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
But it is vain to expect the present race of weak mothers either to
take that reasonable care of a child's body, which is necessary to
lay the foundation of a good constitution, supposing that it do not
suffer for the sins of its fathers; or to manage its temper so
judiciously that the child will not have, as it grows up, to throw
off all that its mother, its first instructor, directly or
indirectly taught, and unless the mind have uncommon vigour,
womanish follies will stick to the character throughout life. The
weakness of the mother will be visited on the children! And whilst
women are educated to rely on their husbands for judgment, this
must ever be the consequence, for there is no improving an
understanding by halves, nor can any being act wisely from
imitation, because in every circumstance of life there is a kind of
individuality, which requires an exertion of judgment to modify
general rules. The being who can think justly in one track, will
soon extend its intellectual empire; and she who has sufficient
judgment to manage her children, will not submit right or wrong, to
her husband, or patiently to the social laws which makes a
nonentity of a wife.
In public schools women, to guard against the errors of ignorance,
should be taught the elements of anatomy and medicine, not only to
enable them to take proper care of their own health, but to make
them rational nurses of their infants, parents, and husbands; for
the bills of mortality are swelled by the blunders of self-willed
old women, who give nostrums of their own, without knowing any
thing of the human frame. It is likewise proper, only in a
domestic view, to make women, acquainted with the anatomy of the
mind, by allowing the sexes to associate together in every pursuit;
and by leading them to observe the progress of the human
understanding in the improvement of the sciences and arts; never
forgetting the science of morality, nor the study of the political
history of mankind.
A man has been termed a microcosm; and every family might also be
called a state. States, it is true, have mostly been governed by
arts that disgrace the character of man; and the want of a just
constitution, and equal laws, have so perplexed the notions of the
worldly wise, that they more than question the reasonableness of
contending for the rights of humanity. Thus morality, polluted in
the national reservoir, sends off streams of vice to corrupt the
constituent parts of the body politic; but should more noble, or
rather more just principles regulate the laws, which ought to be
the government of society, and not those who execute them, duty
might become the rule of private conduct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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