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

The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 7: Modesty comprehensively considered
streets of London, causing alternate emotions of pity and
disgust, illustrate this remark. They trample on virgin
bashfulness with a sort of bravado, and glorying in their
shame they become more audaciously lewd than men. . . .ever
appear to be. But these poor ignorant wretches never had
any modesty to lose when they consigned themselves to
infamy; for modesty is a virtue, not a quality. No, they were
only bashful, shame-faced innocents; and when they lost
their innocence their shame-facedness was roughly brushed
off; whereas a virtue, if sacrificed to passion, would have left
some traces in the mind to make us respect the grand ruin.
Purity of mind—i.e. the genuine delicacy that is the only
virtuous support of chastity—is near kin to the refinement
of humanity that resides only in cultivated minds. It is
something nobler than innocence; it is the delicacy of reflection,
and not the coyness of ignorance. The reservedness
of reason—which like habitual cleanliness is seldom seen
in any great degree unless the soul is active—can easily be
distinguished from rustic shyness or wanton skittishness;
and far from being incompatible with knowledge, it is its
fairest fruit. Someone who wrote this had a gross idea of
modesty:
The lady who asked ‘Can women be instructed in the
modern system of botany, consistently with female
delicacy?’ was accused of ridiculous prudery; but if
she had asked me I would certainly have answered
‘No, they cannot’.
Thus is the fair book of knowledge to be shut with an everlasting
seal! On reading things like that I have reverentially
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lifted up my eyes and heart to God and said, ‘O my Father,
have you by the very constitution of my nature forbidden me
to seek you in the fair forms of truth?’. . . .
A woman who has dedicated much of her time to purely
intellectual pursuits, and whose affections have been exercised
by humane plans of usefulness, must as a natural
consequence have more purity of mind than the ignorant
beings whose time and thoughts have been occupied by gay
pleasures or schemes to conquer hearts. 10 The regulation of
one’s behaviour is not modesty, though those who carefully
obey rules of decorum are generally described as ‘modest
women’. Make the heart clean, let it expand and feel for
everything human instead of being narrowed by selfish passions;
and let the mind frequently contemplate subjects that
exercise the understanding without heating the imagination;
and artless modesty will give the finishing touches to the
picture.
Anyone who sees herself as immortal [see Glossary] will
respect, as a sacred temple, the body that enshrines such
an improvable soul. True love also spreads this kind of
mysterious sanctity around the beloved object, making the
lover most modest when in her presence. . . .
As a sex, women are more chaste than men, and as
modesty is the effect of chastity they may deserve to have
this virtue—·modesty·—ascribed to them. . . ., but I must be
allowed to add a hesitating if, ·revising the above statement
to ‘If modesty is the effect of chastity·. . . ’; because I am not
sure whether chastity will produce •modesty, though it may
produce •propriety of conduct, when it is merely a respect
I have conversed with medical men on anatomical subjects, conversing as man with man; and I have discussed the proportions of the human body
with ·male· artists; but I met with such modesty that I was never reminded by word or look of •my sex or of •the absurd rules that make modesty a
pharisaical cloak for weakness. And I am convinced that in the pursuit of knowledge women would never be insulted by sensible men—and rarely by
men of any description—if they didn’t by mock modesty remind them that they were women. . . . Men are not always men in the company of women;
and women wouldn’t always remember that they are women if they were allowed to acquire more understanding.
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