A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Let fancy now present a woman with a tolerable understanding, for I
do not wish to leave the line of mediocrity, whose constitution,
strengthened by exercise, has allowed her body to acquire its full
vigour; her mind, at the same time, gradually expanding itself to
comprehend the moral duties of life, and in what human virtue and
dignity consist. Formed thus by the relative duties of her
station, she marries from affection, without losing sight of
prudence, and looking beyond matrimonial felicity, she secures her
husband's respect before it is necessary to exert mean arts to
please him, and feed a dying flame, which nature doomed to expire
when the object became familiar, when friendship and forbearance
take place of a more ardent affection. This is the natural death
of love, and domestic peace is not destroyed by struggles to
prevent its extinction. I also suppose the husband to be virtuous;
or she is still more in want of independent principles.
Fate, however, breaks this tie. She is left a widow, perhaps,
without a sufficient provision: but she is not desolate! The pang
of nature is felt; but after time has softened sorrow into
melancholy resignation, her heart turns to her children with
redoubled fondness, and anxious to provide for them, affection
gives a sacred heroic cast to her maternal duties. She thinks that
not only the eye sees her virtuous efforts, from whom all her
comfort now must flow, and whose approbation is life; but her
imagination, a little abstracted and exalted by grief, dwells on
the fond hope, that the eyes which her trembling hand closed, may
still see how she subdues every wayward passion to fulfil the
double duty of being the father as well as the mother of her
children. Raised to heroism by misfortunes, she represses the
first faint dawning of a natural inclination, before it ripens into
love, and in the bloom of life forgets her sex--forgets the
pleasure of an awakening passion, which might again have been
inspired and returned. She no longer thinks of pleasing, and
conscious dignity prevents her from priding herself on account of
the praise which her conduct demands. Her children have her love,
and her brightest hopes are beyond the grave, where her imagination
often strays.
I think I see her surrounded by her children, reaping the reward of
her care. The intelligent eye meets her's, whilst health and
innocence smile on their chubby cheeks, and as they grow up the
cares of life are lessened by their grateful attention. She lives
to see the virtues which she endeavoured to plant on principles,
fixed into habits, to see her children attain a strength of
character sufficient to enable them to endure adversity without
forgetting their mother's example.
The task of life thus fulfilled, she calmly waits for the sleep of
death, and rising from the grave may say, behold, thou gavest me a
talent, and here are five talents.
I wish to sum up what I have said in a few words, for I here throw
down my gauntlet, and deny the existence of sexual virtues, not
excepting modesty. For man and woman, truth, if I understand the
meaning of the word, must be the same; yet the fanciful female
character, so prettily drawn by poets and novelists, demanding the
sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue becomes a relative idea,
having no other foundation than utility, and of that utility men
pretend arbitrarily to judge, shaping it to their own convenience.
Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are
HUMAN duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge
of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.
To become respectable, the exercise of their understanding is
necessary, there is no other foundation for independence of
character; I mean explicitly to say, that they must only bow to the
authority of reason, instead of being the MODEST slaves of opinion.
In the superior ranks of life how seldom do we meet with a man of
superior abilities, or even common acquirements? The reason
appears to me clear; the state they are born in was an unnatural
one. The human character has ever been formed by the employments
the individual, or class pursues; and if the faculties are not
sharpened by necessity, they must remain obtuse. The argument may
fairly be extended to women; for seldom occupied by serious
business, the pursuit of pleasure gives that insignificancy to
their character which renders the society of the GREAT so insipid.
The same want of firmness, produced by a similar cause, forces them
both to fly from themselves to noisy pleasures, and artificial
passions, till vanity takes place of every social affection, and
the characteristics of humanity can scarcely be discerned. Such
are the blessings of civil governments, as they are at present
organized, that wealth and female softness equally tend to debase
mankind, and are produced by the same cause; but allowing women to
be rational creatures they should be incited to acquire virtues
which they may call their own, for how can a rational being be
ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its OWN exertions?
CHAPTER 4.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF DEGRADATION TO WHICH WOMAN IS REDUCED
BY VARIOUS CAUSES.
That woman is naturally weak, or degraded by a concurrence of
circumstances is, I think, clear. But this position I shall simply
contrast with a conclusion, which I have frequently heard fall from
sensible men in favour of an aristocracy: that the mass of mankind
cannot be any thing, or the obsequious slaves, who patiently allow
themselves to be penned up, would feel their own consequence, and
spurn their chains. Men, they further observe, submit every where
to oppression, when they have only to lift up their heads to throw
off the yoke; yet, instead of asserting their birthright, they
quietly lick the dust, and say, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die. Women, I argue from analogy, are degraded by the same
propensity to enjoy the present moment; and, at last, despise the
freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to
attain. But I must be more explicit.
With respect to the culture of the heart, it is unanimously allowed
that sex is out of the question; but the line of subordination in
the mental powers is never to be passed over. Only "absolute in
loveliness," the portion of rationality granted to woman is,
indeed, very scanty; for, denying her genius and judgment, it is
scarcely possible to divine what remains to characterize intellect.
The stamina of immortality, if I may be allowed the phrase, is the
perfectibility of human reason; for, was man created perfect, or
did a flood of knowledge break in upon him, when he arrived at
maturity, that precluded error, I should doubt whether his
existence would be continued after the dissolution of the body.
But in the present state of things, every difficulty in morals,
that escapes from human discussion, and equally baffles the
investigation of profound thinking, and the lightning glance of
genius, is an argument on which I build my belief of the
immortality of the soul. Reason is, consequentially, the simple
power of improvement; or, more properly speaking, of discerning
truth. Every individual is in this respect a world in itself.
More or less may be conspicuous in one being than other; but the
nature of reason must be the same in all, if it be an emanation of
divinity, the tie that connects the creature with the Creator; for,
can that soul be stamped with the heavenly image, that is not
perfected by the exercise of its own reason? Yet outwardly
ornamented with elaborate care, and so adorned to delight man,
"that with honour he may love," (Vide Milton) the soul of woman is
not allowed to have this distinction, and man, ever placed between
her and reason, she is always represented as only created to see
through a gross medium, and to take things on trust. But,
dismissing these fanciful theories, and considering woman as a
whole, let it be what it will, instead of a part of man, the
inquiry is, whether she has reason or not. If she has, which, for
a moment, I will take for granted, she was not created merely to be
the solace of man, and the sexual should not destroy the human
character.
Into this error men have, probably, been led by viewing education
in a false light; not considering it as the first step to form a
being advancing gradually toward perfection; (This word is not
strictly just, but I cannot find a better.) but only as a
preparation for life. On this sensual error, for I must call it
so, has the false system of female manners been reared, which robs
the whole sex of its dignity, and classes the brown and fair with
the smiling flowers that only adorn the land. This has ever been
the language of men, and the fear of departing from a supposed
sexual character, has made even women of superior sense adopt the
same sentiments. Thus understanding, strictly speaking, has been
denied to woman; and instinct, sublimated into wit and cunning, for
the purposes of life, has been substituted in its stead.
The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive
conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement
for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge.
Merely to observe, without endeavouring to account for any thing,
may, (in a very incomplete manner) serve as the common sense of
life; but where is the store laid up that is to clothe the soul
when it leaves the body?
This power has not only been denied to women; but writers have
insisted that it is inconsistent, with a few exceptions, with their
sexual character. Let men prove this, and I shall grant that woman
only exists for man. I must, however, previously remark, that the
power of generalizing ideas, to any great extent, is not very
common amongst men or women. But this exercise is the true
cultivation of the understanding; and every thing conspires to
render the cultivation of the understanding more difficult in the
female than the male world.
I am naturally led by this assertion to the main subject of the
present chapter, and shall now attempt to point out some of the
causes that degrade the sex, and prevent women from generalizing
their observations.
I shall not go back to the remote annals of antiquity to trace the
history of woman; it is sufficient to allow, that she has always
been either a slave or a despot, and to remark, that each of these
situations equally retards the progress of reason. The grand
source of female folly and vice has ever appeared to me to arise
from narrowness of mind; and the very constitution of civil
governments has put almost insuperable obstacles in the way to
prevent the cultivation of the female understanding: yet virtue
can be built on no other foundation! The same obstacles are thrown
in the way of the rich, and the same consequences ensue.
Necessity has been proverbially termed the mother of invention; the
aphorism may be extended to virtue. It is an acquirement, and an
acquirement to which pleasure must be sacrificed, and who
sacrifices pleasure when it is within the grasp, whose mind has not
been opened and strengthened by adversity, or the pursuit of
knowledge goaded on by necessity? Happy is it when people have the
cares of life to struggle with; for these struggles prevent their
becoming a prey to enervating vices, merely from idleness! But, if
from their birth men and women are placed in a torrid zone, with
the meridian sun of pleasure darting directly upon them, how can
they sufficiently brace their minds to discharge the duties of
life, or even to relish the affections that carry them out of
themselves?
Pleasure is the business of a woman's life, according to the