it doesn’t

consist of pretty repartees or well-turned compliments? In

order to admire or esteem anything for long, we must at least

have our curiosity aroused by knowing something about it;

we can’t estimate the value of qualities and virtues that are

above our comprehension. When such a respect is felt, it

may be very sublime; and the admirer’s confused feeling of

humility may have some tendency to draw people to her;

but human love must also have cruder ingredients, and

the

woman’s

person very naturally will come in for its

share—and what a big share it usually is!

Love is to a large extent an arbitrary passion, and—like

some other stalking mischiefs—it will reign by its own author-

ity, without bringing in reason; and it’s easy to distinguish

love from esteem—the foundation of friendship—because

love is often aroused by ﬂeeting beauties and graces; though

love won’t have much energy unless something more solid

deepens the impression made by those beauties and graces,

setting the imagination to work to make the loveliest the

best.

Common passions are aroused by common qualities. Men

look for beauty and the simper of good-humoured docility;

women are captivated by easy manners—a gentlemanly man

seldom fails to please them, and their thirsty ears eagerly

drink in the suggestive nothings of politeness, while they

turn away from the unintelligible sounds of the

other

charmer—reason—however wisely he produces his charm.

When it comes to superﬁcial

•

accomplishments, the rake

certainly has the advantage; and females can form an opinion

about

•

these because this is their own ground. Rendered

gay and giddy by the whole tenor of their lives, the very look

of wisdom or of the severe graces of virtue must strike them

as gloomy, and produce a kind of restraint from which they

and the playful child

love

naturally revolt. Without taste. . . .,

which is the offspring of judgment, how can they discover

that true beauty and grace must arise from the play of the

mind? and how can they be expected to enjoy in a lover

something that they so very imperfectly possess themselves?

The sympathy that unites hearts and invites to conﬁdence

is so very faint in them that it can’t catch ﬁre and thus rise

to the level of passion. No, I repeat it, the love cherished by

such minds must have cruder fuel!

The conclusion is obvious: until women are led to exercise

their understandings, they shouldn’t be satirised for their

attachment to rakes; nor even for being rakes at heart them-

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 6: Effects of the early association of ideas

selves, when that seems to be the inevitable consequence

of their education. Those who live to please must ﬁnd their

enjoyments, their happiness, in pleasure! We never do

anything well unless we love it for its own sake—a trite

remark, but a true one.

Pretend for a moment that at some future time women

will become what I sincerely wish them to be. Then love will

acquire a more serious dignity, and be puriﬁed in its own

ﬁres; and because virtue will give true delicacy to women’s

affections they will turn with disgust from a rake. When

that time comes they will

•

reason as well as

•

feel—whereas

feeling is all they can do at present—so that it will be easy for

them to guard against surface graces, and learn to despise

•

the sensibility that had been aroused in the ways of women

and then grown stale there, the sensibility whose trade is

vice; and

•

allurement’s wanton airs. They will recollect that

the ﬂame. . . .they wanted to light up has been exhausted by

lust, and that the sated appetite, losing all taste for pure

and simple pleasures, can be aroused only by licentious

arts of variety. What satisfaction could a woman of delicacy

promise herself in a union with such a man, when the very

artlessness

[here = ‘sincerity’]

of her affection might appear

insipid?. . . . One grand truth women haven’t yet learned,

though it would do them a lot of good if they acted on it,

namely: In the choice of a husband they should not be led

astray by the qualities of a lover—because a husband, even

a wise and virtuous one, can’t remain a lover for long.

If women were more rationally educated and could take a

more comprehensive view of things, they would be content

to love only once in their lives; and after marriage calmly let

passion subside into friendship—into that tender intimacy

which is the best refuge from care. Friendship is built on

such pure, calm affections that idle jealousies aren’t allowed

•

disturb the performance of the sober duties of life or

•

take up thoughts that ought to be otherwise employed. This

is a state in which many men live, but

very

few women.

It is easy to explain this difference without recurring to a

sexual character

[i.e. without supposing that there are basic, natural

psychological differences between the sexes]

. [MW devotes the ﬁnal

two pages of this chapter to the explanation in question.

It doesn’t add any content to things she has said already,

except for this sad footnote about the fate of those ‘who have

not sufﬁcient mind to be amused by innocent pleasure’ and

who, for one reason or another, have withdrawn from the

scene of uninnocent pleasure:]

I have frequently seen this exempliﬁed in women whose

beauty could no longer be repaired. They have retired from

the noisy scenes of dissipation; but, unless they became

Methodists, the solitude of the select society of their family

connections or acquaintance has presented only a fearful

void; consequently nervous complaints and all the vapourish

train of idleness rendered them quite as useless as, and far

more unhappy than, they were when they joined the giddy

throng.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 7: Modesty comprehensively considered

Chapter 7:

Modesty comprehensively considered and not as a sexual virtue

Modesty! Sacred offspring of sensibility and reason!—true

delicacy of mind! I hope you won’t blame me if I investigate

your nature and track to its lair the mild charm, the mellow-

ing of each harsh feature of a character, that makes

lovely

something that would otherwise only inspire cold admiration.

You who smooth wisdom’s wrinkles and soften the tone of

the more elevated virtues until they all melt into humanity!

You who spread the ethereal cloud that encircles love and

heightens every beauty that it half-shades. . . . Modulate for

me the language of persuasive reason until I rouse my sex

from the ﬂowery bed on which they supinely sleep life away!

[MW is here asking modesty to be with her, so that the reasoning she is

going to present to the female sex will be found acceptable.]

. . . .In deﬁning modesty we should distinguish these two:

(1) The purity of mind that is an effect of chastity;

(2)

a simplicity of character that leads us to form a just

opinion of ourselves, equally distant from vanity or

presumption, but compatible with a lofty awareness

of our own dignity.

Modesty in sense

(2)

is the soberness of mind that teaches

a man not to think more highly of himself than he ought

to think. It should be distinguished from humility, because

humility is a kind of self-abasement. A modest man often

conceives a great plan, and tenaciously sticks to it, conscious

of his own strength, until it is crowned with success. Milton

was not arrogant when he let slip a judgment that proved

to be a prophesy; nor was General Washington arrogant

when he accepted of the command of the American forces.

[When Milton was 17 years old, someone told him he would some day

be famous, and Milton agreed. When Washington was called to lead

the revolutionary army in the American war of independence, he ﬁrmly

declared that he was not good enough for the job.]

Washington has

always been described as a modest man; but if he had been

merely

humble

he would probably have shrunk back, afraid

of trusting to himself the direction of an enterprise on which

so much depended.

A modest man is steady, a humble man is timid, and a

vain one is presumptuous—or so my observation of many

characters has led me to believe. Jesus Christ was modest,

Moses was humble, and ·the apostle· Peter was vain.

Modesty is different not only from humility but also

from bashfulness. Bashfulness is so distinct from modesty,

indeed, that the most bashful lass or raw country lout

often becomes the most impudent; for their bashfulness

is merely the instinctive timidity of ignorance, and custom

soon changes it into assurance.

·A BIT OF VERSE THAT MW PUT INTO A FOOTNOTE HERE·

Such is the country-maiden’s fright,

When ﬁrst a red-coat is in sight;

Behind the door she hides her face,

Next time at distance eyes the lace:

She now can all his terrors stand,

Nor from his squeeze withdraws her hand,

She plays familiar in his arms,

And every soldier hath his charms;

From tent to tent she spreads her ﬂame;

For custom conquers fear and shame.

(John Gay, ‘The Tame Stag’)

The shameless behaviour of the prostitutes who infest the

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 7: Modesty comprehensively considered

streets of London, causing alternate emotions of pity and

disgust, illustrate this remark. They trample on virgin

bashfulness with a sort of bravado, and glorying in their

shame they become more audaciously lewd than men. . . .ever

appear to be. But these poor ignorant wretches never had

any modesty to lose when they consigned themselves to

infamy; for modesty is a virtue, not a quality. No, they were

only bashful, shame-faced innocents; and when they lost

their innocence their shame-facedness was roughly brushed

off; whereas a

virtue

, if sacriﬁced to passion, would have left

some traces in the mind to make us respect the grand ruin.

Purity of mind—i.e. the genuine delicacy that is the only

virtuous support of chastity—is near kin to the reﬁnement

of humanity that resides only in cultivated minds. It is

something nobler than innocence; it is the delicacy of reﬂec-

tion, and not the coyness of ignorance. The reservedness

of reason—which like habitual cleanliness is seldom seen

in any great degree unless the soul is active—can easily be

distinguished from rustic shyness or wanton skittishness;

and far from being incompatible with knowledge, it is its

fairest fruit. Someone who wrote this had a gross idea of

modesty:

The lady who asked ‘Can women be instructed in the

modern system of botany, consistently with female

delicacy?’ was accused of ridiculous prudery; but if

she had asked me I would certainly have answered

‘No, they cannot’.

Thus is the fair book of knowledge to be shut with an ever-

lasting seal! On reading things like that I have reverentially

lifted up my eyes and heart to God and said, ‘O my Father,

have you by the very constitution of my nature forbidden me

to seek you in the fair forms of truth?’. . . .

A woman who has dedicated much of her time to purely

intellectual pursuits, and whose affections have been exer-

cised by humane plans of usefulness, must as a natural

consequence have more purity of mind than the ignorant

beings whose time and thoughts have been occupied by gay

pleasures or schemes to conquer hearts.

The regulation of

one’s behaviour is not modesty, though those who carefully

obey rules of decorum are generally described as ‘modest

women’. Make the heart clean, let it expand and feel for

everything human instead of being narrowed by selﬁsh pas-

sions; and let the mind frequently contemplate subjects that

exercise the understanding without heating the imagination;

and artless modesty will give the ﬁnishing touches to the

picture.

Anyone who sees herself as immortal

[see Glossary]

will

respect, as a sacred temple, the body that enshrines such

an improvable soul. True love also spreads this kind of

mysterious sanctity around the beloved object, making the

lover most modest when in her presence. . . .

As a sex, women are more chaste than men, and as

modesty is the effect of chastity they may deserve to have

this virtue—

modesty

—ascribed to them. . . ., but I must be

allowed to add a hesitating if, ·revising the above statement

to ‘

modesty is the effect of chastity

. . . ’; because I am not

sure whether chastity

will

produce

•

modesty, though it may

produce

•

propriety of conduct, when it is merely a respect

I have conversed with medical men on anatomical subjects, conversing as man with man; and I have discussed the proportions of the human body

with ·male· artists; but I met with such modesty that I was never reminded by word or look of

•

my sex or of

•

the absurd rules that make modesty a

pharisaical cloak for weakness. And I am convinced that in the pursuit of knowledge women would never be insulted by sensible men—and rarely by

men of any description—if they didn’t by mock modesty remind them that they were women. . . . Men are not always men in the company of women;

and women wouldn’t always remember that they are women if they were allowed to acquire more understanding.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 7: Modesty comprehensively considered

for the opinion of the world. (The immodest behaviour of

many married women who are nevertheless faithful to their

husbands’ beds will illustrate this remark.). . . . Indeed, my

experience and my reason lead me to expect to ﬁnd more

modesty among men than among women, simply because

men exercise their understandings more than women do.

But when it comes to propriety of behaviour, women

obviously have the advantage (except for one class of females).

What can be more disgusting than that impudent dross of

‘gallantry’, thought to be so manly, which makes many men

stare insultingly at every female they meet? Is this respect

for the

female

sex? No. This loose behaviour shows such

habitual depravity, such weakness of mind, that we can’t

expect to see much public or private virtue until both men

and women grow more modest. . . .and treat each other with

respect—I mean the modest respect of humanity and

fellow-feeling, not the libidinous mockery of gallantry or the

insolent condescension of protectorship.

The sexual distinction respecting modesty is carried still

further, and woman—weak woman!—whose education has

made her the slave of sensibility, is required on the most

difﬁcult occasions to resist that sensibility. ‘Can anything’,

says Knox, ‘be more absurd than keeping women in a state

of ignorance, and yet vehemently insisting that they resist

temptation?’ Thus, when virtue or honour make it proper to

check a passion, the burden is thrown on the weaker shoul-

ders, contrary to reason and true modesty which should at

least make the self-denial mutual. . . .

When men boast of their victories over women, what

are they boasting of? Truly the creature of sensibility was

surprised by her sensibility into folly—into vice; and the

dreadful reckoning falls heavily on her own weak head, when

reason wakes. Where will you ﬁnd comfort, forlorn and

disconsolate one? The man who ought to have directed your

reason and supported your weakness has betrayed you! In a

dream of passion you consented to wander through ﬂowery

lawns and, carelessly stepping over the precipice to which

your ‘guide’ lured you, you awake from your dream and

ﬁnd yourself faced by a sneering, frowning world. You are

alone in a wasteland, for the man who triumphed in your

weakness is now pursuing new conquests; but for you there

is no redemption on this side the grave!. . . .

But if the sexes are really to live in a state of warfare—if

that’s what nature has indicated—then let men act nobly,

or let pride whisper to them that when they merely conquer

sensibility that is a tawdry victory. The real conquest is that

over affection not taken by surprise—when like Héloise a

woman deliberately gives up all the world for love. I am not

discussing the wisdom or virtue of such a sacriﬁce; I merely

contend that it was a sacriﬁce to affection and not merely

to sensibility, though she had her share of that. I call her a

modest woman. . . .

Now for another view of the subject, this time purely

about women.

Mistaken notions of modesty lead people to tell children

ridiculous falsehoods

that tend very early to inﬂame their

Children very early see cats with their kittens, birds with their young, etc. Then why shouldn’t they be told that their mothers carry and nourish

them in the same way? As there would then be no appearance of mystery, they wouldn’t give any more thought to the subject. Truth can always

be told to children if it is told gravely; but it is the immodesty of affected modesty that does all the harm—it is a smoke that vainly tries to obscure

certain objects but only succeeds in heating the imagination. If indeed children could be kept entirely from improper company, we need never talk

to them about such subjects; but as this is impossible, it is best to tell them the truth, especially as such information won’t impress itself on their

imaginations because they won’t be much interested in it.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 7: Modesty comprehensively considered

imaginations and set their little minds to work on topics

that nature never intended them to think about until their

bodies arrived at

•

some degree of maturity. At

•

that stage,

the passions naturally begin to take place of the senses as

instruments to unfold the understanding and form the moral

character.

Girls are ﬁrst spoiled in nurseries and boarding schools,

especially the latter. A number of girls sleep in the same

room, and wash together. I wouldn’t want to contaminate

an innocent creature’s mind by instilling false delicacy, or

the indecent prudish notions that naturally arise from early

cautions regarding the other sex; but I would be very anxious

to prevent their acquiring indelicate or immodest habits;

and as many girls have learned very indelicate tricks from

ignorant servants, it is very improper to mix the girls in this

indiscriminate way.

The fact is that women are in general too familiar with

each other, which leads to that gross degree of familiarity

that so frequently renders the marriage state unhappy. Why

are sisters, female intimates, or ladies and their waiting

women so grossly familiar as to forget the respect that one

human creature owes to another? The squeamish delicacy

that shrinks from the most disgusting ofﬁces—

helping with

urination and defecation

—when affection or humanity lead

us to care for a sick person is despicable. But why are

healthy women more familiar with each other than men are,

when they (the women) boast of their greater ‘delicacy’? I

have never been able to answer this.

In order to preserve health and beauty I earnestly recom-

mend frequent ablutions (I’m putting this in words that won’t

offend the fastidious ear); and girls ought to be taught to

wash and dress alone; and if they need some little assistance,

they shouldn’t ask for it until they have ﬁnished that part

of the business that ought never to be done before a fellow-

creature because it is an insult to the majesty of human

nature. Not because of modesty, but because of

decency

. . . .

[This is followed by about two pages on the subject of

women’s tendency to be too ‘familiar’ with one another,

lacking in ‘reserve’ in a way that leads to talk and actions

that are ‘disgusting’. MW continues:] You may think that

I am laying too great a stress on personal reserve; but it is

always the hand-maid of modesty. If I were asked ‘What are

the graces that ought to adorn beauty?’ I would immediately

exclaim

•

cleanliness,

•

neatness, and

•

personal reserve. I

hope it is obvious that the reserve I am talking about is

equally necessary in both sexes. . . .

[This modulates into a couple of pages on the importance

of being clean, neatly dressed, brisk in manner. Among other

things, MW reports that she has ‘often felt hurt, not to say

disgusted’ when a friend she has arranged to meet in the

morning shows up in a state showing that she had stayed

in bed until the last possible moment. Eventually she works

her way back to the announced topic of this chapter:]

I need hardly add that I consider as

immodest

all those

airs of grown women. . . .to which truth is sacriﬁced, to secure

the heart of a husband or rather to force him to be still a

lover when nature (if left alone) would have replaced love

by friendship. The tenderness that a man will feel for the

mother of his children is an excellent substitute for the

ardour of unsatisﬁed passion; but it is indelicate, not to say

immodest, for a woman to prolong that ardour by feigning

an unnatural coldness of constitution.

[This is one of several

places where MW implies that a man’s wish for sexual relations with

his partner can be intensiﬁed by her pretending not to be interested.]

Women as well as men ought to have the common appetites

and passions of their nature; they are animal-like only when

not controlled by reason; but the obligation to control them

is the duty of mankind, not of one sex rather than the

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 7: Modesty comprehensively considered

other. In these respects, nature can safely be left to itself; let

women acquire knowledge and humanity, and love will teach

them modesty. There is no need for disgusting and futile

falsehoods, because calculated rules of behaviour impose

only on shallow observers; a man of sense soon sees through

such an affectation and despises it. . . .

My sisters. if you really want to possess modesty, you

must remember that the possession of

any

virtue is incom-

patible with ignorance and vanity! You must acquire the

soberness of mind that can only come from the performance

of duties and the pursuit of knowledge; without it, you will

remain in a doubtful dependent situation, and you will be

loved only while you are beautiful! The downcast eye, the

rosy blush, the retiring grace, are all proper in their season;

but modesty is the child of reason, and can’t co-exist for

long with the sensibility that is not tempered by reﬂection.

Besides, if you devote your lives to love, even innocent

love, your hearts will be too soft to provide for modesty the

tranquil retreat where she delights to dwell in close union

with humanity.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 8: Sexual notions about reputation

Chapter 8:

Morality undermined by sexual notions of the importance of a good reputation

I realized long ago

•

that advice about behaviour and about

all the various ways of preserving a good reputation—advice

that has been so strenuously forced on the female world—is a

glittering poison that forms a crust around morality and eats

away its substance. And

•

that this measuring of shadows

produces a false calculation, because the length of a shadow

depends so much on the height of the sun and other external

circumstances.

The easy false behaviour of a courtier—where does it come

from? From the fact that the courtier needs dependents, so

that he has to learn the arts of

•

denying without giving

offence, and of

•

evasively feeding hope with the chameleon’s

food.

[The chameleon’s tongue moves faster than the eye can see; so

it used to be said that the chameleon feeds on air.]

That is how

politeness plays with truth and—eating away the sincerity

and humanity natural to man— produces the ﬁne gentleman.

Women in the same way acquire, from a supposed neces-

sity, an equally artiﬁcial way of behaving. But you can’t

with impunity play with truth, because the experienced

dissembler eventually becomes the dupe of his own arts, and

can no longer quickly perceive common truths, which means

that he loses his common sense. Those are truths that are

constantly accepted as true by the unsophisticated mind,

though it might not have had enough energy to discover them

itself when local prejudices got in the way. Most people take

their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of using their

own minds, and these lazy beings naturally adhere to the

letter of the law rather its spirit, whether the law be divine

or human. Some author (I forget who) wrote: ‘Women don’t

care about things that only heaven sees.’ Why indeed should

they? It is the eye of man that they have been taught to

dread—and if they can lull their Argus to sleep, they seldom

think of heaven or themselves, because their reputation is

safe; and it is not

•

chastity but

•

reputation that they are

working to keep free from spot, not as a virtue but to preserve

their status in the world.

[Argus in Greek mythology was a guardian

god with a hundred eyes.]

To prove the truth of this remark, I need only mention

the intrigues of married women, particularly in the upper

social ranks and in countries where women are suitably

married according to their respective ranks by their parents.

If an innocent girl become a prey to love [i.e. if she has a sexual

affair before marriage]

, she is degraded forever, even if her mind

wasn’t polluted by the arts that married women practise

under the convenient cloak of

marriage

; and she hasn’t

violated any duty except her duty to respect herself. In

contrast with that, if a married woman is a false and faithless

wife, she breaks a most sacred contract and becomes a

cruel mother. If her husband still has an affection for her,

the tricks she must use to deceive him will make her the

most contemptible of human beings; and the contrivances

necessary to preserve appearances will keep her mind in that

childish or vicious tumult that destroys all its energy. . . .

I have known a number of women who, if they did not

love their husbands, loved nobody else,

devoting themselves entirely to vanity and dissipation,

neglecting every domestic duty, even squandering the

money that should have been saved for their helpless

younger children,

and priding themselves on their spotless reputation, as if

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 8: Sexual notions about reputation

the whole extent of their duty as wives and mothers was to

preserve that. . . .

It would have been better if superﬁcial moralists had said

less about behaviour and outward observances,

and more

about the underlying frame of mind

; for unless virtue of

any kind is built on knowledge, it will produce only a kind

of insipid decency. Yet respect for the opinion of the world

has been explicitly claimed to be woman’s principal duty, for

Rousseau declares:

Reputation is as indispensable as chastity. A man,

secure in his own good conduct, depends only on

himself, and can brave public opinion; but a woman

in behaving well performs only half her duty; the other

half is to be well thought of, because

•

what is thought

of her is as important to her as

•

what she really is.

So the system of a woman’s education should in this

respect be directly contrary to that of men’s education.

Opinion is virtue’s grave among the men but its throne

among women.

It is strictly logical to infer from this that virtue depending on

opinion is merely worldly, and that it is the virtue of a being

to whom reason has been denied. But even with respect

to the opinion of the world I am convinced that this class

of reasoners—

ones who think as Rousseau did about the

matter·—are mistaken.

This regard for reputation, independent of its being one of

the natural rewards of virtue, arose from a cause that I have

already deplored as the grand source of female depravity,

namely the impossibility of regaining respectability by a

return to virtue, although men preserve theirs

during

the

indulgence of vice. This made it natural for women to try to

preserve something that when lost can never be regained,

namely reputation for chastity; this became the one thing

needed by the female sex, and the concern for it swallowed up

every other concern. But. . . .neither religion nor virtue, when

they reside in the heart, require such a childish attention to

mere ceremonies, because the behaviour must on the whole

be proper when the motive is pure.

To support my opinion I can produce very respectable

authority; and the authority of a cool reasoner ought to have

weight—not to establish an opinion but to make one take it

into consideration. Dr Smith observes:

By some very extraordinary and unlucky circum-

stance, a good man may come to be suspected of

a crime of which he was altogether incapable, and on

that account be most unjustly exposed for the rest of

his life to the horror and aversion of mankind. By an

accident of this kind he may be said to ‘lose his all’

despite his integrity and justice, in the same way that

a cautious man may be ruined by an earthquake or a

ﬂood, despite all the care he has taken. Accidents of

the ﬁrst kind are rarer—more contrary to the common

course of things—than accidents of the second kind;

and it still remains true that the practice of truth,

justice and humanity is a certain and almost infallible

method of acquiring what those virtues chieﬂy aim at,

the conﬁdence and love of those we live with. A person

may be easily misrepresented with regard to a partic-

ular action; but it is hardly possible that he should be

misrepresented with regard to the general tenor of his

conduct. An innocent man may be believed to have

done wrong; but this won’t often happen. On the other

hand, the established opinion that his behaviour is

innocent will often lead us to absolve him in cases

where he has really been at fault. . . .

[Adam Smith, The

Theory of Moral Sentiments]

I entirely agree with this writer, for I believe that few people of

either sex were ever despised for certain vices without deserv-

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 8: Sexual notions about reputation

ing to be despised. I’m not talking about the short-term libel

that hangs over someone’s character, like a dense November

morning fog over London, until it gradually subsides before

the common light of day; my point is just that the daily

conduct of the majority of people stamps their character with

the hallmark of truth. The clear light, shining day after day,

quietly refutes the ignorant suspicion or malicious tale that

has thrown dirt on a pure character. . . .

Many people. . . .obtain a better reputation than, strictly

speaking, they deserve, for if you work hard enough you

will reach your goal in almost any race. Those who strive

only for this paltry prize—like the Pharisees who prayed at

street-corners so as to be seen by men—do indeed get the

reward they seek, for the heart of man cannot be read by

man! But the fair fame that is naturally reﬂected by good

actions, when the man is trying only to do the right thing,

regardless of the lookers-on, is in general not only more true

but more sure.

It’s true that there are trials when the good man must

appeal to God from the injustice of man, and to the accom-

paniment of the. . . .hissing of envy, erect a shelter in his own

mind to retire into until the rumour has passed; and indeed

the darts of undeserved blame may pierce an innocent tender

bosom with many sorrows; but these are all exceptions to

general rules. And it is according to these common laws that

human behaviour ought to be regulated. . . .

So I venture to assert that after a man has reached

maturity, the general outline of his character in the world

is just, allowing for the before mentioned exceptions to the

rule. I don’t deny that a prudent, worldly-wise man with

only negative virtues and qualities may sometimes obtain a

smoother reputation than a wiser or a better man. . . . But the

hills and dales, clouds and sunshine, that are conspicuous

in the virtues of great men set each other off; and though

they afford envious weakness a better target to shoot at, the

real character will still work its way into the light even if it is

bespattered by weak affection or ingenious malice.

. . . .Morality is very insidiously undermined in the female

world by the attention being given to the

•

show instead of to

the

•

substance. This turns a simple thing into something

strangely complicated; indeed, sometimes virtue and its

shadow are set at variance. We might never have heard of

Lucretia if she had she died to preserve her chastity instead

of her reputation.

[A heroine of early Rome who, according to legend,

killed herself after being raped.]

If we really deserve to think well of

ourselves we shall commonly be respected in the world; but if

we pant after higher improvement and higher attainments, it

is not sufﬁcient to view ourselves as we suppose that

•

others

view us, though this has been ingeniously argued—by Adam

Smith—to be the foundation of our moral sentiments. Why

not? Because each bystander may have his own prejudices

in addition to those of his age or country. We should rather

try to view ourselves as we suppose that

•

God views us. . . .

[We are then given two pages of ﬂowery prose on the

theme of an honest person examining himself in the presence

of God, seeing that he is far from perfect, and being led

by this discovery to a less harshly blaming attitude to his

fellow-mortals. Here is a one-sentence sample of the style of

this passage: ‘Virtues, unobserved by men, drop their balmy

fragrance at this cool hour, and the thirsty land, refreshed

by the pure streams of comfort that suddenly gush out, is

crowned with smiling verdure; this is the living green on

which that eye may look with complacency that is too pure

to behold iniquity!’ Eventually MW comes to the end of this

I have in mind various biographical writings, particularly Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 8: Sexual notions about reputation

‘reverie’, as she calls it, and gets back to her proper topic:]

The leading principles that run through all my discus-

sions would make it unnecessary to go on about this subject

if it weren’t for the fact that a constant attention to keep

the

varnish

of the character fresh and in good condition is

often taught as the sum total of female duty; the fact that

moral obligations are often pushed into second place by

rules to regulate behaviour and preserve reputation. But

with regard to reputation the attention is conﬁned to a single

virtue—chastity. If a woman’s ‘honour’—as it is absurdly

called—is safe, she may neglect every social duty; even ruin

her family by gambling and extravagance; yet still present a

shame-free front—for truly she is an honourable woman!

Mrs. Macaulay has rightly remarked that ‘there is only

one fault that a woman of honour can’t commit without being

punished’. She then justly and humanely adds:

This has given rise to the foolish observation that

the ﬁrst fault against chastity in woman has a rad-

ical power to deprave the character. But no such

frail beings come out of the hands of nature. The

human mind is built of nobler materials than to be

so easily corrupted; and with all their disadvantages

of situation and education, women seldom become

entirely abandoned until they are thrown into a state

of desperation by the venomous rancour of their own

sex.

But in proportion as this regard for the reputation of

chastity is prized by women, it is despised by men: and the

two extremes are equally destructive to morality.

[Two paragraphs on ‘beastly’ over-eating by the rich, and

their lack of shame about it. Then from talking about this

‘appetite’ she moves to another:]

The depravity of the appetite that brings the sexes to-

gether has had a still more fatal effect. Nature must always

be the standard of taste, the gauge of appetite—yet nature is

grossly insulted by the voluptuary.

I’ll discuss this

, leaving

the reﬁnements of love out of the question. Nature makes

the gratiﬁcation of this appetite. . . .a natural and imperious

law to preserve the species; and by so doing, it exalts the

appetite and mixes a little

(1)

mind and affection into

(2)

the sensual appetite. The

(1)

feelings of a parent mingling

with

(2)

a merely animal instinct give the latter dignity; and

because the man and the woman often interact on account

of the child, a mutual interest and affection is aroused by

the exercise of a shared sympathy. So mothers, having

necessarily some duty to fulﬁl more noble than to adorn

their persons, would not contentedly be the slaves of casual

appetite. Yet many women are just that: they are, literally

speaking, standing dishes to which every

sexual

glutton

can have access.

I may be told that bad as this sexual promiscuity is,

it affects only one cursed part of the sex—cursed for the

salvation of the rest. Well, it’s easy to prove that it is never

right to allow a small evil in order to produce a greater good;

but that’s not the end of the matter. The moral character

and peace of mind of the more chaste part of the sex is

undermined by the conduct of the very women to whom

they allow no refuge from guilt. These are women whom the

chaste women inexorably consign to the practice of skills

and tricks that lure their husbands from them and debauch

their sons. And they also force the modest women (who may

be surprised to read this!) to become to some extent like

themselves. For I will venture to assert that all the causes of

female weakness or depravity that I have already discussed

branch out from one grand cause—the lack of chastity in

men.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 8: Sexual notions about reputation

[A paragraph introducing the extremely voluptuous man,

‘the lustful prowler’, and his ways of satisfying his sexual

appetite. Then:]

To satisfy this type of man, women are made systemat-

ically voluptuous, and though they may not all take their

libertinism as far as the man does, still this heartless in-

teraction with males that they allow themselves depraves

both sexes: the taste of men is vitiated, and women of

all classes naturally adapt their behaviour to gratify the

taste by which they obtain pleasure and power. In this way

women become weaker in mind and body than they ought

to be. . . .and don’t have enough strength to discharge the

ﬁrst duty of a mother; so they sacriﬁce to lasciviousness the

parental affection that ennobles instinct, and either destroy

the embryo in the womb or throw it out when it has been

born.

[MW also builds into that sentence the thesis that ‘bearing and

nursing children is one of the grand ends of women’s existence’.]

Nature

demands respect in everything, and those who violate her

laws seldom violate them with impunity. The weak enervated

women who particularly catch the attention of libertines are

unﬁt to be mothers, though they may conceive; so that the

rich sensualist who has rioted among women, spreading

depravity and misery, when he wants to perpetuate his name

receives from his wife only a half-formed being that inherits

both its father’s and mother’s weakness.

[That sentence is

verbatim MW.]

. . . .I have already remarked that men ought to maintain

the women whom they have seduced; this would be one

means of reforming female manners and

by giving disgraced

women an alternative to prostitution

stopping an abuse

that has an equally fatal effect on population and morals.

Another

means of reforming female manners

—an equally

obvious one—would be to turn the attention of woman to the

real virtue of chastity. A woman’s reputation may be white

as the driven snow, but she hasn’t much claim to respect for

her modesty if she smiles on the libertine while spurning the

victims of his lawless appetites and their own folly.

Besides, she has a taint of the same folly when she

studiously adorns her person

[see Glossary]

only to be seen by

men, to excite respectful sighs and all the idle homage of

what is called ‘innocent gallantry’. Women who really respect

virtue for its own sake won’t look for compensation in

the

coin of

vanity for the self-denial they have to practise to

preserve their reputation, nor will they associate with men

who set reputation at deﬁance.

The two sexes corrupt each other and improve each other.

I believe this to be an indisputable truth, and I extend

it to every virtue. Chastity, modesty, public spirit, and

all the noble train of virtues on which social virtue and

happiness are built, should be understood and cultivated

by all mankind—otherwise they will be cultivated to little

effect. And instead of providing vicious or idle people with

a pretext for violating some sacred duty by saying that it is

a duty for only one of the sexes, it would be wiser to show

that nature has not drawn any line here, for the unchaste

man doubly defeats the purpose of nature by rendering

women barren and destroying his own constitution, though

he avoids the shame that pursues the crime in the other

sex.

[MW is implying here that the unchaste man defeats the purpose

of nature by getting syphilis and by spreading it.]. . . .

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 9: Unnatural distinctions

Chapter 9:

The pernicious effects of the unnatural distinctions established in society

Most of the evils and vices that make this world such a

dreary scene to the contemplative mind ﬂow—as from a

poisoned fountain—from the respect paid to

property

. For

it is in the most polished society that stinking reptiles and

venomous serpents lurk under the nasty foliage; and there is

voluptuousness pampered by the still sultry air, slackening

every good disposition before it has time to ripen into virtue.

One class presses on another; for they are all aiming to

get respect on account of their property; and once they have

that

it will bring them the respect that is really due only

to talents and virtue. Men neglect their human duties, yet

are treated like demi-gods; religion is also separated from

morality by a ceremonial veil; yet men are surprised that

the world is, almost literally speaking, a den of cheats or

oppressors.

There’s a shrewd truth in the homely proverb that who-

ever the devil ﬁnds idle he will employ. And what can hered-

itary wealth and titles produce except habitual idleness?

Man is so constituted that he can attain a proper use of his

faculties only by using them, and he won’t use them unless

the wheels are ﬁrst set in motion by some kind of necessity.

Virtue also can be acquired only by the performance of one’s

duties to others; but the importance of these sacred duties

will hardly be felt by someone who is cajoled out of his

humanity by the ﬂattery of sycophants. There must be more

equality established in society, or morality will never gain

ground; and this virtuous equality will not rest ﬁrmly even

when founded on a rock, if one half of mankind are chained

to its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining

it through ignorance or pride. [That sentence is verbatim MW.]

You can’t expect virtue from women until they are to

some extent independent of men; indeed, you can’t expect

the strength of natural affection that would make them good

wives and good mothers. While they absolutely depend on

their husbands, they will be cunning, mean, and selﬁsh,

and the men who can be gratiﬁed by the fawning fondness

of spaniel-like affection don’t have much delicacy—because

love is not to be bought. . . .; its silken wings are instantly

shrivelled up when anything is sought other than a return

in kind. But while wealth enervates men, and women live

(so to speak) by their personal charms, how can we expect

them to perform the ennobling duties that equally require

exertion and self-denial? Hereditary property perverts the

mind, and the unfortunate victims of hereditary property (if I

may call them ‘victims’), swathed from their birth, seldom get

either body or mind moving; so they view everything through

one medium, and that a false one; so they can’t tell what

true merit and happiness consist in. False, indeed, must be

the light when the drapery of situation hides the man, and

makes him stalk in masquerade, dragging from one scene

of dissipation to another the nerveless limbs that hang with

stupid listlessness, and rolling round the vacant eye that

plainly tells us that there is no mind at home.

[That splendid

sentence is verbatim MW.]

My point is that a society isn’t properly organized if it

doesn’t

compel

men and women to perform their respective

duties, by making that their only route to being viewed by

their fellow creatures in the way that every human being

wants. So the respect that is paid to wealth and mere per-

sonal charms is a true north-easterly blast that blights the

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 9: Unnatural distinctions

tender blossoms of affection and virtue. Nature has wisely

attached

•

affections to

•

duties, to make the work sweeter

and to give to the exertions of reason the vigour that only the

heart can give. But when someone who doesn’t perform the

duties that go with a certain affection nevertheless

puts on

the affection merely because it is the trade-mark of a certain

kind of

character, this is one of the empty compliments

that vice and folly are obliged to pay to virtue and the real

nature of things.

For example: when a woman is admired for her beauty,

and allows herself to be so intoxicated by the admiration she

receives that she neglects to discharge the indispensable duty

of a mother, she sins against herself by neglecting to develop

an affection that would

equally

tend to make her useful and

happy. True happiness—I mean all the contentment and

virtuous satisfaction that can be snatched in this imperfect

state—must arise from well regulated affections; and an

affection includes a duty. Men aren’t aware of the misery

they cause, and the vicious weakness they encourage, by

only inciting women to make themselves pleasing; they

don’t consider that they are making natural and artiﬁcial

duties clash by sacriﬁcing the comfort and respectability of a

woman’s life to voluptuous notions of beauty, when in nature

they all harmonize.

It would be a cold-hearted husband, or one made unnat-

ural by early debauchery, who didn’t feel more delight at

seeing his child breast-fed by its mother than the most artful

wanton tricks could ever raise; yet wealth leads women to

spurn this natural way of cementing the matrimonial tie and

weaving esteem in with fonder recollections. . . . The maternal

care of a reasonable affectionate woman puts us on her side;

and the chastened dignity with which a mother returns the

caresses that she and her child receive from a father who

has been fulﬁlling the serious duties of his position is not

only worthy of respect but is a beautiful sight. . . . I have

viewed with pleasure a woman nursing her children, and

performing the duties of her position with, perhaps, merely

a servant maid to take off her hands the servile part of the

household business. I have seen her prepare herself and

children, with only the luxury of cleanliness, to receive her

husband who, returning home weary in the evening, found

smiling babes and a clean hearth. . . .

While my benevolence has been gratiﬁed by contemplat-

ing this artless picture, I have thought that a couple of

this description. . . .possessed all that life could give. Raised

above abject poverty enough not to be obliged to think about

every farthing they spend, and having enough to save them

from having to manage a frigid system of economy that

narrows both heart and mind. In my plain thoughts I don’t

know what else is needed to make this the happiest as well

as the most respect-worthy situation in the world—except

for

•

a taste for literature, to throw a little variety and interest

into conversation, and

•

some surplus money to give to the

needy and to buy books. . . .

Riches and inherited honours are destructive to the

human character, and are even worse for women than for

men, because men can still to some extent unfold their

faculties by becoming soldiers and statesmen.

[MW goes on to say that soldiering has lost its glory

and been reduced to mere ﬁne-tuning of the balances of

power on the European continent. Statesmen can do a little

better, moving from gambling to government, and using the

same skills for each. Then:] The whole system of British

politics—calling it a ‘system’ is mere politeness—consists in

multiplying dependents and contriving taxes that grind the

poor to pamper the rich; thus a war or any wild-goose-chase

is a bit of good luck for the minister, whose chief merit is the

art of keeping himself in place.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 9: Unnatural distinctions

[Then a scornful paragraph about how a minister can ply

his trade, pretending to care about the poor and unfortunate

but doing nothing for them. MW continues:] Let me return to

the more specious slavery that chains the very soul of woman,

keeping her for ever under the bondage of ignorance.

The preposterous distinctions of rank that make civi-

lization a curse by dividing the world between

•

voluptuous

tyrants and

•

cunning envious dependents corrupt every class

of people almost equally; because the respect a person gets

depends only on his rank, and not to his performance of

his duties to others; and when the duties are neglected the

affections can’t gain enough strength to fortify the virtue of

which they are the natural reward. There are some loop-holes

out of which a man may creep, and dare to think and act for

himself; but for a woman it is a Herculean task because the

female sex faces difﬁculties of its own that require almost

superhuman powers to overcome.

A truly benevolent legislator always tries to make it in

the interests of each individual to be virtuous; this makes

private virtue become the cement of public happiness, so that

an orderly whole is consolidated by the tendency of all the

parts towards a common centre. But the private or public

virtue of women is very problematic because many male

writers, including Rousseau, insist that a woman should

throughout her life be subjected to the severe restraint of

propriety

. Why subject her to propriety—blind propriety—if

she is capable of acting from a nobler spring, i.e. if she has

inherited immortality [see Glossary]?. . . .

[MW returns to her old theme of women being given the

wrong kind of attention by men etc. One item in this is new:

‘The laws respecting woman, which I mean to discuss in a

future part, make an absurd unit of a man and his wife;

and then by the easy transition of considering only him as

responsible she is reduced to a mere cipher, ·a nothing·.

[Then a great deal more of the old theme. In the course

of dealing with Rousseau’s statement that women’s lower

status is shown by the fact that they can’t ﬁght in wars, MW

remarks in passing that ‘defensive war’ is ‘the only justiﬁable

war’. And she works her way around to a brief consideration

of the poor:] What can be a more melancholy sight to a

thinking mind than to look into the numerous carriages

that drive helter-skelter about London in a morning, full of

pale-faced creatures who are ﬂying from themselves. I have

often wished, with Dr Johnson, to place some of them in

a little shop with half a dozen children looking up to their

languid countenances for support. If that happened, I think

that some latent vigour would soon give health and spirit to

their eyes; and some lines drawn by the use of reason on the

blank cheeks. . . .might restore lost dignity to the character,

or rather enable it to attain the true dignity of its nature.. . . .

Besides, when poverty is more disgraceful even than vice,

isn’t morality cut to the quick? Still to avoid misconstruction,

though I consider that women in the common walks of

life are called by religion and reason to fulﬁl the duties

of wives and mothers, I can’t help lamenting that women

higher up the social scale don’t have a road along which

they can pursue more extensive plans of usefulness and

independence. . . . I really think (don’t laugh!) that women

ought to have

parliamentary

representatives, instead of

being arbitrarily governed without being allowed any direct

share in the deliberations of government. This is just a hint;

I mean to pursue it at some future time.

But the whole system of ‘representation’ in this country is

at present only a convenient label for despotism; so women

needn’t complain, because they are as well represented as

a numerous class of hard-working mechanics who pay for

the support of royalty when they can scarcely put bread in

their children’s mouths. Men whose very sweat

•

supports

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 9: Unnatural distinctions

the splendid horses of the heir apparent to the throne, or

•

varnishes the chariot of some female favourite

of the king’s

who looks down on shame—how are they

represented

? Taxes

on the very necessities of life enable an endless tribe of idle

princes and princesses to pass with stupid pomp before a

gaping crowd, who almost worship the very parade that

costs them so dear. This is mere barbarous grandeur,

something like the useless parade of sentinels on horseback

at Whitehall, which I could never see without a mixture of

contempt and indignation.

How strangely must the mind be sophisticated when this

sort of state impresses it! But until these monuments of folly

are levelled by virtue, similar follies will leaven the whole

mass. For the same character, in some degree, will prevail

in the aggregate of society: and the reﬁnements of luxury, or

the vicious repinings of envious poverty, will equally banish

virtue from society, considered as the characteristic of that

society, or only allow it to appear as one of the stripes of the

harlequin coat worn by the ‘civilized’ man.

In the upper ranks of society every duty is performed

by deputies (as though duties could be transferred!), and

the pointless pleasures that the resulting idleness forces

•

the rich to pursue appear so enticing to the next rank that

the numerous scramblers for wealth sacriﬁce everything to

tread on

•

their heels. . . . Women, in particular, all want to be

ladies. Which is simply to have nothing to do except listlessly

to go they hardly care where, for they cannot tell what.

‘But what have women to do in society’ I may be asked

‘but to loiter with easy grace? Surely you wouldn’t condemn

them all to breast-feed fools and keep household accounts!’

No. Women might certainly study the art of healing, and be

well paid

physicians as well as

very poorly paid

nurses.

And there is also midwifery.

They might also study politics, and settle their benev-

olence on the broadest basis; for the reading of history

will hardly be more useful than the reading of romances

if the history is read as mere biography and the character

of the times, the political improvements, arts, etc. are not

observed. The proﬁtable approach to history regards it as

the history of

man

, and not of

particular men

who ﬁlled a

niche in the temple of fame and then dropped into the black

rolling stream of time that silently sweeps all before it. . . .

Women might also pursue business of various kinds if

they were educated in a more orderly manner, and that might

save many from common or legal prostitution

[i.e. from actual

prostitution or marrying in order to have economic security]. . . .

[MW remarks that an unmarried woman may have had

honourable reasons for choosing not to marry, and others

may have been unable to marry. She continues:] So it’s

a very defective government—one that entirely neglects the

happiness of one half of its public—that doesn’t provide

for honest, independent women by encouraging them to

occupy respectable positions in society. But to make their

private virtue a public beneﬁt, they must—whether married

or single—have a civil existence in the state. . . .

The most respect-worthy women are the most oppressed;

this is a melancholy truth about the blessed effects of

civilization! Treating them like contemptible beings will make

them become contemptible, unless they have understandings

much above the average for humanity (both sexes). Many

women waste life away, the prey of discontent, when they

might have practised as physicians, run a farm, or managed

a shop, and stood upright supported by their own industry,

instead of hanging their heads. . . .

The woman who earns her own bread by fulﬁlling some

duty deserves much more respect than the most accom-

plished beauty!. . . . I sigh to think how few women try to

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 10: Parental Affection

attain this respect-worthiness by withdrawing from the giddy

whirl of pleasure, or the lazy calm that stupeﬁes the good

sort of women it sucks in.

Proud of their weakness, however, they must always be

protected (

they think

), guarded from care and all the rough

toils that dignify the mind. If this is what fate ordains—if they

choose to make themselves insigniﬁcant and contemptible,

sweetly wasting life away, let them not expect to be valued

when their beauty fades, for the fairest ﬂowers are pulled to

pieces by the careless hand that plucked them. . . .

The most useful writers, in my opinion, are the ones who

make man feel for man, independent of his social position

and of the drapery of false sentiments. So I would like to

convince reasonable men of the importance of some of my

remarks, and prevail on them to weigh dispassionately the

over-all position that I have been defending. I appeal to

their understandings; and as a fellow-creature I claim, in

the name of my sex, some interest in their hearts. I entreat

them to assist to emancipate their companion to make her a

helpmate for them!

If only men would generously break our chains and be

content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience,

they would ﬁnd us more observant daughters, more affection-

ate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers—in

a word, better citizens. We would then love them with true

affection, because we would learn to respect ourselves; and

a worthy man’s peace of mind wouldn’t be interrupted by

the idle vanity of his wife, and his babes wouldn’t be sent to

nestle in a strange bosom because they never found a home

in their mother’s.

Chapter 10:

Parental Affection

Parental affection is perhaps, the blindest kind of perverse

self-love. Parents often love their children in the most brutal

[see Glossary]

manner, and sacriﬁce every duty to anyone else

in order to promote their children’s advancement in the

world. The aim to promote the future welfare of the very

beings whose present existence they embitter by the most

despotic stretch of power—that’s a sign of how perverse an

unprincipled prejudice can be.

In fact, every kind of power. . . .wants to reign without

control or inquiry. Its throne is built across a dark abyss that

no eye must dare to explore, for fear that the baseless fabric

might totter under investigation. Obedience, unconditional

obedience, is the catch-word of tyrants of every description,

and to make ‘assurance doubly sure,’ one kind of despotism

supports another. Tyrants would have cause to tremble if

reason were to become the rule of duty in any of the relations

of life, for the light might spread until perfect day appeared.

And when it did appear, men would smile at the sight of

the bugbears that had made them jump during the night of

ignorance or the twilight of timid inquiry. . . .

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 10: Parental Affection

If man’s great privilege is

•

the power of reﬂecting on the past, and

•

peering speculatively into the future,

it must be granted that some people enjoy this privilege in a

very limited degree. Everything new appears to them wrong;

and not able to distinguish what could happen from what

couldn’t, they fear where there should be no place for fear,

running from the light of reason as if it were a ﬁrebrand. . . .

Woman, however, being in every situation a slave to

prejudice, seldom exerts enlightened maternal affection; for

she either

•

neglects her children or

•

spoils them by undue

permissiveness. Also, the affection of many women for their

children is (I repeat) very brutish, because it eradicates every

spark of humanity. Justice, truth,

everything

is sacriﬁced

by these Rebekahs, and for the sake of their own children

they violate the most sacred duties, forgetting the common

relationship that binds the whole family on earth together.

[MW is echoing the story in Genesis 27, where Rebekah schemes with

her favourite son Jacob to cheat his brother Esau.]

Yet reason seems

to say that someone who allows

•

one duty or affection to

swallow up the rest doesn’t have enough heart or mind to

fulﬁl

•

that one conscientiously. . . .

As the care of children in their infancy is one of the grand

duties that naturally fall to the female character, this duty—if

it were properly considered—would provide many forcible

arguments for strengthening the female understanding.

The formation of the mind must be begun very early, and

the temperament (in particular) requires the most judicious

attention; and that attention

can’t

be paid by women who

love their children only because they are their children,

and don’t try to base their duty on anything deeper than

the feelings of the moment. It is this lack of reason in

their affections that makes so many women be the most

foolishly attentive mothers or—at the other extreme—the

most careless and unnatural ones.

To be a good mother a woman must have

•

sense and also

•

the independence of mind that is possessed by few women

who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands. Meek

wives are usually foolish mothers, wanting their children to

love them best, and to side with them in a secret conspiracy

against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow—the one

who must punish them if they have offended the mother,

the one who must be the judge in all disputes: but I’ll

discuss this subject more fully when I deal with private

education. At present I want only to insist that unless

woman’s understanding is enlarged and her character made

more ﬁrm through her being allowed to govern her own

conduct, she will never have enough sense or command of

temperament to manage her children properly. A woman

who doesn’t breast-feed her children hardly counts as

having

parental affection, because the performance of this duty

contributes equally to maternal and ﬁlial affection; and it is

the indispensable duty of men and women to fulﬁl the duties

that give rise to affections that are the surest preservatives

against vice. So-called

natural affection

is a very weak tie, I

think; affections

that strongly bond people together

must

grow out of the habitual exercise of a mutual sympathy; and

a mother who sends her babe to a nurse, and only takes it

from a nurse to send it to a school—what sympathy does

she

exercise?

In the exercise of their natural feelings, God has provided

women with a natural substitute for love: when the lover

becomes only a friend, and mutual conﬁdence replaces over-

strained admiration, a child then gently twists the relaxing

cord

thereby tightening it up again

, and a shared care

produces a new mutual sympathy. But a child. . . .won’t

enliven the parents’ affections if they are content to transfer

the charge to hirelings; those who ‘do their duty’ by having

someone do it for them shouldn’t complain if they miss the

reward of duty, namely the child’s dutifulness towards them.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 11: Duty to Parents

Chapter 11:

Duty to Parents

Man seems to have a lazy tendency to make prescription

[see

Glossary]

always take the place of reason. . . . The rights of

kings are deduced in a direct line from the King of kings;

and that of parents from our ﬁrst parent.

Why do we thus go back for principles that should always

rest on the same base and have the same weight to-day

that they had a thousand years ago—and not a jot more? If

parents do their duty, they have a strong hold and sacred

claim on the gratitude of their children; but few parents are

willing to receive the respectful affection of their offspring

on those terms. They demand

blind

obedience, because

they don’t deserve a reasonable service

that their children

might willingly provide with their eyes open

; and to make

these demands of weakness and ignorance more binding,

a mysterious

sanctity

is spread around the most arbitrary

principle. ‘Arbitrary’? Well, what other name can be given

to the blind duty of obeying vicious or weak beings merely

because they obeyed a powerful instinct?

[MW is referring to the

parents’ sexual ‘instinct’: their ‘obedience’ to that led to the coupling that

caused the children to come into existence.]

The simple deﬁnition

of the two-way duty that naturally holds between parent and

child can be stated in a few words:

The parent who pays proper attention to helpless

infancy has a right to require the same attention when

the feebleness of age comes upon him.

But to subjugate a rational being to the mere will of another

when he is old enough to answer to society for his own

conduct is cruel and improper; and it may be as harmful to

morality as are the religious systems that make God’s will

the sole source of the line between right and wrong.

I never knew a parent who had paid more than common

attention to his children who was then disregarded by the

children; on the contrary, the early habit of relying almost

unquestioningly on the opinion of a respected parent is not

easy to shake off, even when mature reason convinces the

child that his father is not the wisest man in the world.

This is an attractive weakness, but it

a weakness, and a

reasonable man should steel himself against it, because the

all-too-common belief that one is obliged to obey a parent just

because he is one’s parent shackles the mind and prepares

it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.

I distinguish the natural duty to parents from the acci-

dental duty to parents.

The parent who carefully tries to form the heart and

enlarge the understanding of his child has given to the per-

formance of a duty that is common to the whole animal world

a dignity that only reason can give. This is the

•

parental af-

fection of humanity, and leaves

•

instinctive natural affection

far behind. Such a parent acquires all the rights of the most

sacred friendship, and his advice—even when his child is

fully adult—demands serious consideration.

With respect to marriage: after 21 years a parent seems

to have no right to withhold his consent for any reason, but

twenty years of parental care deserve something in return,

and the son ought at least to promise not to marry for two or

three years if the woman of his choice doesn’t entirely meet

with the approval of his ﬁrst friend.

But respect for parents is generally speaking a much

lower cause of action, namely a selﬁsh respect for property.

The father who is blindly obeyed is obeyed from sheer weak-

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 11: Duty to Parents

ness or from motives that degrade the human character.

Much of the misery that wanders in hideous forms around

the world is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents;

and yet these are the people who cling most tightly to what

they call a ‘natural right’, though it undermines man’s

birthright, the right to act as his own reason directs.

I have already often pointed out that vicious or idle people

are always eager to proﬁt from the enforcement of arbitrary

privileges, usually in proportion to their neglect of the duties

that might make the privileges reasonable. This is basically

a dictate of common sense—i.e. the instinct of self-defence—

that is typical of ignorant weakness, resembling the instinct

that makes a ﬁsh muddy the water it swims in to escape its

enemy, instead of boldly facing it in the clear stream.

The supporters of any kind of prescription do indeed ﬂy

from the clear stream of argument. Taking refuge in the dark-

ness that. . . .has been supposed to surround God’s throne,

they dare to demand the immediate and total respect that is

due only to his unsearchable ways. (Don’t misunderstand

me: the darkness that hides our God from us only concerns

speculative truths—it never obscures moral ones, which

shine clearly. . . .)

Females in all countries are too much under the dominion

of their parents; and few parents think of addressing their

children like this:

It is your interest to obey me until you can judge

for yourself; and

God

, the Almighty Father of all,

has implanted in me an affection to serve as your

guardian while your reason is unfolding; but when

your mind arrives at maturity, you must obey me—or

rather respect my opinions—only to the extent that

they coincide with the light that is breaking in on your

own mind.

A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the

mind. Locke was right when he said that ‘if the mind is

curbed and humbled too much in children—if their spirits

are abased and broken by too strict a hand over them—they

lose all their vigour and industry’. This strict hand may to

some extent explain the weakness of women; because girls

are for various reasons more kept

down

by their parents,

in every sense of the word ‘down’, than boys are. The duty

expected from them is, like all the duties arbitrarily imposed

on women, based less on reason than on a sense of propriety,

on respect for decorum; and by being taught slavishly to

submit to their parents girls are prepared for the slavery of

marriage. [MW concedes that some married women are not

slaves, but they, she says, become tyrants. She also says

that not all boys and girls are slaves to their parents, but

continues her campaign on behalf of those who are. She

emphatically contrasts parents who ‘have allowed a natural

parental affection to take root in their hearts’ with those who

are motivated by ‘selﬁsh pride’. The former, she says, will be

rewarded by ‘ﬁlial reverence’.]

Why should the minds of children be warped when they

are just beginning to expand, only to favour the laziness of

parents who insist on a privilege without being willing to pay

the price for it ﬁxed by nature?. . . . A right always includes

a duty; and I think we can fairly infer from this that those

who don’t perform the duty don’t retain the right.

. . . .I believe that in general the affection we inspire

others

always resembles the affection that we cultivate

in ourselves

; so that natural affections—which have been

supposed to be almost distinct from reason—are more nearly

connected with judgment than is commonly allowed. Indeed,

the affections that merely reside in the heart

with no input

from the head

seem to have a kind of animal capriciousness;

I offer that as another proof of the necessity of cultivating

the female understanding.

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 12: National education

It is the irregular exercise of parental authority that

ﬁrst injures the mind, and girls are more subject to these

irregularities than boys are. The will of those who never

allow their will to be disputed except when they happen to

be in a good mood is almost always unreasonable. [MW

describes and deplores the tricks that little girls practice in

order to cope with this kind of parental authority. Then:]

I have been led into a melancholy train of reﬂection about

females, concluding that when their ﬁrst affection must

•

lead

them astray or

•

make their duties clash until they rest on

mere whims and customs, little can be expected from them

as they grow older. How indeed can an instructor remedy

this evil? for to teach children virtue on any solid principle

is to teach them to despise their parents. Children ought

not to be taught to make allowance for their parents’ faults,

because every such allowance weakens the force of reason

in their minds, and makes them still more indulgent to their

own faults. It is a sublime virtue of maturity that leads

us to be hard on ourselves and forbearing towards others;

but children should be taught only the simple virtues, for if

they begin too early to make allowance for human passions

and manners, they’ll wear off the ﬁne edge of the criterion by

which they should regulate their own. . . .

[A few years before this

was written, Mary Wollstonecraft had been governess to the children of

Lord and Lady Kingsborough. Many facts could help to explain why her

relationship with Lady Kingsborough went sour, so that eventually she

was dismissed; the content of this paragraph may be part of the story!

There is another side-light on it on page 98.]

The affections of children and weak people are always

selﬁsh: they love their relatives because they are loved by

them, not because of their virtues. But until esteem and

love are blended together in the

•

ﬁrst affection, and reason

is made the basis for the

•

ﬁrst duty, morality will stumble at

the threshold. . . .

Chapter 12:

National education

The good effects of private education will always be very

limited; the parent who really puts his own hand to the

plough will always be somewhat disappointed until education

becomes a grand national concern. A man can’t retire into

a desert with his child; and if he did, he couldn’t bring

himself back to childhood and become the proper friend and

playmate of an infant or youth. When children are conﬁned

to the society of men and women, they soon acquire a kind of

premature manhood that stops the growth of every vigorous

power of mind or body. In order to develop their faculties

they should be stimulated to think for themselves; and this

can be done only by mixing a number of children together

and making them jointly pursue the same objects.

[MW continues with this theme.

•

If children are to be

openly inquiring they need time with their peers rather than

with parents who stand—however wisely—in authority over

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 12: National education

them.

•

There are affections amongst children that are unlike

the affection a child may have for his parents, and a child

needs practice in the former, because ‘in youth the seeds

of every affection should be sown’.

•

A frank openness of

speech and feeling is possible between child and child but

not between child and parent; and this matters because

it ‘ﬁrst opens the heart to friendship and conﬁdence’ and

leads on to ‘more expansive benevolence’.

•

A little further

down she levels a further charge against home-schooling:

it leads to the children’s acquiring ‘too high an opinion of

their own importance’, to their ‘being allowed to tyrannize

over servants’, and to their becoming ‘vain and effeminate’

because they are treated like men when they are still boys’.

[Considerations like these, MW says, have affected her

former preference for private education; and yet she still has

that preference, because:] I still think that schools as they

are now regulated are hot-beds of vice and folly, and that the

only knowledge of human nature that could be learned from

them is merely cunning selﬁshness.

[She now holds forth strenuously against the schools:

at them ‘boys become gluttons and slovens’, and rush into

the libertinism that ‘hardens the heart as it weakens the

understanding’. Children at boarding-schools spend at least

‘half of the time’ longing for vacations, and when these come

‘they are spent in total dissipation and beastly indulgence’.

A little further on she refers to ‘the system of tyranny and

abject slavery that is established among the boys’.]

The only way to avoid two extremes that are equally harm-

ful to morality would be to contrive some way of combining

a public and private education. Thus to make men citizens,

two natural steps might be taken that seem to lead directly

to the desired point: cultivating the domestic affections that

ﬁrst open the heart to the various modiﬁcations of humanity,

while also allowing the children to spend great part of their

time on terms of equality with other children. [MW follows

this up with a lyrical reminiscence of ‘a country day school’,

whose pupils had the desirable daily mixture of childhood

friends and family inﬂuence. She contrasts this ﬁercely with

the evils of ‘close conﬁnement in an academy near London’,

ending with ‘. . . to say nothing of the slavery to forms that

makes religion worse than a farce’. This launches her on

an attack ﬁrst on religious services in schools and then

cutting with a wider swathe through religious practices more

generally.]

·A DIATRIBE AGAINST RELIGIOUS PRACTICE IN ENGLAND·

What good can be expected from the youth who receives

the sacrament of the Lord’s supper so as to avoid paying

a ﬁne? Half the employment of the youths is to elude the

necessity of attending public worship; and well they may, for

such a constant repetition of the same thing must be a very

irksome restraint on their natural vivacity. These ceremonies

•

have the most fatal effect on their morals,

•

are a ritual performed by the lips when the heart and

mind are far away, and

•

are no longer stored up by our

Protestant

church

as a bank to draw on for the fees of the poor souls in

purgatory;

so why shouldn’t they be abolished?

[This next paragraph is addressed to the situation of any school or college

which was founded by someone who provided a ﬁnancial endowment and

laid down rules for how the institution was to be run. There were and

still are many of these.]

But in this country there is a fear of

any

innovation. This

hidden fear is really the apprehensive timidity of idle slugs

who guard the snug place that they view as an hereditary

estate—eating, drinking and enjoying themselves instead of

fulﬁlling the duties (except a few empty forms) for which the

‘estate’ was endowed. How do they guard it? By sliming

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 12: National education

it over! These are the people who most strenuously insist

on conforming to the will of the founder, crying out against

every reform as if it were a violation of justice. [MW is

especially indignant, she explains, about institutions that

are now Protestant but were founded by Roman Catholics

and still hold onto ‘the relics of popery’ that remain from

their foundation. She continues:] These Romish customs

have the most baneful effect on the morals of our clergy;

for the idle vermin who two or three times a day sloppily

perform a service that they think is useless, but call their

‘duty’, soon lose their sense of duty. Having been forced at

college to attend or evade public worship, they acquire an

habitual contempt for the very service the performance of

which will enable them to live in idleness. . . .

Nothing can be more irreverent than the cathedral service

as it is now performed in this country, and England doesn’t

contain a set of weaker men than those who are the slaves

of this childish routine. A disgusting skeleton of the former

state is still exhibited; but all the solemnity—which engaged

the imagination even if it didn’t purify the heart—is stripped

off. The performance of

Roman Catholic

high mass on

the

European

continent must impress anyone who has

a spark of imagination with that solemn melancholy, that

sublime tenderness, which is so near a kin to devotion. I

don’t say that these devotional feelings do more moral good

than any other emotion of taste; but I do say that the

French

Roman Catholic

theatrical pomp that gratiﬁes our senses

is preferable to the

English Protestant

cold parade that

insults the understanding without reaching the heart.

These remarks can’t be misplaced in a discussion of

national education, especially given that the supporters of

these puerile establishments pretend to be the champions of

religion. Religion, pure source of comfort in this vale of tears!

how has your clear stream been muddied by the dabblers

who have presumptuously tried to conﬁne in one narrow

channel the living waters that always ﬂow toward God—the

sublime ocean of existence! What would life be without the

peace that can’t be had except through the love of God, built

on humanity?. . . .

·END OF THE DIATRIBE·

[There are several more paragraphs expressing scorn and

disgust for boarding schools and what they do to the morals

of their pupils. Then:]

I have heard several masters of schools maintain that

their role was connected not with boys’ morals but only with

their learning Latin and Greek; and that they had done their

duty by sending some good scholars to college.

A few good scholars, I grant, may have been formed in

this way; but to bring forward these clever boys, the health

and morals of a number of others have been sacriﬁced. . . . It

is not for the beneﬁt of society that a few brilliant men should

be brought forward at the expense of the multitude. It is

true that great men seem to start up. . . .at proper intervals,

to restore order and blow away the clouds that thicken over

the face of truth; but if more reason and virtue prevailed

in society, these strong winds wouldn’t be necessary. [MW

now returns to the main theme of this chapter, taking it to

the declaration that ‘children ought to be educated at home’.

She adds some warnings about the danger of this, and then:]

This train of reasoning brings me back to a subject that I

want to discuss at length, the need for proper day-schools.

But these should be

national

establishments; schoolmas-

ters in private schools depend on the whims of parents,

and as long as that is so they can’t be expected to exert

themselves any more than is necessary to please ignorant

people. A schoolmaster has to give the parents some sample

of the boy’s abilities, which during the vacation is shown

to every visitor to his home; and this does more harm than

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 12: National education

would at ﬁrst be supposed. For these purposes the master

winds the poor machine up to some extraordinary exertion

that injures the wheels and stops the progress of gradual

improvement, or alternatively the master does much of the

work himself, thus going along with falsehoods. . . .

[MW goes on with her indictment of most private schools;

e.g. they have too many children in each class, because that

is the only way the school can stay solvent. This eventually

brings her to the ﬁrst mention of girls in this chapter:]

With what disgust have I heard sensible women. . . .speak

of the wearisome conﬁnement they endured at school. . . .

Obliged to walk with steady deportment stupidly backwards

and forwards, holding up their heads, turning out their toes,

with shoulders braced back, instead of moving vigorously

and naturally in the ways that are so conducive to health. . . .

[She adds a little about the harm that separate schooling

does to the characters of girls and (a different harm) the

characters of boys, and draws from these facts a conclusion]

that I have had in view throughout—namely that

to improve

both sexes they ought to be educated together

, not only

in private families but also in public schools. . . . If boys and

girls were permitted to pursue the same studies together,

they might early learn the graceful decencies that produce

modesty. . . . Lessons of politeness and decorum (that rule-

book that treads on the heels of falsehood!) would be made

useless by habitual propriety of behaviour. . . .

[In case you are wondering about the frequency of ellipses in this chapter,

it should be explained that they replace material that

•

essentially repeats

things already said earlier in the work, or

•

provides details that we can

supply for ourselves, given our knowledge of MW, or

•

is like this: ‘Until

more understanding preponderate in society, there will always be a want

of heart and taste, and the harlot’s rouge will supply the place of that

celestial suffusion that only virtuous affections can give to the face.’

Enough already!]

[Much more about the harm done to girls by their

upbringing—notably harm to their grasp of what real virtue

is and their ability to respond appropriately to the ﬁne arts;

MW thinks that these two are connected. As an example

of the latter, she reports being made almost breathless by

the beauty of music she was listening to, and ‘a lady asked

me where I bought my gown’. She then moves back into

her theme of women being deprived of power and therefore

developing cunning; plus remarks about the harms that

have been done by women partly manipulating the men who

had power.]

When I call women ‘slaves’, I mean this in a political and

civil sense; for

indirectly

they obtain

too much

power, and

their efforts to get this illicit power debase them.

So let an enlightened nation run an experiment to dis-

cover how far

reason

would bring women back to nature and

their duty; let them share the advantages of education and

government with man, and see whether they become

•

better

as they grow

•

wiser and become

•

free. They can’t be injured

by the experiment, because it’s not in the power of man to

make them more insigniﬁcant than they are at present.

To make this practicable, day schools for particular ages

should be established by government, in which boys and

girls might be educated together. The school for the younger

children, from ﬁve to nine years of age, ought to be absolutely

free and open to all classes.

A sufﬁcient number of masters

should be chosen by a select committee in each parish, to

whom complaints of negligence etc. could be made if signed

by six of the children’s parents. . . .

Treating this part of the subject, I have borrowed some hints from a very sensible pamphlet on Public Education, written by M. Talleyrand. [see

page 1]

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 12: National education

I am advocating the creation of elementary day-schools

where boys and girls, rich and poor, would meet together.

To prevent any of the distinctions of vanity, they should be

dressed alike, and all obliged to submit to the same discipline.

The school-room ought to be surrounded by a large piece of

ground in which the children could have exercise, because

at this age they shouldn’t be conﬁned to any sedentary task

for more than an hour at a time. But these relaxations could

all be made a part of elementary education, for many things

improve and occupy the senses when introduced as a kind

of show—things that children would turn a deaf ear to if

their principles were dryly laid down. For instance, botany,

mechanics, and astronomy

could all be taught in practical

ways, out-of-doors

. Reading, writing, arithmetic, natural

history, and some simple experiments in natural philosophy

could ﬁll up the rest of the day; but these pursuits should

never encroach on gymnastic play in the open air. The

elements of religion, history, the history of man, and politics

could be taught by conversations in the Socratic form.

After the age of nine, girls and boys who are intended

for domestic employment or mechanical trades should be

transferred to other schools and be given instruction that is

to some degree adapted to the destination of each individual

pupil; the two sexes should still be together in the morning,

but in the afternoon the girls should attend a school where

simple sewing, dressmaking, millinery, etc. would be their

employment.

Young people of superior abilities, or fortune, might now

be taught—in another school—the dead and living languages,

the elements of science, and more on history and politics,

on a more extensive scale that wouldn’t exclude literature.

‘Girls and boys still together?’ I hear some readers ask. Yes!

And I wouldn’t fear any consequence except that there might

be some early girl-boy attachment that didn’t perfectly agree

with the views of the parents though it had an excellent effect

on the moral character of the young people. I’m afraid that

we are a long way from having a world that is so enlightened

that parents, anxious only to make their children virtuous,

will let them choose companions for life themselves.

Besides, this would be a sure way to promote early mar-

riages, and from early marriages the most salutary physical

and moral effects naturally ﬂow. [Then a long page of praise

for the advantages, very much in the spirit of things said in

earlier chapters. A notable episode in this is MW’s treatment

of the ‘coming out’ of debutantes in the fashionable world.

[That was where and when girls of 17+ from wealthy families were for

the ﬁrst time taken to adult balls and parties and so on.]

MW writes:

‘What can be more indelicate than a girl’s coming out in

the fashionable world? That is the process of bringing to

market a marriageable miss whose person

[see Glossary]

taken from one public place to another.’

[ She comes close to

describing a debutante ball as a slave auction where the merchandise is

ogled by potential buyers. ‘Indelicate’ indeed!]]

What I am offering here is only an outline of the plan

I have in mind, not the fully detailed plan. But I must

include one detail that I highly approve of in the regulations

presented in M. Talleyrand’s pamphlet, mentioned earlier. It

is the proposal to make the children and youths independent

of the masters respecting punishments. They should be tried

by their peers, which would be an admirable method of ﬁxing

sound principles of justice in the mind, and might have an

excellent effect on a child’s temperament, which is very early

soured or irritated by tyranny until it becomes peevishly

cunning or ferociously overbearing. . . .

I know it will be said that woman would be ‘unsexed’ by

acquiring strength of body and mind, and that beauty—soft

bewitching beauty!—would no longer adorn the daughters

of men. I think, on the contrary, that we would then see

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 12: National education

•

digniﬁed beauty and

•

true grace, arising from many power-

ful physical and moral causes. It wouldn’t be

•

relaxed beauty

•

the graces of helplessness; but rather the beauty and

grace that appears to make us respect the human body as a

majestic structure that is ﬁt to receive a noble inhabitant, in

the relics of antiquity.

[MW moves now into a discussion of ancient Greek sculp-

ture, why and how we admire it and why and how it was

made. She takes this opportunity to re-work her themes

of virtue, intelligence, and so on. The last sentence of this

passage is a pivot note on which she modulates into a new

topic:] Judgment can be acquired only by reﬂection, affection

only by the discharge of duties, and humanity only by the

exercise of compassion to every living creature.

Humanity to animals should be particularly taught as

a part of national education, for it is not at present one

of our national virtues. Gentleness towards their domestic

animals, among the lower class, is more often found in

savage states than in civilized ones. For civilization

•

prevents

the dealings with animals that create affection in the crude

hut or mud cabin, and

•

leads uncultivated minds—who are

only depraved by the reﬁnements of a society where they are

trodden down by the rich—to domineer over their animals

to revenge the insults they have to bear from their

social

superiors.

This habitual cruelty is ﬁrst caught—

like catching a

disease

—at school, where the boys have great sport torment-

ing the miserable animals that they come across. As they

grow up they easily shift from barbarity towards animals to

domestic tyranny over wives, children, and servants. Justice

won’t be a powerful spring of action unless it extends to

the whole creation, nor will benevolence. Indeed, I believe it

can be accepted as an axiom that

those who can

•

see pain

without being moved will soon learn to

•

inﬂict it.

[MW attacks not only people who treat animals cruelly

but also ones who let sentimental affection for domestic pets

supplant the feelings they should have for human beings, e.g.

their children. She includes in this a portrait of her former

employer, Lady Kingsborough

[see note on page 93]

, lisping coy

nothings to her lap-dogs and neglecting her children. She

adds:]

I don’t like to make a distinction without a difference, and

I have to say that I have been as much disgusted by

•

the ﬁne

lady who took her lap-dog to her bosom instead of her child

as by

•

the ferocity of a man who beat his horse and declared

that the horse knew when he did wrong just as a Christian

would.

[Then more about the troubles that would not occur if

boys and girls were educated, in the right way, together.

Followed by a three-page sweep through the theme of the

moral harm done to women by the way they are treated by

men.]

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 13: Harm done by women’s ignorance

Chapter 13:

Examples of the harm done by women’s ignorance

There are many follies that are to some extent

women’s

follies—sins against reason, of commission as well as of

omission—but all ﬂowing from ignorance or prejudice. I

shall point out only ﬁve of them that appear to be harmful

to the woman’s moral character. In criticizing them I want

especially to show that the weakness of mind and body that

men have tried to perpetuate in

•

women prevents

•

them

from discharging the special duty of their sex; for when

weakness of body won’t let them breast-feed their children,

and weakness of mind makes them spoil their tempers—is

woman in a natural state?

1: Charlatans

One glaring instance of the weakness that comes from

ignorance calls for severe reproof.

In this city a number of lurking leeches wickedly make

their living by exploiting women’s credulity, claiming to ‘cast

nativities’, to use the technical phrase

[= ‘to draw up horoscopes,

making predictions on the basis of astrology’]

; and many females

who are proud of their rank and fortune, and look down

on the vulgar

[see Glossary]

with sovereign contempt, show by

their credulity that the distinction

between themselves and

the vulgar

is arbitrary, and that they have not sufﬁciently

cultivated their minds to rise above vulgar prejudices. Be-

cause women haven’t been led

•

to regard the knowledge of

their duty as the one thing necessary to know, or

•

to live in

the present moment by doing their duty, they are anxious

to peep into the future, to learn what they have to expect to

make life interesting, and to break the vacuum of ignorance.

If any of these ladies who are not ashamed to drive in their

own carriages to the door of the cunning man should read

this work, I beg them to answer the following questions,

remembering that they are in the presence of God.

•

Do you believe that there is only one God, and that he

is powerful, wise, and good?

•

Do you believe that all things were created by him,

and that all beings depend on him?

•

Do you rely on his wisdom (which is so conspicuous

in his works, including your own body)? and are you

convinced, that he has ordered all the things that

don’t come within the range of your senses in the

same perfect harmony to fulﬁl his designs?

•

Do you acknowledge that the power of looking into

the future, and seeing things that are

not

as if they

were

, is an attribute of the Creator? And if he

does

ever want to impart to his creatures a knowledge of

some event that hasn’t yet happened, to whom would

he reveal the secret by immediate inspiration?

The opinion of the ages will answer that last question: he

will reveal it to reverend old men, to people distinguished for

eminent piety.

[MW says that the priests of the ancient Greek and Roman

religions were ‘impostors’ who were used by politicians to

keep the populace quiet and malleable, and in that context

there was some excuse for people who tried to learn about

the future from oracles.] But can a Christian suppose that

God’s favourites—the ones he chose

to reveal some of his

future plans

—would lurk in disguise, and practise the most

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 13: Harm done by women’s ignorance

dishonest tricks to cheat silly women out of the money that

the poor cry for in vain?

[She rails against the ‘foolish women’ who resort to as-

trologers, saying that this conduct is inconsistent with ‘your

religion, such as it is’, adding that these women are so foolish

that they probably wouldn’t understand her if she tried to

show that astrology is ‘absolutely inconsistent with the grand

purpose of life’. She then tries a different tack, from which

she moves on to a different kind of charlatan:]

Perhaps, however, you devoutly believe in the devil, and

imagine that he may assist those who are devoted to him?

But if you really respect the power of such a being, who is an

enemy to goodness and to God, can you go to church after

having been under such an obligation to him?

There is a natural transition from these delusions to the

still more fashionable deceptions practised by the whole tribe

of magnetisers.

[These people used so-called ‘animal magnetism’—i.e.

hypnotism—as a supposed means to curing various ills. The process was

also called ‘mesmerism’, after the Austrian Dr Mesmer, who popularised

it.]

With respect to them, also, it is proper to ask women a

few questions.

Do you know anything about the construction of the

human body? If not, you should be told something that

every child ought to know, namely that when the body’s

admirable system has been disturbed by intemperance or

inactivity—I’m talking not about violent disorders, but about

chronic diseases—it must be returned to a healthy state by

slow degrees. If the functions of life haven’t been materially

injured

so that recovery is impossible

, the only ways that

have yet been discovered for recovering that inestimable

blessing, health—or anyway the only ones that will bear

investigation—are through a

regimen

of temperance, air,

exercise, and a few medicines prescribed by persons who

have studied the human body.

Do you believe that these magnetisers, who by hocus-

pocus tricks pretend to work a miracle, are

•

delegated

by God, or

•

assisted by the solver of all these kinds of

difﬁculties—the devil?

When the magnetisers put to ﬂight (so they claim) dis-

orders that have bafﬂed the powers of medicine, are they

working in conformity to the light of reason? Or do they

bring about these wonderful cures by supernatural aid?

A magnetiser may answer ‘We do it by communicating

with the world of spirits’. A noble privilege, we must ad-

mit!. . . . These men are very fortunate in becoming ac-

quainted with such obliging spirits; but we can’t give the

spirits much credit for wisdom or goodness in choosing

these ignoble instruments as means to show themselves the

benevolent friends of man.

It is, however, little short of blasphemy to claim to have

such power.

From the over-all way that God runs the world, it seems

evident to sober reason that certain vices produce certain

effects. Can anyone so grossly insult God’s wisdom as to

suppose that a

‘magnetising’

miracle will be allowed to

disturb his general laws, restoring intemperate and vicious

people to health merely to enable them to go back to their

old ways with impunity? ‘Be whole, and sin no more’, said

Jesus

[John 5:14]

. Are greater miracles to be performed by

those who do not follow in the footsteps of him who healed

the body in order to reach the mind?

The mention of the name of Christ after such vile impos-

tors may displease you—I respect your warmth, but don’t

forget that the followers of these

‘magnetising’

delusions

bear his name, and profess to be the disciples of him who

said ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’

[Matthew 7:16]

, i.e.

know who are the children of God and who are the servants

of sin. It’s certainly easier to

•

touch the body of a saint or

100

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 13: Harm done by women’s ignorance

•

be magnetised than it is to

•

to restrain our appetites

or govern our passions; but health of body or mind can

only be recovered by those restraints. If there is another

way—

through ‘magnetising’

—then the Supreme Judge is

partial and revengeful.

[‘partial’ in the sense of showing favoritism;

‘revengeful’—MW’s premature choice of that word is explained in the next

two paragraphs.]

Is God a

man

, that he should change, or punish out of

resentment? Reason tells us that God—our common father—

wounds only in order to heal; our irregularities produce

certain consequences, and that forcibly shows us the nature

of vice. In that way we learn from experience to know good

from evil, so that we will love one and hate the other in

proportion to our degree of wisdom. The poison contains

the antidote; and we either

•

reform our evil habits and stop

sinning against our own bodies, to use the forcible language

of scripture

[1 Corinthians 6:18]

, or a premature death—the

punishment of sin—snaps the thread of life.

This raises a question that is frightening to discuss, but

why should I conceal my views? Considering God’s attributes,

I believe that whatever punishment may follow will tend, like

the anguish of disease, to show the malignity of vice, the

purpose of all this being

reformation

. Positive punishment—

i.e. punishment whose rationale lies wholly within itself

rather than in its relation to its consequences

—appears

to be contrary to the nature of God that we can discover

from his works and in our own reason;

contrary that

I would ﬁnd it easier to believe that

•

the Deity paid no

attention to men’s conduct than that

•

he punished without

the benevolent design of reforming. . . .

I know that many devout people boast of submitting

blindly to God’s will, as to an arbitrary sceptre or rod. . . .

In other words, like people in the common concerns of life

they do homage to power, and cringe under the foot that

can crush them. Rational religion, on the other hand, is a

submission to the will of a being who is so perfectly wise that

all he wills must be directed by the proper motive—must be

reasonable.

And if we respect God in this way, can we believe the

mysterious insinuations that insult his laws? Can we

believe—even if it stares us in the face—that God would

work a miracle to authorise confusion by sanctioning an

error? Yet we must either allow these impious conclusions,

or treat with contempt every promise to

(2)

restore health to

a diseased body by supernatural means, or to

(1)

foretell the

incidents that only God can foresee.

2: Novel-reading

Another instance of feminine weakness of character that is

often produced by a conﬁned education is a romantic twist

of the mind that has been very properly called ‘sentimental’.

Women, subjected by ignorance to their sensations, and

taught to look for happiness only in love, reﬁne on sensual

feelings and adopt metaphysical notions about love that lead

them to neglect shamefully the duties of life, and frequently

in the midst of these lofty reﬁnements they plunge into actual

vice.

These are the women who pass their time with the day-

dreams of the stupid novelists who, knowing little of human

nature, work up stale tales and describe tarted-up scenes,

all retailed in a sentimental jargon that corrupts the reader’s

•

taste and draws the

•

heart away from its daily duties. I

don’t mention the

•

understanding, because it has never been

exercised, so that its slumbering energies rest inactive. . . .

Because females are denied all political privileges, and

as married women. . . .are denied even a civil existence, their

attention is naturally drawn from the interests of the whole

101

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 13: Harm done by women’s ignorance

community to the interests of the tiny parts. . . . The mighty

business of female life is

to please

, and for them—blocked

by political and civil oppression from entering into more

important concerns—

sentiments

become

important

events.

When they reﬂect on these feelings they intensify them;

whereas reﬂection

•

ought to erase them, and

•

would do so if

the understanding were allowed to take a wider range.

Conﬁned to trivial activities, women naturally imbibe

the opinions expressed in the only kind of reading that

can interest an innocent frivolous mind. Unable to grasp

anything great, they naturally ﬁnd the reading of history a

very dry task, and ﬁnd anything that is addressed to the

understanding to be intolerably tedious and almost unintelli-

gible. So they have to depend on the novelist for amusement

[see Glossary]

. When I criticize novels, I’m attacking them as

contrasted with works that exercise the understanding and

regulate the imagination;

I’m not saying that the reading

of novels is absolutely bad

. I regard

any

kind of reading

as better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the

mind must be a little enlarged and a little strengthened by

the slight exertion of its thinking powers

that novel-reading

may bring

. And even novels that are addressed only to the

imagination

and provide nothing to think about

raise the

reader a little above the gross gratiﬁcation of appetites that

haven’t been even slightly reﬁned by the mind.

. . . .I knew a woman—as good a woman as her narrow

mind would allow her to be—who took care that her three

daughters should never see a novel. She was a woman of

fortune and fashion, so they had various masters to attend

them, and a sort of menial governess to watch their footsteps.

From their masters they learned how tables, chairs, etc. are

called in French and Italian; but they acquired neither ideas

nor sentiments, because the few books thrown in their way

were either

•

far above their capacities or

•

devotional. When

they weren’t being compelled to repeat

words

they spent

their time in dressing, quarrelling with each other, or secretly

conversing with their maids—until at last they were brought

into company as marriageable.

Their mother, a widow, was busy in the meantime keeping

up her ‘connections’, as she called her acquaintances, so as

to ensure her girls a proper introduction into the great world.

And these young ladies, with spoiled temperaments and

minds that were

vulgar

in every sense of the word, entered

life puffed up with notions of their own importance and

contempt for anyone who couldn’t compete with them in

dress and parade.

As for

love

: nature or their nurses had taken care to

teach them the physical meaning of the word; and as they

had few topics of conversation and even fewer reﬁnements

of sentiment, they expressed their gross wishes in not very

delicate phrases when they had free conversations about

marriage. . . .

This is only one instance; but I recollect many other

women who, not having been

•

led gradually to proper studies

•

permitted to choose for themselves, have indeed been

overgrown children. They may have obtained, by mixing in

the world, a little of what is called ‘common sense’, which is

a distinct manner of seeing common events as they stand

detached—

i.e. seeing each event in isolation

. What they

didn’t have was anything deserving the name ‘intellect’, the

power of gaining general or abstract ideas. . . . Their minds

were quiescent, and when they were not roused by sensible

objects and employments of that kind they were low-spirited,

tearful, or sleepy.

So when I advise my sex not to read such ﬂimsy works

as novels

, it is to induce them to read something better. . . .

102

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 13: Harm done by women’s ignorance

3: Dressing up

Ignorance, and the mistaken cunning that nature sharpens

in weak heads as a means of self-preservation, make women

very fond of dress, and produce the vanity that such a

fondness naturally generates, to the exclusion of spirited

attempts to grow and improve.

I agree with Rousseau that the physical part of the art

of pleasing consists in ornaments; and for just that reason

I want to guard girls against the contagious fondness for

dress that is so common to weak women, so that they don’t

remain stuck in the

physical

part. Women who think they

can long please without the aid of the mind—i.e. without the

moral

art of pleasing—must be weak indeed. The moral art

is never accompanied by ignorance; it is essentially different

from and superior to the sportiveness of innocence that is so

pleasing to reﬁned libertines of both sexes. (It may indeed be

profanation to use the word ‘art’ in connection with the grace

that is

•

an effect of virtue and not

•

the motive of action.)

[MW writes that a liking for ﬁne clothes and ornamen-

tation is ‘natural to mankind’—common to both sexes and

all social levels. (In the most barbarous states only men are

allowed to act on this; that our society allows women to take

part in this too is ‘at least one step in civilisation’.) When the

mind is not sufﬁciently opened to take pleasure in reﬂection,

the body will be adorned with great care, and ambition will

appear in tattooing or painting it.

[MW discusses reasons why vanity about dress is in our

society more of a feminine than a masculine trait. The main

reason is just that men are allowed to have other interests

and pursuits, whereas women aren’t. Also, a man can avoid

clashing with most other men, whereas women]. . . are all

rivals. Before marriage it is their business to please men;

and after marriage most of them follow the same scent, with

all the persistence of instinct. Even virtuous women never

forget their sex in company, for they are always trying to be

agreeable

. A female beauty and a male wit seem to be equally

anxious to draw the attention of the company to themselves;

and the animosity of contemporary wits is proverbial.

So it’s not surprising that the sole ambition of woman

centres on beauty. . . and that there are perpetual rivalships.

They are all running the same race; they rise above the virtue

of mortals if they didn’t view each other with a suspicious

and even envious eye. . . .

4: Sensibility

Women are supposed to have more sensibility

[see Glossary]

than men and even more humanity, and their strong at-

tachments and instantaneous emotions of compassion are

cited as proofs of this. But the clinging affection of ignorance

seldom has anything noble in it; like the affections of children

and the lower animals it is mostly a form of selﬁshness. I

have known many weak women whose sensibility was en-

tirely taken up by their husbands; and as for their humanity,

it was very faint indeed, or rather it was only a transient

emotion of compassion, ‘Humanity does not consist in a

squeamish ear’, says an eminent orator

[Charles James Fox]

. ‘It

belongs to the mind as well as the nerves.’

This exclusive kind of affection, though it degrades the

individual, shouldn’t be offered as evidence of the inferiority

of the

female

sex, because it is the natural consequence of

conﬁned views. Even women of superior sense, when their

attention is focussed on little employments and private plans,

rarely rise to heroism. . . . I therefore agree with the moralist

[Adam Smith]

who says that women seldom have as much

generosity as men, and that their narrow affections—often

put ahead of justice and humanity—make the sex apparently

103

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 13: Harm done by women’s ignorance

inferior. . . ., but I contend that the heart would expand as

the understanding gained strength if women were not held

down from their cradles.

I know that a little sensibility and great weakness will

produce a strong sexual attachment

[= ‘a strong attachment to

members of one’s own sex’]

, and that friendship is made stronger

by reason; so more friendship is to be found in the male than

the female world, and men have a higher sense of justice.

The narrowly focussed affections of women seem to resemble

Cato’s most unjust love for his country. He wished to crush

Carthage, not to save Rome but to promote its vainglory. . . .

Besides, how can women be just or generous when they

are the slaves of injustice?

5: Ignorance about child-care

As the rearing of children—i.e. the laying a foundation of

sound health both of body and mind in the rising generation—

has justly been insisted on as the task especially assigned

to women, their ignorance about it must be contrary to the

order of things. If they are to become sensible mothers, I

contend, their minds will have to take in much more than

they now do, and they

can

do so. Many men attend to the

breeding of horses, and supervise the management of the

•

stable, and yet would. . . .think themselves degraded by pay-

ing any attention to the

•

nursery; yet ever so many children

are absolutely murdered

[MW’s phrase]

by the ignorance of

women! And of those who escape that, and are not destroyed

by unnatural negligence or blind fondness, very few are

managed properly with respect to the infant mind. A child’s

spirit is allowed to become vicious at home, so the child

is sent to school to have his or her spirit broken; and the

methods the school uses—and must use to keep a number

of children in order—scatter the seeds of almost every vice

in the soil that has been forcibly torn up.

[MW compares this treatment of children with the forceful

‘breaking’ of a horse. Perhaps the latter is not permanently

injurious to the horse, she says, but:] I am certain that

a child should never be thus forcibly tamed after it has

unwisely been allowed to run wild; for every violation of

justice and reason in the treatment of children weakens

their reason. They catch a character

[MW’s phrase]

so early—

experience leads me to infer—that the base of the moral

character is ﬁxed before their seventh year, the period during

which women are allowed the sole management of children.

Afterwards it too often happens that half the business of

education is to try to correct the faults, that the children

would never have acquired if their mothers had had more

understanding.

One striking instance of the folly of women must be men-

tioned, namely their treatment of servants in the presence

of children, allowing the children to think that the servants

ought to wait on them and to put up with their moods.

A child should always be made to receive assistance from

a man or woman as a

favour

; and as the ﬁrst lesson of

independence they should learn from their mother’s example

not to require personal attendance that it is an insult to

humanity to require (unless one is ill). . . . I have often heard

servants imperiously called to put children to bed, and sent

away again and again because master or miss hung about

mamma so as to stay up a little longer. . . .

[MW concludes this subsection with reﬂections on how a

woman could be a good mother while also engaging in other

pursuits that would improve her intellect and her morals.]

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Section 6: Concluding thoughts

[This subsection is presented exactly as Mary Wollstonecraft wrote it

(second edition of the work). You can probably think of reasons there

might be for doing this.]

It is not necessary to inform the sagacious reader, now I enter

on my concluding reﬂections, that the discussion of this

subject merely consists in opening a few simple principles,

and clearing away the rubbish that obscured them. But, as

all readers are not sagacious, I must be allowed to add some

explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason—to

that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust,

and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of

thinking.

Moralists have unanimously agreed, that unless virtue

be nursed by liberty, it will never attain due strength—and

what they say of man I extend to mankind, insisting, that in

all cases morals must be ﬁxed on immutable principles; and

that the being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who

obeys any authority but that of reason.

To render women truly useful members of society, I argue,

that they should be led, by having their understandings

cultivated on a large scale, to acquire a rational affection for

their country, founded on knowledge, because it is obvious,

that we are little interested about what we do not understand.

And to make this general knowledge of due importance, I

have endeavoured to show that private duties are never

properly fulﬁlled, unless the understanding enlarges the

heart; and that public virtue is only an aggregate of private.

But, the distinctions established in society undermine both,

by beating out the solid gold of virtue, until it becomes

only the tinsel-covering of vice; for, while wealth makes a

man more respectable than virtue, wealth will be sought

before virtue; and, while women’s persons are caressed,

when a childish simper shows an absence of mind—the mind

will lie fallow. Yet, true voluptuousness must proceed from

the mind—for what can equal the sensations produced by

mutual affection, supported by mutual respect? What are the

cold or feverish caresses of appetite, but sin embracing death,

compared with the modest overﬂowings of a pure heart and

exalted imagination? Yes, let me tell the libertine of fancy

when he despises understanding in woman—that the mind,

which he disregards, gives life to the enthusiastic affection

from which rapture, short-lived as it is, alone can ﬂow! And,

that, without virtue, a sexual attachment must expire, like a

tallow candle in the socket, creating intolerable disgust. To

prove this, I need only observe, that men who have wasted

great part of their lives with women, and with whom they

have sought for pleasure with eager thirst, entertain the

meanest opinion of the sex. Virtue, true reﬁner of joy! if

foolish men were to fright thee from earth, in order to give

loose to all their appetites without a check—some sensual

wight of taste would scale the heavens to invite thee back, to

give a zest to pleasure!

That women at present are by ignorance made foolish

or vicious, is, I think, not to be disputed; and, that the

most salutary effects tending to improve mankind, might be

expected from a

REVOLUTION

in female manners, appears at

least, with a face of probability, to rise out of the observa-

tion. For as marriage has been termed the parent of those

endearing charities, which draw man from the brutal herd,

the corrupting intercourse that wealth, idleness, and folly

produce between the sexes, is more universally injurious

to morality, than all the other vices of mankind collectively

considered. To adulterous lust the most sacred duties are

sacriﬁced, because, before marriage, men, by a promiscuous

intimacy with women, learned to consider love as a selﬁsh

gratiﬁcation—learned to separate it not only from esteem,

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but from the affection merely built on habit, which mixes

a little humanity with it. Justice and friendship are also

set at deﬁance, and that purity of taste is vitiated, which

would naturally lead a man to relish an artless display of

affection, rather than affected airs. But that noble simplicity

of affection, which dares to appear unadorned, has few

attractions for the libertine, though it be the charm, which,

by cementing the matrimonial tie, secures to the pledges

of a warmer passion the necessary parental attention; for

children will never be properly educated until friendship

subsists between parents. Virtue ﬂies from a house divided

against itself—and a whole legion of devils take up their

residence there.

The affection of husbands and wives cannot be pure when

they have so few sentiments in common, and when so little

conﬁdence is established at home, as must be the case when

their pursuits are so different. That intimacy from which

tenderness should ﬂow, will not, cannot subsist between the

vicious.

Contending, therefore, that the sexual distinction, which

men have so warmly insisted on, is arbitrary, I have dwelt

on an observation, that several sensible men, with whom I

have conversed on the subject, allowed to be well founded;

and it is simply this, that the little chastity to be found

among men, and consequent disregard of modesty, tend to

degrade both sexes; and further, that the modesty of women,

characterized as such, will often be only the artful veil of

wantonness, instead of being the natural reﬂection of purity,

until modesty be universally respected.

From the tyranny of man, I ﬁrmly believe, the greater

number of female follies proceed; and the cunning, which

I allow, makes at present a part of their character, I like-

wise have repeatedly endeavoured to prove, is produced by

oppression.

Were not dissenters, for instance, a class of people, with

strict truth characterized as cunning? And may I not lay

some stress on this fact to prove, that when any power

but reason curbs the free spirit of man, dissimulation is

practised, and the various shifts of art are naturally called

forth? Great attention to decorum, which was carried to

a degree of scrupulosity, and all that puerile bustle about

triﬂes and consequential solemnity, which Butler’s caricature

of a dissenter brings before the imagination, shaped their

persons as well as their minds in the mould of prim littleness.

I speak collectively, for I know how many ornaments to

human nature have been enrolled among sectaries; yet, I

assert, that the same narrow prejudice for their sect, which

women have for their families, prevailed in the dissenting

part of the community, however worthy in other respects;

and also that the same timid prudence, or headstrong efforts,

often disgraced the exertions of both. Oppression thus

formed many of the features of their character perfectly

to coincide with that of the oppressed half of mankind; for

is it not notorious, that dissenters were like women, fond

of deliberating together, and asking advice of each other,

until by a complication of little contrivances, some little end

was brought about? A similar attention to preserve their

reputation was conspicuous in the dissenting and female

world, and was produced by a similar cause.

Asserting the rights that women in common with men

ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate their

faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of

their education and station in society. If so, it is reasonable

to suppose, that they will change their character, and correct

their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a

physical, moral, and civil sense.

Let woman share the rights, and she will emulate the

virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emanci-

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pated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being

to her duty. If the latter, it will be expedient to open a fresh

trade with Russia for whips; a present that a father should

always make to his son-in-law on his wedding day, that a

husband may keep his whole family in order by the same

means; and without any violation of justice reign, wielding

this sceptre, sole master of his house, because he is the only

being in it who has reason; the divine, indefeasible, earthly

sovereignty breathed into man by the Master of the universe.

Allowing this position, women have not any inherent rights

to claim; and, by the same rule their duties vanish, for rights

and duties are inseparable.

Be just then, O ye men of understanding! and mark

not more severely what women do amiss, than the vicious

tricks of the horse or the ass for whom ye provide provender,

and allow her the privileges of ignorance, to whom ye deny

the rights of reason, or ye will be worse than Egyptian

task-masters, expecting virtue where nature has not given

understanding!

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