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
The man who can be contented to live with a pretty useful companion
without a mind, has lost in voluptuous gratifications a taste for
more refined enjoyments; he has never felt the calm satisfaction
that refreshes the parched heart, like the silent dew of heaven--of
being beloved by one who could understand him. In the society of
his wife he is still alone, unless when the man is sunk in the
brute. "The charm of life," says a grave philosophical reasoner,
is "sympathy; nothing pleases us more than to observe in other men
a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breast."
But, according to the tenor of reasoning by which women are kept
from the tree of knowledge, the important years of youth, the
usefulness of age, and the rational hopes of futurity, are all to
be sacrificed, to render woman an object of desire for a short
time. Besides, how could Rousseau expect them to be virtuous and
constant when reason is neither allowed to be the foundation of
their virtue, nor truth the object of their inquiries?
But all Rousseau's errors in reasoning arose from sensibility, and
sensibility to their charms women are very ready to forgive! When
he should have reasoned he became impassioned, and reflection
inflamed his imagination, instead of enlightening his
understanding. Even his virtues also led him farther astray; for,
born with a warm constitution and lively fancy, nature carried him
toward the other sex with such eager fondness, that he soon became
lascivious. Had he given way to these desires, the fire would have
extinguished itself in a natural manner, but virtue, and a romantic
kind of delicacy, made him practise self-denial; yet, when fear,
delicacy, or virtue restrained him, he debauched his imagination;
and reflecting on the sensations to which fancy gave force, he
traced them in the most glowing colours, and sunk them deep into
his soul.
He then sought for solitude, not to sleep with the man of nature;
or calmly investigate the causes of things under the shade where
Sir Isaac Newton indulged contemplation, but merely to indulge his
feelings. And so warmly has he painted what he forcibly felt,
that, interesting the heart and inflaming the imagination of his
readers; in proportion to the strength of their fancy, they imagine
that their understanding is convinced, when they only sympathize
with a poetic writer, who skilfully exhibits the objects of sense,
most voluptuously shadowed, or gracefully veiled; and thus making
us feel, whilst dreaming that we reason, erroneous conclusions are
left in the mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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