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
That women at present are by ignorance rendered 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 observation. 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, 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 till 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 upon, 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 amongst 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, till modesty be universally respected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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