For examples of the lighter productions referred to see _An Essay on Marriage, in a cautionary Epistle to a Young Gentleman, wherein the Artifices and Foibles of the Fair_, etc. (London, 1750); _The Deportment of a Married Life: Laid down in a Series of Letters ... to a Young Lady ... lately Married_ (2d ed., London, 1798; 3d ed., 1821); _Boone_, _The Marriage Looking-Glass: written as a Manual for the Married and a Beacon to the Single_ (London, 1848); GUTHRIE, _Wedded Love_ (London, 1859), a volume of sentimental verse. Some of them have a pious or theological tone: _The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Married State ... under the Similitude of a Dream_ (5th ed., London, 1760); _Conjugal Love and Duty_ (4th ed., Dublin and London, 1758); _Reflections on Celibacy and Marriage, in Four Letters to a Friend_ (London, 1771); SANDEMAN, _The Honour of Marriage opposed to all Impurities_ (London, 1777); BEAN, _The Christian Minister's Affectionate Advice to a New Married Couple_ (4th ed., London, 1809). Others contain valuable passages, while vividly reflecting the contemporary view regarding woman's inferior position: "Philogamus," _The Present State of Matrimony_ (London, 1739); _The Art of Governing a Wife; with Rules for Batchelors_ (London, 1747). Nevertheless, the beginning of an efficient agitation for woman's rights was then made. As early as 1696 appeared Mary Astell's vigorous _Defense of the Female Sex_, further developing views which she had expressed two years earlier.[802] The next year Defoe, advocating an "academy for women," made a strong plea for the equal education of the sexes.[803] A singularly clear and incisive exposure of the _Hardships of the English Laws in relation to Wives_ was published in 1735. The writer, apparently a woman, while protesting that her adversaries for want of arguments resort to "points of wit, smart jests, and all-confounding laughter," presents many striking proofs from judicial annals and elsewhere to show that in England the "estate of wives is more disadvantageous than slavery itself;" that they "may be made prisoners for life at the discretion of their domestick governors;" and that they "have no property, neither in their own persons, children, or fortunes."[804] In 1739 an anonymous writer, signing herself "Sophia," produced a forceful _Vindication of the natural Right of the Fair-Sex to a perfect Equality of Power, Dignity, and Esteem with the Men_, in which, appealing to "rectified reason," she urged that difference in sex relates to the "propagation of human nature," whereas in "soul there is no sex," and diversity must therefore come from education and environment.[805] Mary Wollstonecraft's better known and much more elaborate _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_,[806] published in 1792, was therefore not without helpful predecessors. But it is immensely superior to them in its literary power and its intellectual grasp.