A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with - Early Modern Texts

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 13: Harm done by women’s ignorance
3: Dressing up
Ignorance, and the mistaken cunning that nature sharpens
in weak heads as a means of self-preservation, make women
very fond of dress, and produce the vanity that such a
fondness naturally generates, to the exclusion of spirited
attempts to grow and improve.
I agree with Rousseau that the physical part of the art
of pleasing consists in ornaments; and for just that reason
I want to guard girls against the contagious fondness for
dress that is so common to weak women, so that they don’t
remain stuck in the physical part. Women who think they
can long please without the aid of the mind—i.e. without the
moral art of pleasing—must be weak indeed. The moral art
is never accompanied by ignorance; it is essentially different
from and superior to the sportiveness of innocence that is so
pleasing to refined libertines of both sexes. (It may indeed be
profanation to use the word ‘art’ in connection with the grace
that is •an effect of virtue and not •the motive of action.)
[MW writes that a liking for fine clothes and ornamentation
is ‘natural to mankind’—common to both sexes and
all social levels. (In the most barbarous states only men are
allowed to act on this; that our society allows women to take
part in this too is ‘at least one step in civilisation’.) When the
mind is not sufficiently opened to take pleasure in reflection,
the body will be adorned with great care, and ambition will
appear in tattooing or painting it.
[MW discusses reasons why vanity about dress is in our
society more of a feminine than a masculine trait. The main
reason is just that men are allowed to have other interests
and pursuits, whereas women aren’t. Also, a man can avoid
clashing with most other men, whereas women]. . . are all
rivals. Before marriage it is their business to please men;
and after marriage most of them follow the same scent, with
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all the persistence of instinct. Even virtuous women never
forget their sex in company, for they are always trying to be
agreeable. A female beauty and a male wit seem to be equally
anxious to draw the attention of the company to themselves;
and the animosity of contemporary wits is proverbial.
So it’s not surprising that the sole ambition of woman
centres on beauty. . . and that there are perpetual rivalships.
They are all running the same race; they rise above the virtue
of mortals if they didn’t view each other with a suspicious
and even envious eye. . . .
4: Sensibility
Women are supposed to have more sensibility [see Glossary]
than men and even more humanity, and their strong attachments
and instantaneous emotions of compassion are
cited as proofs of this. But the clinging affection of ignorance
seldom has anything noble in it; like the affections of children
and the lower animals it is mostly a form of selfishness. I
have known many weak women whose sensibility was entirely
taken up by their husbands; and as for their humanity,
it was very faint indeed, or rather it was only a transient
emotion of compassion, ‘Humanity does not consist in a
squeamish ear’, says an eminent orator [Charles James Fox]. ‘It
belongs to the mind as well as the nerves.’
This exclusive kind of affection, though it degrades the
individual, shouldn’t be offered as evidence of the inferiority
of the ·female· sex, because it is the natural consequence of
confined views. Even women of superior sense, when their
attention is focussed on little employments and private plans,
rarely rise to heroism. . . . I therefore agree with the moralist
[Adam Smith] who says that women seldom have as much
generosity as men, and that their narrow affections—often
put ahead of justice and humanity—make the sex apparently