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

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 3: The same subject continued
attacked the wise will think about it and leave thoughtless
and noisy scolding to the narrow-minded.
A mother who wants to give her daughter true dignity of
character must ignore the sneers of ignorance and proceed
on a plan diametrically opposite to the one Rousseau has
recommended with all the deluding charms of eloquence
and philosophical trickery. His eloquence makes absurdities
plausible, and when his dogmatic conclusions are considered
by people who aren’t able to refute them, they produce
puzzlement but no conviction.
Throughout the whole animal kingdom every young creature
requires almost continual exercise, and the infancy of
children should similarly be spent in harmless play that
exercises the feet and hands without requiring very precise
direction from the head or the constant attention of a governess.
In fact, the care necessary for self-preservation is the
first natural exercise of the understanding, as inventive little
pastimes stretch the imagination. But these wise designs of
nature are counteracted by mistaken fondness or blind zeal.
The child is not left for a moment to its own direction, particularly
a girl, and is thus made dependent—and dependence
is called natural.
To preserve personal beauty—woman’s glory!—the girls’
limbs and faculties are cramped with worse-than-Chinese
bands; and the sedentary life they are condemned to live,
while boys play in the open air, weakens their muscles and
slackens their nerves. [MW is referring to the Chinese practice of
binding girls’ feet very tightly so as to keep them fashionably small, with
the result that the adult woman could only hobble.] As for Rousseau’s
remarks, since echoed by many writers, that
girls have naturally, i.e. from their birth and independent
of education, a fondness for dolls, dressing, and
talking,
they are too puerile to merit a serious refutation. If a girl
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is condemned to sit for hours listening to the idle chat of
weak governesses or to be present at her mother’s toilet, it is
indeed very natural for her to •try to join the conversation,
and •to imitate her mother or aunts and to amuse herself
[see Glossary] by adorning her lifeless doll, as they amuse
themselves in dressing her, poor innocent babe! Men of the
greatest abilities have seldom been strong enough to rise
above the surrounding atmosphere; and if the page of genius
[see Glossary] has always been blurred by the prejudices of the
times, some allowance should be made for ·the members of·
a sex who—like kings!—always see things through a false
medium.
Thus, we can easily explain women’s conspicuous fondness
for dress without supposing it to come from a desire to
please ·the members of· the sex on which they are dependent.
In short, the supposition that
a girl is naturally a coquette, and her behaviour
expresses a desire connected with nature’s impulse
to propagate the species, even before an improper
education has, by heating the imagination, created
the desire prematurely
is absurd. It’s so unphilosophical that such an intelligent
observer as Rousseau wouldn’t have adopted it if he hadn’t
been accustomed to pushing his desire for uniqueness ahead
of reason, and pushing a favourite paradox ahead of truth.
To give a sex [see Glossary] to mind in this way was not
very consistent with the principles of a man who argued
so warmly and so well for the immortality of the soul. But
truth is a weak barrier when it stands in the way of an
hypothesis! Rousseau respected virtue—he almost adored
it—and yet he allowed himself to love with sensual fondness.
His imagination constantly prepared combustible fuel for
his combustible senses; but, in order to reconcile ·his other
views with· his respect for self-denial, fortitude and those