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MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. A Vindication of The Rights of Woman

The document is a passage from Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman criticizing the system of education for women at the time. She argues that women are rendered weak and unhappy due to an education focused on beauty rather than intellect. This false system teaches women to be attractive rather than develop abilities and virtues. While some attention is now paid to women's education, they are still seen as frivolous and are taught accomplishments rather than strength of body and mind. This leaves them unfit to govern families or care for children when married.

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133 views2 pages

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. A Vindication of The Rights of Woman

The document is a passage from Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman criticizing the system of education for women at the time. She argues that women are rendered weak and unhappy due to an education focused on beauty rather than intellect. This false system teaches women to be attractive rather than develop abilities and virtues. While some attention is now paid to women's education, they are still seen as frivolous and are taught accomplishments rather than strength of body and mind. This leaves them unfit to govern families or care for children when married.

Uploaded by

lapixel
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman AFTER considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have sighed when obliged to confess, that either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial. I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result?a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity.One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than wives; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect. ... My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consistsI wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonimous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt. ... The education of women has, of late, been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavor

by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments: meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves,-the only way women can rise in the world,by marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry they act as such children may be expected to act:they dress; they paint, and nickname God's creatures.Surely these weak beings are only fit for a seraglio!Can they govern a family, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world? ... It seems scarcely necessary to say, that I now speak of the sex in general. Many individuals have more sense than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium, without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.

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