A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
that man may lend them his reason to guide their tottering steps
aright. Or should they be ambitious, they must govern their
tyrants by sinister tricks, for without rights there cannot be any
incumbent duties. The laws respecting woman, which I mean to
discuss in a future part, make an absurd unit of a man and his
wife; and then, by the easy transition of only considering him as
responsible, she is reduced to a mere cypher.
The being who discharges the duties of its station, is independent;
and, speaking of women at large, their first duty is to themselves
as rational creatures, and the next, in point of importance, as
citizens, is that, which includes so many, of a mother. The rank
in life which dispenses with their fulfilling this duty,
necessarily degrades them by making them mere dolls. Or, should
they turn to something more important than merely fitting drapery
upon a smooth block, their minds are only occupied by some soft
platonic attachment; or, the actual management of an intrigue may
keep their thoughts in motion; for when they neglect domestic
duties, they have it not in their power to take the field and march
and counter-march like soldiers, or wrangle in the senate to keep
their faculties from rusting.
I know, that as a proof of the inferiority of the sex, Rousseau has
exultingly exclaimed, How can they leave the nursery for the camp!
And the camp has by some moralists been termed the school of the
most heroic virtues; though, I think, it would puzzle a keen
casuist to prove the reasonableness of the greater number of wars,
that have dubbed heroes. I do not mean to consider this question
critically; because, having frequently viewed these freaks of
ambition as the first natural mode of civilization, when the ground
must be torn up, and the woods cleared by fire and sword, I do not
choose to call them pests; but surely the present system of war,
has little connection with virtue of any denomination, being rather
the school of FINESSE and effeminacy, than of fortitude.
Yet, if defensive war, the only justifiable war, in the present
advanced state of society, where virtue can show its face and ripen
amidst the rigours which purify the air on the mountain's top, were
alone to be adopted as just and glorious, the true heroism of
antiquity might again animate female bosoms. But fair and softly,
gentle reader, male or female, do not alarm thyself, for though I
have contrasted the character of a modern soldier with that of a
civilized woman, I am not going to advise them to turn their
distaff into a musket, though I sincerely wish to see the bayonet
converted into a pruning hook. I only recreated an imagination,
fatigued by contemplating the vices and follies which all proceed
from a feculent stream of wealth that has muddied the pure rills of
natural affection, by supposing that society will some time or
other be so constituted, that man must necessarily fulfil the
duties of a citizen, or be despised, and that while he was employed
in any of the departments of civil life, his wife, also an active
citizen, should be equally intent to manage her family, educate her
children, and assist her neighbours.
But, to render her really virtuous and useful, she must not, if she
discharge her civil duties, want, individually, the protection of
civil laws; she must not be dependent on her husband's bounty for
her subsistence during his life, or support after his death--for
how can a being be generous who has nothing of its own? or,
virtuous, who is not free? The wife, in the present state of
things, who is faithful to her husband, and neither suckles nor
educates her children, scarcely deserves the name of a wife, and
has no right to that of a citizen. But take away natural rights,
and there is of course an end of duties.
Women thus infallibly become only the wanton solace of men, when
they are so weak in mind and body, that they cannot exert
themselves, unless to pursue some frothy pleasure, or to invent
some frivolous fashion. What can be a more melancholy sight to a
thinking mind, than to look into the numerous carriages that drive
helter-skelter about this metropolis in a morning, full of
pale-faced creatures who are flying from themselves. I have often
wished, with Dr. Johnson, to place some of them in a little shop,
with half a dozen children looking up to their languid countenances
for support. I am much mistaken, if some latent vigour would not
soon give health and spirit to their eyes, and some lines drawn by
the exercise of reason on the blank cheeks, which before were only
undulated by dimples, might restore lost dignity to the character,
or rather enable it to attain the true dignity of its nature.
Virtue is not to be acquired even by speculation, much less by the
negative supineness that wealth naturally generates.
Besides, when poverty is more disgraceful than even vice, is not
morality cut to the quick? Still to avoid misconstruction, though
I consider that women in the common walks of life are called to
fulfil the duties of wives and mothers, by religion and reason, I
cannot help lamenting that women of a superiour cast have not a
road open by which they can pursue more extensive plans of
usefulness and independence. I may excite laughter, by dropping an
hint, which I mean to pursue, some future time, for I really think
that women ought to have representatives, instead of being
arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them
in the deliberations of government.
But, as the whole system of representation is now, in this country,
only a convenient handle for despotism, they need not complain, for
they are as well represented as a numerous class of hard working
mechanics, who pay for the support of royality when they can
scarcely stop their children's mouths with bread. How are they
represented, whose very sweat supports the splendid stud of an heir
apparent, or varnishes the chariot of some female favourite who
looks down on shame? Taxes on the very necessaries of life, enable
an endless tribe of idle princes and princesses to pass with stupid
pomp before a gaping crowd, who almost worship the very parade
which costs them so dear. This is mere gothic grandeur, something
like the barbarous, useless parade of having sentinels on horseback
at Whitehall, which I could never view without a mixture of
contempt and indignation.
How strangely must the mind be sophisticated when this sort of
state impresses it! But till these monuments of folly are levelled
by virtue, similar follies will leaven the whole mass. For the
same character, in some degree, will prevail in the aggregate of
society: and the refinements of luxury, or the vicious repinings
of envious poverty, will equally banish virtue from society,
considered as the characteristic of that society, or only allow it
to appear as one of the stripes of the harlequin coat, worn by the
civilized man.
In the superiour ranks of life, every duty is done by deputies, as
if duties could ever be waved, and the vain pleasures which
consequent idleness forces the rich to pursue, appear so enticing
to the next rank, that the numerous scramblers for wealth sacrifice
every thing to tread on their heels. The most sacred trusts are
then considered as sinecures, because they were procured by
interest, and only sought to enable a man to keep GOOD COMPANY.
Women, in particular, all want to be ladies. Which is simply to
have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where,
for they cannot tell what.
But what have women to do in society? I may be asked, but to
loiter with easy grace; surely you would not condemn them all to
suckle fools, and chronicle small beer! No. Women might certainly
study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses. And
midwifery, decency seems to allot to them, though I am afraid the
word midwife, in our dictionaries, will soon give place to
accoucheur, and one proof of the former delicacy of the sex be
effaced from the language.
They might, also study politics, and settle their benevolence on
the broadest basis; for the reading of history will scarcely be
more useful than the perusal of romances, if read as mere
biography; if the character of the times, the political
improvements, arts, etc. be not observed. In short, if it be not
considered as the history of man; and not of particular men, who
filled a niche in the temple of fame, and dropped into the black
rolling stream of time, that silently sweeps all before it, into
the shapeless void called eternity. For shape can it be called,
"that shape hath none?"
Business of various kinds, they might likewise pursue, if they were
educated in a more orderly manner, which might save many from
common and legal prostitution. Women would not then marry for a
support, as men accept of places under government, and neglect the
implied duties; nor would an attempt to earn their own subsistence,
a most laudable one! sink them almost to the level of those poor
abandoned creatures who live by prostitution. For are not
milliners and mantuamakers reckoned the next class? The few
employments open to women, so far from being liberal, are menial;
and when a superior education enables them to take charge of the
education of children as governesses, they are not treated like the
tutors of sons, though even clerical tutors are not always treated
in a manner calculated to render them respectable in the eyes of
their pupils, to say nothing of the private comfort of the
individual. But as women educated like gentlewomen, are never
designed for the humiliating situation which necessity sometimes
forces them to fill; these situations are considered in the light
of a degradation; and they know little of the human heart, who need
to be told, that nothing so painfully sharpens the sensibility as
such a fall in life.
Some of these women might be restrained from marrying by a proper
spirit or delicacy, and others may not have had it in their power
to escape in this pitiful way from servitude; is not that
government then very defective, and very unmindful of the happiness
of one half of its members, that does not provide for honest,
independent women, by encouraging them to fill respectable
stations? But in order to render their private virtue a public
benefit, they must have a civil existence in the state, married or
single; else we shall continually see some worthy woman, whose
sensibility has been rendered painfully acute by undeserved
contempt, droop like "the lily broken down by a plough share."
It is a melancholy truth; yet such is the blessed effects of
civilization! the most respectable women are the most oppressed;
and, unless they have understandings far superiour to the common
run of understandings, taking in both sexes, they must, from being
treated like contemptible beings, become contemptible. How many
women thus waste life away, the prey of discontent, who might have
practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and
stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging
their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes
the beauty to which it at first gave lustre; nay, I doubt whether
pity and love are so near a-kin as poets feign, for I have seldom
seen much compassion excited by the helplessness of females, unless
they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was the soft handmaid of love,
or the harbinger of lust.
How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by
fulfilling any duty, than the most accomplished beauty! beauty did
I say? so sensible am I of the beauty of moral loveliness, or the
harmonious propriety that attunes the passions of a well-regulated
mind, that I blush at making the comparison; yet I sigh to think