Chapter 13:
Examples of the harm done by women’s ignorance
There are many follies that are to some extent women’s follies—sins against reason, of commission as well as of omission—but all flowing from ignorance or prejudice. I shall point out only five of them that appear to be harmful to the woman’s moral character. In criticizing them I want especially to show that the weakness of mind and body that men have tried to perpetuate in •women prevents •them from discharging the special duty of their sex; for when weakness of body won’t let them breast-feed their children, and weakness of mind makes them spoil their tempers—is woman in a natural state?
1: Charlatans
One glaring instance of the weakness that comes from ignorance calls for severe reproof.
1. In this city a number of lurking leeches wickedly make their living by exploiting women’s credulity, claiming to ‘cast nativities’, to use the technical phrase [= ‘to draw up horoscopes, making predictions on the basis of astrology’]; and many females who are proud of their rank and fortune, and look down on the vulgar [see Glossary] with sovereign contempt, show by their credulity that the distinction ·between themselves and the vulgar· is arbitrary, and that they have not sufficiently cultivated their minds to rise above vulgar prejudices. Because women haven’t been led •to regard the knowledge of their duty as the one thing necessary to know, or •to live in the present moment by doing their duty, they are anxious to peep into the future, to learn what they have to expect to make life interesting, and to break the vacuum of ignorance. If any of these ladies who are not ashamed to drive in their own carriages to the door of the cunning man should read this work, I beg them to answer the following questions, remembering that they are in the presence of God.
•Do you believe that there is only one God, and that he is powerful, wise, and good?
•Do you believe that all things were created by him, and that all beings depend on him?
•Do you rely on his wisdom (which is so conspicuous in his works, including your own body)? and are you convinced, that he has ordered all the things that don’t come within the range of your senses in the same perfect harmony to fulfil his designs?
•Do you acknowledge that the power of looking into the future, and seeing things that are not as if they were, is an attribute of the Creator? And if he does ever want to impart to his creatures a knowledge of some event that hasn’t yet happened, to whom would he reveal the secret by immediate inspiration?
The opinion of the ages will answer that last question: he will reveal it to reverend old men, to people distinguished for eminent piety.
[MW says that the priests of the ancient Greek and Roman religions were ‘impostors’ who were used by politicians to keep the populace quiet and malleable, and in that context there was some excuse for people who tried to learn about the future from oracles.] But can a Christian suppose that God’s favourites—the ones he chose ·to reveal some of his future plans·—would lurk in disguise, and practise the most dishonest tricks to cheat silly women out of the money that the poor cry for in vain?
[She rails against the ‘foolish women’ who resort to astrologers, saying that this conduct is inconsistent with ‘your religion, such as it is’, adding that these women are so foolish that they probably wouldn’t understand her if she tried to show that astrology is ‘absolutely inconsistent with the grand purpose of life’. She then tries a different tack, from which she moves on to a different kind of charlatan:]
Perhaps, however, you devoutly believe in the devil, and imagine that he may assist those who are devoted to him? But if you really respect the power of such a being, who is an enemy to goodness and to God, can you go to church after having been under such an obligation to him?
2. There is a natural transition from these delusions to the still more fashionable deceptions practised by the whole tribe of magnetisers. [These people used so-called ‘animal magnetism’—i.e. hypnotism—as a supposed means to curing various ills. The process was also called ‘mesmerism’, after the Austrian Dr Mesmer, who popularised it.] With respect to them, also, it is proper to ask women a few questions.
Do you know anything about the construction of the human body? If not, you should be told something that every child ought to know, namely that when the body’s admirable system has been disturbed by intemperance or inactivity—I’m talking not about violent disorders, but about chronic diseases—it must be returned to a healthy state by slow degrees. If the functions of life haven’t been materially injured ·so that recovery is impossible·, the only ways that have yet been discovered for recovering that inestimable blessing, health—or anyway the only ones that will bear investigation—are through a regimen of temperance, air, exercise, and a few medicines prescribed by persons who have studied the human body.
Do you believe that these magnetisers, who by hocuspocus tricks pretend to work a miracle, are •delegated by God, or •assisted by the solver of all these kinds of difficulties—the devil?
When the magnetisers put to flight (so they claim) disorders that have baffled the powers of medicine, are they working in conformity to the light of reason? Or do they bring about these wonderful cures by supernatural aid?
A magnetiser may answer ‘We do it by communicating with the world of spirits’. A noble privilege, we must admit!. . . . These men are very fortunate in becoming acquainted with such obliging spirits; but we can’t give the spirits much credit for wisdom or goodness in choosing these ignoble instruments as means to show themselves the benevolent friends of man.
It is, however, little short of blasphemy to claim to have such power.
From the over-all way that God runs the world, it seems evident to sober reason that certain vices produce certain effects. Can anyone so grossly insult God’s wisdom as to suppose that a ·‘magnetising’· miracle will be allowed to disturb his general laws, restoring intemperate and vicious people to health merely to enable them to go back to their old ways with impunity? ‘Be whole, and sin no more’, said Jesus [John 5:14]. Are greater miracles to be performed by those who do not follow in the footsteps of him who healed the body in order to reach the mind?
The mention of the name of Christ after such vile impostors may displease you—I respect your warmth, but don’t forget that the followers of these ·‘magnetising’· delusions bear his name, and profess to be the disciples of him who said ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’ [Matthew 7:16], i.e. know who are the children of God and who are the servants of sin. It’s certainly easier to •touch the body of a saint or to •be magnetised than it is to •to restrain our appetites or govern our passions; but health of body or mind can only be recovered by those restraints. If there is another way—·through ‘magnetising’·—then the Supreme Judge is partial and revengeful. [‘partial’ in the sense of showing favoritism; ‘revengeful’—MW’s premature choice of that word is explained in the next two paragraphs.]
Is God a man, that he should change, or punish out of resentment? Reason tells us that God—our common father— wounds only in order to heal; our irregularities produce certain consequences, and that forcibly shows us the nature of vice. In that way we learn from experience to know good from evil, so that we will love one and hate the other in proportion to our degree of wisdom. The poison contains the antidote; and we either •reform our evil habits and stop sinning against our own bodies, to use the forcible language of scripture [1 Corinthians 6:18], or a premature death—the punishment of sin—snaps the thread of life.
This raises a question that is frightening to discuss, but why should I conceal my views? Considering God’s attributes, I believe that whatever punishment may follow will tend, like the anguish of disease, to show the malignity of vice, the purpose of all this being reformation. Positive punishment— ·i.e. punishment whose rationale lies wholly within itself rather than in its relation to its consequences·—appears to be contrary to the nature of God that we can discover from his works and in our own reason; so contrary that I would find it easier to believe that •the Deity paid no attention to men’s conduct than that •he punished without the benevolent design of reforming. . . .
I know that many devout people boast of submitting blindly to God’s will, as to an arbitrary sceptre or rod. . . . In other words, like people in the common concerns of life they do homage to power, and cringe under the foot that can crush them. Rational religion, on the other hand, is a submission to the will of a being who is so perfectly wise that all he wills must be directed by the proper motive—must be reasonable.
And if we respect God in this way, can we believe the mysterious insinuations that insult his laws? Can we believe—even if it stares us in the face—that God would work a miracle to authorise confusion by sanctioning an error? Yet we must either allow these impious conclusions, or treat with contempt every promise to (2) restore health to a diseased body by supernatural means, or to (1) foretell the incidents that only God can foresee.
2: Novel-reading
Another instance of feminine weakness of character that is often produced by a confined education is a romantic twist of the mind that has been very properly called ‘sentimental’.
Women, subjected by ignorance to their sensations, and taught to look for happiness only in love, refine on sensual feelings and adopt metaphysical notions about love that lead them to neglect shamefully the duties of life, and frequently in the midst of these lofty refinements they plunge into actual vice.
These are the women who pass their time with the daydreams of the stupid novelists who, knowing little of human nature, work up stale tales and describe tarted-up scenes, all retailed in a sentimental jargon that corrupts the reader’s •taste and draws the •heart away from its daily duties. I don’t mention the •understanding, because it has never been exercised, so that its slumbering energies rest inactive. . . .
Because females are denied all political privileges, and as married women. . . .are denied even a civil existence, their attention is naturally drawn from the interests of the whole community to the interests of the tiny parts. . . . The mighty business of female life is to please, and for them—blocked by political and civil oppression from entering into more important concerns—sentiments become ·important· events. When they reflect on these feelings they intensify them; whereas reflection •ought to erase them, and •would do so if the understanding were allowed to take a wider range.
Confined to trivial activities, women naturally imbibe the opinions expressed in the only kind of reading that can interest an innocent frivolous mind. Unable to grasp anything great, they naturally find the reading of history a very dry task, and find anything that is addressed to the understanding to be intolerably tedious and almost unintelligible. So they have to depend on the novelist for amusement [see Glossary]. When I criticize novels, I’m attacking them as contrasted with works that exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination; ·I’m not saying that the reading of novels is absolutely bad·. I regard any kind of reading as better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must be a little enlarged and a little strengthened by the slight exertion of its thinking powers ·that novel-reading may bring·. And even novels that are addressed only to the imagination ·and provide nothing to think about· raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites that haven’t been even slightly refined by the mind.
. . . .I knew a woman—as good a woman as her narrow mind would allow her to be—who took care that her three daughters should never see a novel. She was a woman of fortune and fashion, so they had various masters to attend them, and a sort of menial governess to watch their footsteps. From their masters they learned how tables, chairs, etc. are called in French and Italian; but they acquired neither ideas nor sentiments, because the few books thrown in their way were either •far above their capacities or •devotional. When they weren’t being compelled to repeat words they spent their time in dressing, quarrelling with each other, or secretly conversing with their maids—until at last they were brought into company as marriageable.
Their mother, a widow, was busy in the meantime keeping up her ‘connections’, as she called her acquaintances, so as to ensure her girls a proper introduction into the great world. And these young ladies, with spoiled temperaments and minds that were vulgar in every sense of the word, entered life puffed up with notions of their own importance and contempt for anyone who couldn’t compete with them in dress and parade.
As for love: nature or their nurses had taken care to teach them the physical meaning of the word; and as they had few topics of conversation and even fewer refinements of sentiment, they expressed their gross wishes in not very delicate phrases when they had free conversations about marriage. . . .
This is only one instance; but I recollect many other women who, not having been •led gradually to proper studies or •permitted to choose for themselves, have indeed been overgrown children. They may have obtained, by mixing in the world, a little of what is called ‘common sense’, which is a distinct manner of seeing common events as they stand detached—·i.e. seeing each event in isolation·. What they didn’t have was anything deserving the name ‘intellect’, the power of gaining general or abstract ideas. . . . Their minds were quiescent, and when they were not roused by sensible objects and employments of that kind they were low-spirited, tearful, or sleepy.
So when I advise my sex not to read such flimsy works ·as novels·, it is to induce them to read something better. . . .
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 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 inferior. . . ., but I contend that the heart would expand as the understanding gained strength if women were not held down from their cradles.
I know that a little sensibility and great weakness will produce a strong sexual attachment [= ‘a strong attachment to members of one’s own sex’], and that friendship is made stronger by reason; so more friendship is to be found in the male than the female world, and men have a higher sense of justice. The narrowly focussed affections of women seem to resemble Cato’s most unjust love for his country. He wished to crush Carthage, not to save Rome but to promote its vainglory. . . .
Besides, how can women be just or generous when they are the slaves of injustice?
5: Ignorance about child-care
As the rearing of children—i.e. the laying a foundation of sound health both of body and mind in the rising generation— has justly been insisted on as the task especially assigned to women, their ignorance about it must be contrary to the order of things. If they are to become sensible mothers, I contend, their minds will have to take in much more than they now do, and they can do so. Many men attend to the breeding of horses, and supervise the management of the •stable, and yet would. . . .think themselves degraded by paying any attention to the •nursery; yet ever so many children are absolutely murdered [MW’s phrase] by the ignorance of women! And of those who escape that, and are not destroyed by unnatural negligence or blind fondness, very few are managed properly with respect to the infant mind. A child’s spirit is allowed to become vicious at home, so the child is sent to school to have his or her spirit broken; and the methods the school uses—and must use to keep a number of children in order—scatter the seeds of almost every vice in the soil that has been forcibly torn up.
[MW compares this treatment of children with the forceful ‘breaking’ of a horse. Perhaps the latter is not permanently injurious to the horse, she says, but:] I am certain that a child should never be thus forcibly tamed after it has unwisely been allowed to run wild; for every violation of justice and reason in the treatment of children weakens their reason. They catch a character [MW’s phrase] so early— experience leads me to infer—that the base of the moral character is fixed before their seventh year, the period during which women are allowed the sole management of children. Afterwards it too often happens that half the business of education is to try to correct the faults, that the children would never have acquired if their mothers had had more understanding.
One striking instance of the folly of women must be mentioned, namely their treatment of servants in the presence of children, allowing the children to think that the servants ought to wait on them and to put up with their moods. A child should always be made to receive assistance from a man or woman as a favour; and as the first lesson of independence they should learn from their mother’s example not to require personal attendance that it is an insult to humanity to require (unless one is ill). . . . I have often heard servants imperiously called to put children to bed, and sent away again and again because master or miss hung about mamma so as to stay up a little longer. . . .
[MW concludes this subsection with reflections on how a woman could be a good mother while also engaging in other pursuits that would improve her intellect and her morals.]
Section 6: Concluding thoughts
[This subsection is presented exactly as Mary Wollstonecraft wrote it (second edition of the work). You can probably think of reasons there might be for doing this.]
It is not necessary to inform the sagacious reader, now I enter on my concluding reflections, that the discussion of this subject merely consists in opening a few simple principles, and clearing away the rubbish that obscured them. But, as all readers are not sagacious, I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason—to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking.
Moralists have unanimously agreed, that unless virtue be nursed by liberty, it will never attain due strength—and what they say of man I extend to mankind, insisting, that in all cases morals must be fixed on immutable principles; and that the being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority but that of reason.
To render women truly useful members of society, I argue, that they should be led, by having their understandings cultivated on a large scale, to acquire a rational affection for their country, founded on knowledge, because it is obvious, that we are little interested about what we do not understand. And to make this general knowledge of due importance, I have endeavoured to show that private duties are never properly fulfilled, unless the understanding enlarges the heart; and that public virtue is only an aggregate of private. But, the distinctions established in society undermine both, by beating out the solid gold of virtue, until it becomes only the tinsel-covering of vice; for, while wealth makes a man more respectable than virtue, wealth will be sought before virtue; and, while women’s persons are caressed, when a childish simper shows an absence of mind—the mind will lie fallow. Yet, true voluptuousness must proceed from the mind—for what can equal the sensations produced by mutual affection, supported by mutual respect? What are the cold or feverish caresses of appetite, but sin embracing death, compared with the modest overflowings of a pure heart and exalted imagination? Yes, let me tell the libertine of fancy when he despises understanding in woman—that the mind, which he disregards, gives life to the enthusiastic affection from which rapture, short-lived as it is, alone can flow! And, that, without virtue, a sexual attachment must expire, like a tallow candle in the socket, creating intolerable disgust. To prove this, I need only observe, that men who have wasted great part of their lives with women, and with whom they have sought for pleasure with eager thirst, entertain the meanest opinion of the sex. Virtue, true refiner of joy! if foolish men were to fright thee from earth, in order to give loose to all their appetites without a check—some sensual wight of taste would scale the heavens to invite thee back, to give a zest to pleasure!
That women at present are by ignorance made foolish or vicious, is, I think, not to be disputed; and, that the most salutary effects tending to improve mankind, might be expected from a REVOLUTION in female manners, appears at least, with a face of probability, to rise out of the observation. For as marriage has been termed the parent of those endearing charities, which draw man from the brutal herd, the corrupting intercourse that wealth, idleness, and folly produce between the sexes, is more universally injurious to morality, than all the other vices of mankind collectively considered. To adulterous lust the most sacred duties are sacrificed, because, before marriage, men, by a promiscuous intimacy with women, learned to consider love as a selfish gratification—learned to separate it not only from esteem, but from the affection merely built on habit, which mixes a little humanity with it. Justice and friendship are also set at defiance, and that purity of taste is vitiated, which would naturally lead a man to relish an artless display of affection, rather than affected airs. But that noble simplicity of affection, which dares to appear unadorned, has few attractions for the libertine, though it be the charm, which, by cementing the matrimonial tie, secures to the pledges of a warmer passion the necessary parental attention; for children will never be properly educated until friendship subsists between parents. Virtue flies from a house divided against itself—and a whole legion of devils take up their residence there.
The affection of husbands and wives cannot be pure when they have so few sentiments in common, and when so little confidence is established at home, as must be the case when their pursuits are so different. That intimacy from which tenderness should flow, will not, cannot subsist between the vicious.
Contending, therefore, that the sexual distinction, which men have so warmly insisted on, is arbitrary, I have dwelt on an observation, that several sensible men, with whom I have conversed on the subject, allowed to be well founded; and it is simply this, that the little chastity to be found among men, and consequent disregard of modesty, tend to degrade both sexes; and further, that the modesty of women, characterized as such, will often be only the artful veil of wantonness, instead of being the natural reflection of purity, until modesty be universally respected.
From the tyranny of man, I firmly believe, the greater number of female follies proceed; and the cunning, which I allow, makes at present a part of their character, I likewise have repeatedly endeavoured to prove, is produced by oppression.
Were not dissenters, for instance, a class of people, with strict truth characterized as cunning? And may I not lay some stress on this fact to prove, that when any power but reason curbs the free spirit of man, dissimulation is practised, and the various shifts of art are naturally called forth? Great attention to decorum, which was carried to a degree of scrupulosity, and all that puerile bustle about trifles and consequential solemnity, which Butler’s caricature of a dissenter brings before the imagination, shaped their persons as well as their minds in the mould of prim littleness. I speak collectively, for I know how many ornaments to human nature have been enrolled among sectaries; yet, I assert, that the same narrow prejudice for their sect, which women have for their families, prevailed in the dissenting part of the community, however worthy in other respects; and also that the same timid prudence, or headstrong efforts, often disgraced the exertions of both. Oppression thus formed many of the features of their character perfectly to coincide with that of the oppressed half of mankind; for is it not notorious, that dissenters were like women, fond of deliberating together, and asking advice of each other, until by a complication of little contrivances, some little end was brought about? A similar attention to preserve their reputation was conspicuous in the dissenting and female world, and was produced by a similar cause.
Asserting the rights that women in common with men ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate their faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society. If so, it is reasonable to suppose, that they will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a physical, moral, and civil sense.
Let woman share the rights, and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being to her duty. If the latter, it will be expedient to open a fresh trade with Russia for whips; a present that a father should always make to his son-in-law on his wedding day, that a husband may keep his whole family in order by the same means; and without any violation of justice reign, wielding this sceptre, sole master of his house, because he is the only being in it who has reason; the divine, indefeasible, earthly sovereignty breathed into man by the Master of the universe. Allowing this position, women have not any inherent rights to claim; and, by the same rule their duties vanish, for rights and duties are inseparable.
Be just then, O ye men of understanding! and mark not more severely what women do amiss, than the vicious tricks of the horse or the ass for whom ye provide provender, and allow her the privileges of ignorance, to whom ye deny the rights of reason, or ye will be worse than Egyptian task-masters, expecting virtue where nature has not given understanding!