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
"Whatever is, is right," he then proceeds triumphantly to infer.
Granted; yet, perhaps, no aphorism ever contained a more
paradoxical assertion. It is a solemn truth with respect to God.
He, reverentially I speak, sees the whole at once, and saw its just
proportions in the womb of time; but man, who can only inspect
disjointed parts, finds many things wrong; and it is a part of the
system, and therefore right, that he should endeavour to alter what
appears to him to be so, even while he bows to the wisdom of his
Creator, and respects the darkness he labours to disperse.
The inference that follows is just, supposing the principle to be
sound: "The superiority of address, peculiar to the female sex, is
a very equitable indemnification for their inferiority in point of
strength: without this, woman would not be the companion of man;
but his slave: it is by her superiour art and ingenuity that she
preserves her equality, and governs him while she affects to obey.
Woman has every thing against her, as well our faults as her own
timidity and weakness: she has nothing in her favour, but her
subtilty and her beauty. Is it not very reasonable, therefore, she
should cultivate both?" Greatness of mind can never dwell with
cunning or address; for I shall not boggle about words, when their
direct signification is insincerity and falsehood; but content
myself with observing, that if any class of mankind be so created
that it must necessarily be educated by rules, not strictly
deducible from truth, virtue is an affair of convention. How could
Rousseau dare to assert, after giving this advice, that in the
grand end of existence, the object of both sexes should be the
same, when he well knew, that the mind formed by its pursuits, is
expanded by great views swallowing up little ones, or that it
becomes itself little?
Men have superiour strength of body; but were it not for mistaken
notions of beauty, women would acquire sufficient to enable them to
earn their own subsistence, the true definition of independence;
and to bear those bodily inconveniences and exertions that are
requisite to strengthen the mind.
Let us then, by being allowed to take the same exercise as boys,
not only during infancy, but youth, arrive at perfection of body,
that we may know how far the natural superiority of man extends.
For what reason or virtue can be expected from a creature when the
seed-time of life is neglected? None--did not the winds of heaven
casually scatter many useful seeds in the fallow ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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