A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral SubjectsWollstonecraft, Mary
Philosophy
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects
Wollstonecraft, Mary
Feminism; Women -- Education -- Great Britain; Women -- History -- 19th century; Women's rights -- Great Britain
Besides, what can be more indelicate than a girl's coming out in
the fashionable world? Which, in other words, is to bring to
market a marriageable miss, whose person is taken from one public
place to another, richly caparisoned. Yet, mixing in the giddy
circle under restraint, these butterflies long to flutter at large,
for the first affection of their souls is their own persons, to
which their attention has been called with the most sedulous care,
whilst they were preparing for the period that decides their fate
for life. Instead of pursuing this idle routine, sighing for
tasteless show, and heartless state, with what dignity would the
youths of both sexes form attachments in the schools that I have
cursorily pointed out; in which, as life advanced, dancing, music,
and drawing, might be admitted as relaxations, for at these schools
young people of fortune ought to remain, more or less, till they
were of age. Those, who were designed for particular professions,
might attend, three or four mornings in the week, the schools
appropriated for their immediate instruction.
I only drop these observations at present, as hints; rather, indeed
as an outline of the plan I mean, than a digested one; but I must
add, that I highly approve of one regulation mentioned in the
pamphlet already alluded to (The Bishop of Autun), that of making
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 the happiest effect on the temper, which is
very early soured or irritated by tyranny, till it becomes
peevishly cunning, or ferociously overbearing.
My imagination darts forward with benevolent fervour to greet these
amiable and respectable groups, in spite of the sneering of cold
hearts, who are at liberty to utter, with frigid self-importance,
the damning epithet-- romantic; the force of which I shall
endeavour to blunt by repeating the words of an eloquent moralist.
"I know not whether the allusions of a truly humane heart, whose
zeal renders every thing easy, is not preferable to that rough and
repulsing reason, which always finds in indifference for the public
good, the first obstacle to whatever would promote it."
I know that libertines will also exclaim, 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 am of a very different opinion, for I think, that, on the
contrary, we should then see dignified beauty, and true grace; to
produce which, many powerful physical and moral causes would
concur. Not relaxed beauty, it is true, nor the graces of
helplessness; but such as appears to make us respect the human body
as a majestic pile, fit to receive a noble inhabitant, in the
relics of antiquity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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