Her first public profession of her political and social faith was her answer to Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution," which had summoned all the Liberals and Reformers in England to arms. Many came forward boldly and refuted his arguments in print. Mary was among the foremost, her pamphlet in reply to his being the first published. Later authorities have given precedence to Dr. Priestley's, but this fact is asserted by Godwin in his Memoirs, and he would hardly have made the statement at a time when there were many living to deny it, had it not been true. These answers naturally were received with abuse and sneers by the Tories. Burke denounced his female opponents as "viragoes and English poissardes;" and Horace Walpole wrote of them as "Amazonian allies," who "spit their rage at eighteen-pence a head, and will return to Fleet-ditch, more fortunate in being forgotten than their predecessors, immortalized in the 'Dunciad.'" Peter Burke, in his "Life of Burke," says that the replies made by Dr. Price, Mrs. Macaulay, and Mary Wollstonecraft were merely attempts and nothing more. Yet all three were writers of too much force to be ignored. They were thrown into the shade because Paine's "Rights of Man," written for the same purpose, was so much more startling in its wholesale condemnation of government that the principal attention of the public was drawn to it.

Mary's pamphlet, however, added considerably to her reputation, especially among the Liberals. It was her first really important work. Her success encouraged her greatly. It increased her confidence in her powers and possibilities to influence the reading public. It therefore proved an incentive to fresh exertions in the same field. Much as she was interested in the rights of men, she was even more concerned with the rights of women. The former had obtained many able defenders, but no one had as yet thought of saying a word for the latter. Her own experience had been so bitter that she realized the disadvantages of her sex as others, whose path had been easier, never could. She saw that women were hindered and hampered in a thousand and one ways by obstacles created not by nature, but by man. And she also saw that long suffering had blinded them to their, in her estimation, humiliating and too often painful condition. A change for the better must originate with them, and yet how was this possible, if they did not see their degradation?

"Can the sower sow by night, Or the ploughman in darkness plough?"

Clearly, since she had found the light, it was her duty to illuminate with it those who were groping in darkness. She could not with a word revolutionize womankind, but she could at least be the herald to proclaim the dawn of the day during which the good seed was to be sown. She had discovered her life's mission, and, in her enthusiasm, she wrote the "Vindication of the Rights of Women."



CHAPTER V.

LITERARY WORK.

1788-1791.

As has been stated, Mary Wollstonecraft began her literary career by writing a small pamphlet on the subject of education. Its title, in full, is "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: with Reflections on Female Conduct in the more Important Duties of Life." It is interesting as her first work. Otherwise it is of no great value. Though Mr. Johnson saw in it the marks of genius, there is really little originality in its contents or striking merit in the method of treating them. The ideas it sets forth, while eminently commendable, are remarkable only because it was unusual in the eighteenth century for women, especially the young and unmarried, to have any ideas to which to give expression.

The pamphlet consists of a number of short treatises, indicating certain laws and principles which Mary thought needed to be more generally understood and more firmly established. That a woman should not shirk the functions, either physical or moral, of maternity; that artificial manners and exterior accomplishments should not be cultivated in lieu of practical knowledge and simplicity of conduct; that matrimony is to be considered seriously and not entered into capriciously; that the individual owes certain duties to humanity as well as to his or her own family,—all these are truths which it is well to repeat frequently. But if their repetition be not accompanied by arguments which throw new light on ethical science, or else if it be not made with the vigor and power born of a thorough knowledge of humanity and its wants and shortcomings, it will not be remembered by posterity. The "Education of Daughters" certainly bears no relation to such works as the "Imitation" on the one hand, or the "Data of Ethics" on the other. It is not a book for all time.

However, much in it is significant to readers interested in the study of Mary Wollstonecraft's life and character. Every sentence reveals the earnestness of her nature. Many passages show that as early as 1787 she had seriously considered the problems which, in 1791, she attempted to solve. She was even then perplexed by the unfortunate situation of women of the upper classes who, having received but the pretence of an education, eventually become dependent on their own exertions. Her sad experience probably led her to these thoughts. Reflection upon them made her the champion of her sex. Already in this little pamphlet she declares her belief that, by a rational training of their intellectual powers, women can be prepared at one and the same time to meet any emergencies of fortune and to fulfil the duties of wife and mother. She demonstrates that good mental discipline, instead of interfering with feminine occupations, increases a woman's fitness for them. Thus she writes:—

"No employment of the mind is a sufficient excuse for neglecting domestic duties; and I cannot conceive that they are incompatible. A woman may fit herself to be the companion and friend of a man of sense, and yet know how to take care of his family."

The intense love of sincerity in conduct and belief which is a leading characteristic in the "Rights of Women" is also manifested in these early essays. Mary exclaims in one place,—

"How many people are like whitened sepulchres, and careful only about appearances! Yet if we are too anxious to gain the approbation of the world, we must often forfeit our own."

And again she says, as if in warning:—

"... Let the manners arise from the mind, and let there be no disguise for the genuine emotions of the heart.

"Things merely ornamental are soon disregarded, and disregard can scarcely be borne when there is no internal support."

Another marked feature of the pamphlet is the extremely puritanical tendency of its sentiments. It was written at the period when Mary was sending sermon-like letters to George Blood, and breathes the same spirit of stern adherence to religious principles, though not to special dogma.

But perhaps the most noteworthy passage which occurs in the treatise is one on love, and in which, strangely enough, she establishes a belief which she was destined some years later to confirm by her actions. When the circumstances of her union with Godwin are remembered, her words seem prophetic.

"It is too universal a maxim with novelists," she says, "that love is felt but once; though it appears to me that the heart which is capable of receiving an impression at all, and can distinguish, will turn to a new object when the first is found unworthy. I am convinced it is practicable, when a respect for goodness has the first place in the mind, and notions of perfection are not affixed to constancy."

Though not very wonderful in itself, the "Education of Daughters" is, in its choice of subject and the standards it upholds, a worthy prelude to the riper work by which it was before very long followed.

The next work Mary published was a volume called "Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations calculated to regulate the Affections and form the Mind to Truth and Goodness." This was written while her experience as school-mistress and governess was still fresh in her memory. As she explains in her Preface, her object was to make up in some measure for the defective education or moral training which, as a rule, children in those days received from their parents.

"Good habits," she writes, "are infinitely preferable to the precepts of reason; but as this task requires more judgment than generally falls to the lot of parents, substitutes must be sought for, and medicines given, when regimen would have answered the purpose much better.

"... To wish that parents would, themselves, mould the ductile passions is a chimerical wish, as the present generation have their own passions to combat with, and fastidious pleasures to pursue, neglecting those nature points out. We must then pour premature knowledge into the succeeding one; and, teaching virtue, explain the nature of vice."

In addressing a youthful audience, Mary was as deeply inspired by her love of goodness per se, and her detestation of conventional conceptions of virtue, as she was afterwards in appealing to older readers. She represents, in her book, two little girls, aged respectively twelve and fourteen, who have been sadly neglected during their early years, but who, fortunately, have at this period fallen under the care of a Mrs. Mason, who at once undertakes to form their character and train their intellect. This good lady, in whose name Mary sermonizes, seizes upon every event of the day to teach her charges a moral lesson. The defects she attacks are those most common to childhood. Cruelty to animals, peevishness, lying, greediness, indolence, procrastination, are in turn censured, and their opposite virtues praised. Some of the definitions of the qualities commended are excellent. For example, Mrs. Mason says to the two children:—

"Do you know the meaning of the word goodness? I see you are unwilling to answer. I will tell you. It is, first, to avoid hurting anything; and then to contrive to give as much pleasure as you can."

Again, she warns them thus:—

"Remember that idleness must always be intolerable, as it is the most irksome consciousness of existence."

This latter definition is a little above the comprehension of children of twelve and fourteen. But then Mary is careful to explain in the Preface that she writes to assist teachers. She wishes to give them hints which they must apply to the children under their care as they think best. The religious tone of the "Stories" is even more pronounced than that of the "Education of Daughters." The following is but one of many proofs of Mary's honest endeavors to make children understand the importance of religious devotion. In one of her conversational sermons Mrs. Mason says:

"Recollect that from religion your chief comfort must spring, and never neglect the duty of prayer. Learn from experience the comfort that arises from making known your wants and sorrows to the wisest and best of Beings, in whose hands are the issues, not only of this life, but of that which is to come."

To strengthen the effect of Mrs. Mason's words, an example or story is in every chapter added to her remarks. They are all appropriate, and many of the tales are beautiful. As the book is so little known, one of these may with advantage be given here. The story selected is that of Crazy Robin. Mrs. Mason tells it to Mary and Caroline, the two little girls, to explain to them how much wretchedness can be produced by unkindness to men and beasts. It is interesting because it shows the quality of the mental food which Mary thought best fitted for the capacity of children. She was evidently an advocate for strong nourishment. Besides, the story, despite some unpleasant defects of style, is very powerful. It is full of dramatic force, and is related with great simplicity and pathos:—

"In yonder cave lived a poor man, who generally went by the name of Crazy Robin. In his youth he was very industrious, and married my father's dairy-maid, a girl deserving of such a good husband. For some time they continued to live very comfortably; their daily labor procured their daily bread; but Robin, finding it was likely he should have a large family, borrowed a trifle to add to the small pittance they had saved in service, and took a little farm in a neighboring county. I was then a child.

"Ten or twelve years after, I heard that a crazy man, who appeared very harmless, had by the side of the brook piled a great number of stones; he would wade into the river for them, followed by a cur dog, whom he would frequently call his Jacky, and even his Nancy; and then mumble to himself, 'Thou wilt not leave me. We will dwell with the owl in the ivy.' A number of owls had taken shelter in it. The stones he waded for he carried to the mouth of the hole, and only left just room enough to go in. Some of the neighbors at last recollected him; and I sent to inquire what misfortune had reduced him to such a deplorable state.

"The information I received from different persons I will communicate to you in as few words as I can.

"Several of his children died in their infancy; and, two years before he came to his native place, he had been overwhelmed by a torrent of misery. Through unavoidable misfortunes he was long in arrears to his landlord; who, seeing that he was an honest man, and endeavored to bring up his family, did not distress him; but when his wife was lying-in of her last child, the landlord died, and his heir sent and seized the stock for the rent; and the person he had borrowed some money of, exasperated to see all gone, arrested him, and he was hurried to jail. The poor woman, endeavoring to assist her family before she had gained sufficient strength, found herself very ill; and the illness, through neglect and the want of proper nourishment, turned to a putrid fever, which two of the children caught from her, and died with her. The two who were left, Jacky and Nancy, went to their father, and took with them a cur dog that had long shared their frugal meals.

"The children begged in the day, and at night slept with their wretched father. Poverty and dirt soon robbed their cheeks of the roses which the country air made bloom with a peculiar freshness. Their blood had been tainted by the putrid complaint that destroyed their mother; in short, they caught the small-pox, and died. The poor father, who was now bereft of all his children, hung over their bed in speechless anguish; not a groan or a tear escaped from him while he stood, two or three hours, in the same attitude, looking at the dead bodies of his little darlings. The dog licked his hands, and strove to attract his attention; but for a while he seemed not to observe his caresses; when he did, he said mournfully, 'Thou wilt not leave me;' and then he began to laugh. The bodies were removed; and he remained in an unsettled state, often frantic; at length the frenzy subsided, and he grew melancholy and harmless. He was not then so closely watched; and one day he contrived to make his escape, the dog followed him, and came directly to his native village.

"After I received this account, I determined he should live in the place he had chosen, undisturbed. I sent some conveniences, all of which he rejected except a mat, on which he sometimes slept; the dog always did. I tried to induce him to eat, but he constantly gave the dog whatever I sent him, and lived on haws and blackberries and every kind of trash. I used to call frequently on him; and he sometimes followed me to the house I now live in, and in winter he would come of his own accord, and take a crust of bread. He gathered water-cresses out of the pool, and would bring them to me, with nosegays of wild thyme, which he plucked from the sides of the mountain. I mentioned before, that the dog was a cur; it had the tricks of curs, and would run after horses' heels and bark. One day, when his master was gathering water-cresses, the dog ran after a young gentleman's horse, and made it start, and almost throw the rider. Though he knew it was the poor madman's dog, he levelled his gun at it, shot it, and instantly rode off. Robin came to him; he looked at his wounds, and, not sensible that he was dead, called him to follow him; but when he found that he could not, he took him to the pool, and washed off the blood before it began to clot, and then brought him home and laid him on the mat.

"I observed that I had not seen him pacing up the hills, and sent to inquire about him. He was found sitting by the dog, and no entreaties could prevail on him to quit it, or receive any refreshment. I went to him myself, hoping, as I had always been a favorite, that I should be able to persuade him. When I came to him, I found the hand of death was upon him. He was still melancholy; but there was not such a mixture of wildness in it. I pressed him to take some food; but, instead of answering me, or turning away, he burst into tears, a thing I had never seen him do before, and, in inarticulate accents, he said, 'Will any one be kind to me? You will kill me! I saw not my wife die—no!—they dragged me from her, but I saw Jacky and Nancy die; and who pitied me, but my dog?' He turned his eyes to the body. I wept with him. He would then have taken some nourishment, but nature was exhausted, and he expired."

The book is, on the whole, well written, and was popular enough in its day. The first edition, published in 1788, was followed by a second in 1791, and a third in 1796. To make it still more attractive, Mr. Johnson engaged Blake, whom he was then befriending, to illustrate it. But children of the present day object to the tales with a moral which were the delight of the nursery in Mary's time. They have lost all faith in the bad boy who invariably meets with the evil fate which is his due; and they are sceptical as to the good little girl who always receives the cakes and ale—metaphorically speaking—her virtues deserve. And so it has come to pass that the "Original Stories" are remembered chiefly on account of their illustrations.

The drawings contributed by Blake were more in number than were required, and only six were printed. A copy of one of those rejected is given in Gilchrist's Life of the artist. None of them rank with his best work. "The designs," his biographer says, "can hardly be pronounced a successful competition with Stothard, though traces of a higher feeling are visible in the graceful female forms,—benevolent heroine, or despairing, famishing peasant group. The artist evidently moves in constraint, and the accessories of these domestic scenes are simply generalized as if by a child: the result of an inobservant eye for such things." But of those published there are two at least which, as Mr. Kegan Paul has already pointed out, make a deep impression on all who see them. One is the frontispiece, which illustrates this sentence of the text: "Look what a fine morning it is. Insects, birds, and animals are all enjoying existence." The posing of the three female figures standing in reverential attitudes, and the creeping vine by the doorway, are conceived and executed in Blake's true decorative spirit. The other represents Crazy Robin by the bedside of his two dead children, the faithful dog by his side. The grief, horror, and despair expressed in the man's face cannot be surpassed, while the pathos and strength of the scene are heightened by the simplicity of the drawing.

Of the several translations Mary made at this period, but the briefest mention is necessary. It often happens that the book translated is in a great degree indicative of the mental calibre of its translator. Thus it is characteristic of Carlyle that he translated Goethe, of Swinburne that he selected the verses of Villon or Theophile Gautier for the same purpose. But Mary's case was entirely different. The choice of foreign works rendered into English was not hers, but Mr. Johnson's. By adhering to it she was simply fulfilling the contract she had entered into with him. There were times when she had but a poor opinion of the books he put into her hands. Thus of one of the principal of these, Necker on the "Importance of Religion," she says in her "French Revolution:"—

"Not content with the fame he [Necker] acquired by writing on a subject which his turn of mind and profession enabled him to comprehend, he wished to obtain a higher degree of celebrity by forming into a large book various metaphysical shreds of arguments, which he had collected from the conversation of men fond of ingenious subtilties; and the style, excepting some declamatory passages, was as inflated and confused as the thoughts were far fetched and unconnected."

But though she was so far from approving of the original, her translation, published in London in 1788, was declared by the "European Magazine" to be just and spirited, though apparently too hastily executed; and it was sufficiently appreciated by the English-speaking public to be republished in Philadelphia in 1791. There was at least one book, the translation of which must have been a pleasure to her. This was the Rev. C. G. Salzmann's "Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children." Its object, like that of the "Original Stories," was to teach the young, by practical illustration, why virtue is good, why vice is evil. It was written much in the same style, and was for many years highly popular. Johnson brought out the first edition in 1790 and a second in 1793. It was published in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1811, and in Edinburgh in 1821, and a still newer edition was prepared for the present generation by Miss Yonge. The "Analytical Review" thought it upon its first appearance worthy of two notices.

Mary never pretended to produce perfectly literal translations. Her version of Lavater's "Physiognomy," now unknown, was but an abridgment. She purposely "naturalized" the "Elements of Morality," she explains, in order not to "puzzle children by pointing out modifications of manners, when the grand principles of morality were to be fixed on a broad basis." She made free with the originals that they might better suit English readers, and this she frankly confesses in her Prefaces. Her translations are, in consequence, proofs of her industry and varied talents and not demonstrations of her own mental character.

The novel "Mary," like Godwin's earlier stories, has disappeared. There are a few men and women of the present generation who remember having seen it, but it is now not to be found either in public libraries or in bookstores. It was the record of a happy friendship, and to write it had been a labor of love. As Mary always wrote most eloquently on subjects which were of heartfelt interest, its disappearance is to be regretted.

However, after she had been in London about two years, constant writing and translating having by that time made her readier with her pen, she undertook another task, in which her feelings were as strongly interested. This was her answer to Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution." Love of humanity was an emotion which moved her quite as deeply as affection for individual friends. Burke, by his disregard for the sufferings of that portion of the human race which especially appealed to her, excited her wrath. Carried away by the intensity of her indignation, she at once set about proving to him and the world that the reasoning which led to such insensibility was, plausible as it might seem, wholly unsound. She never paused for reflection, but her chief arguments, the result of previous thought, being already prepared, she wrote before her excitement had time to cool. As she explains in the Advertisement to her "Letter" to Burke, the "Reflections" had first engaged her attention as the transient topic of the day. Commenting upon it as she read, her remarks increased to such an extent that she decided to publish them as a short "Vindication of the Rights of Man."

A sermon preached by Dr. Richard Price was the immediate reason which moved Burke to write the "Reflections." The Revolutionists were in the habit of meeting every 4th of November, the anniversary of the arrival of the Prince of Orange in England, to commemorate the Revolution of 1688. Dr. Price was, in 1789, the orator of the day. He, on this occasion, expressed his warm approbation of the actions of the French Republicans, in which sentiment he was warmly seconded by all the other members of the society. Burke seized upon these demonstrations as a pretext for expounding his own views upon the proceedings in France. The sermon and orations were really not of enough importance to evoke the long essay with which he favored them. But though he began by denouncing the English Revolutionists in particular, the subject so inflamed him that before he had finished, he had written without restraint his opinion of the social struggle of the French people, and given his definition of the word Liberty, then in everybody's mouth. As he wrote, news came pouring into England of later political developments in France which increased instead of lessening his hatred and distrust of the Revolution. It was a year before he had finished his work, and it had then grown into a lengthy and elaborate treatise.

The "Reflections" gives a careful exposition of the errors of the French Republican party, and the shortcomings of the National Assembly; and, to add to this the force of antithesis, it extols the merits and virtues of the English Constitution. Furthermore, it points out the evil consequences which must follow the realization of the French attempts at reform. But the real question at issue is the nature of the rights of men. It was to gain for their countrymen the justice which they thought their due, that the revolutionary leaders curtailed the power of the king, lowered the nobility, and disgraced the clergy. If it could be proved that their conception of human justice was wholly wrong, the very foundation of their political structure would be destroyed. Burke's arguments, therefore, are all intended to achieve this end.

In her detestation of his insensibility to the natural equality of mankind, Mary was too impatient to consider the minor points of his reasoning. She announces in her Advertisement that she intends to confine her strictures, in a great measure, to the grand principles at which he levels his ingenious arguments. Her object, therefore, as well as Burke's, is to demonstrate what are the rights of men, but she reasons from a very different stand-point. Burke defends the claims of those who inherit rights from long generations of ancestors; Mary cries aloud in defence of men whose one inheritance is the deprivation of all rights. Burke is moved by the misery of a Marie Antoinette, shorn of her greatness; Mary, by the wretchedness of the poor peasant woman who has never possessed even its shadow. The former knows no birthright for individuals save that which results from the prescription of centuries; the latter contends that every man has a right, as a human being, to "such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of the other individuals with whom he is united in social compact." Burke asserts that the present rights of man cannot be decided by reason alone, since they are founded on laws and customs long established. But Mary asks, How far back are we to go to discover their first foundation? Is it in England to the reign of Richard II., whose incapacity rendered him a mere cipher in the hands of the Barons; or to that of Edward III., whose need for money forced him to concede certain privileges to the commons? Is social slavery to be encouraged because it was established in semi-barbarous days? Does Burke, she continues,—

"... recommend night as the fittest time to analyze a ray of light?

"Are we to seek for the rights of men in the ages when a few marks were the only penalty imposed for the life of a man, and death for death when the property of the rich was touched?—when—I blush to discover the depravity of our nature—a deer was killed! Are these the laws that it is natural to love, and sacrilegious to invade? Were the rights of men understood when the law authorized or tolerated murder?—or is power and right the same?"

Burke's contempt for the poor, which Mary thought the most conspicuous feature of his treatise, was the chief cause of her indignation. She could not endure silently his admonitions to the laboring class to respect the property which they could not possess, and his exhortations to them to find their consolation for ill-rewarded labor in the "final proportions of eternal justice." "It is, sir, possible," she tells him with some dignity, "to render the poor happier in this world, without depriving them of the consolation which you gratuitously grant them in the next." To her mind, the oppression which the lower classes had endured for ages, until they had become in the end beings scarcely above the brutes, made the losses of the French nobility and clergy seem by comparison very insignificant evils. The horrors of the 6th of October, the discomforts and degradation of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and the destitution to which many French refugees had been reduced, blinded Burke to the long-suffering of the multitude which now rendered the distress of the few imperative. But Mary's feelings were all stirred in the opposite cause.

"What," she asks in righteous indignation,—"what were the outrages of the day to these continual miseries? Let those sorrows hide their diminished heads before the tremendous mountain of woe that thus defaces our globe! Man preys on man, and you mourn for the idle tapestry that decorated a Gothic pile, and the dronish bell that summoned the fat priest to prayer. You mourn for the empty pageant of a name, when slavery flaps her wing, and the sick heart retires to die in lonely wilds, far from the abodes of man. Did the pangs you felt for insulted nobility, the anguish which rent your heart when the gorgeous robes were torn off the idol human weakness had set up, deserve to be compared with the long-drawn sigh of melancholy reflection, when misery and vice thus seem to haunt our steps, and swim on the top of every cheering prospect? Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? Hell stalks abroad: the lash resounds on a slave's naked sides; and the sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labor, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good-night, or, neglected in some ostentatious hospital, breathes its last amidst the laugh of mercenary attendants."

Occasionally Mary interrupts the main drift of her "Letter" to refute some of the incidental statements in the "Reflections." But in doing this she is more eager to show the evils of English political and social laws, which Burke praises so unreservedly, than to prove that many existed in the old French government, a fact which he obstinately refuses to recognize. This may have been because she then knew little more than Burke of the real state of affairs in France, and would not take the time to collect her proofs. This is very likely, for the chief fault of her "Letter" is undue haste in its composition. It was written on the spur of the moment, and is without the method indispensable to such a work. There is no order in the arguments advanced, and too often reasoning gives place to exhortation and meditation. Another serious error is the personal abuse with which her "Letter" abounds. She treats Burke in the very same manner with which she reproves him for treating Dr. Price. Instead of confining herself to denunciation of his views, she attacks his character, she accuses him of vanity and susceptibility to the charms of rank, of insincerity and affectation. She calls him a slave of impulse, and tells him he is too full of himself, and even compares his love for the English Constitution to the brutal affection of weakness built on blind, indolent tenderness, rather than on rational grounds. Sometimes she grows eloquent in her sarcasm.

"... On what principle you, sir," she observes, "can justify the Reformation, which tore up by the roots an old establishment, I cannot guess,—but I beg your pardon, perhaps you do not wish to justify it, and have some mental reservation to excuse you to yourself, for not openly avowing your reverence. Or, to go further back, had you been a Jew, you must have joined in the cry, 'Crucify him! Crucify him!' The promulgator of a new doctrine, and the violator of old laws and customs, that did not, like ours, melt into darkness and ignorance, but rested on Divine authority, must have been a dangerous innovator in your eyes, particularly if you had not been informed that the Carpenter's Son was of the stock and lineage of David."

But vituperation is not argument, and abuse proves nothing. This is a fault, however, into which youth readily falls. Mary was young when she wrote the "Vindication of the Rights of Man," and feeling was still too strong to be forgotten in calm discussion. It was a mistake, too, to dwell, as she did, on the inconsistency between Burke's earlier and present policy. This was a powerful weapon against him at the time, but posterity has recognized the consistency which, in reality, underlay his seemingly diverse political creeds. Besides, the demonstration that sentiments in the "Reflections" were at variance with others expressed some years previously, did not prove them to be unsound.

Because of these faults of youth and haste, Mary's "Letter" is not very powerful when considered as a reply to Burke; but its intrinsic merits are many. It is a simple, uncompromising expression of honest opinions. It is noble in its fearlessness, and it manifests a philosophical insight into the meaning and basis of morality wonderful in a woman of Mary's age. It really deserves the praise bestowed upon it in the "Analytical Review," where the critic says that, "notwithstanding it may be the 'effusion of the moment,' [it] yet evidently abounds with just sentiments and lively and animated remarks, expressed in elegant and nervous language, and which may be read with pleasure and improvement when the controversy which gave rise to them is over."



CHAPTER VI.

"VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN."

The "Vindication of the Rights of Women" is the work on which Mary Wollstonecraft's fame as an author rests. It is more than probable that, but for it, her other writings would long since have been forgotten. In it she speaks the first word in behalf of female emancipation. Her book is the forerunner of a movement which, whatever may be its results, will always be ranked as one of the most important of the nineteenth century. Many of her propositions are, to the present advocates of the cause, foregone conclusions. Hers was the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare the way. Her principal task was to demonstrate that the old ideals were false.

The then most exalted type of feminine perfection was Rousseau's Sophia. Though this was an advance from the conception of the sex which inspired Congreve, when he made the women of his comedies mere targets for men's gallantries, or Swift, when he wrote his "Advice to a Young Married Lady," it was still a low estimate of woman's character and sphere of action. According to Rousseau, and the Dr. Gregorys and Fordyces who re-echoed his doctrines in England, women are so far inferior to men that their contribution to the comfort and pleasure of the latter is the sole reason for their existence. For them virtue and duty have a relative and not an absolute value. What they are is of no consequence. The essential point is what they seem to men. That they are human beings is lost sight of in the all-engrossing fact that they are women.

It is strange that Rousseau, who would have had men return to a state of nature that they might be freed from shams and conventionalities, did not see that the sacrifice of reality to appearances was quite as bad for women. Mary Wollstonecraft, farther-sighted than he, discovered at once the flaw in his reasoning. What was said of Schopenhauer by a Frenchman could with equal truth be said of her: "Ce n'est pas un philosophe comme les autres, c'est un philosophe qui a vu le monde." She had lived in woman's world, and consequently, unlike the sentimentalists who were accepted authorities on the subject, she did not reason from an outside stand-point. This was probably what helped her not only to recognize the false position of her sex, but to understand the real cause of the trouble. She referred it, not to individual cases of masculine tyranny or feminine incompetency, but to the fundamental misconception of the relations of the sexes. Therefore, what she had to do was to awaken mankind to the knowledge that women are human beings, and then to insist that they should be given the opportunity to assert themselves as such, and that their sex should become a secondary consideration. It would have been useless for her to analyze their rights in detail until she had established the premises upon which their claims must rest. It is true she contends for their political emancipation. "I really think," she writes, "that women ought to have representatives instead of being arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government." And she also maintains their ability for the practice of many professions, especially of medicine. But this she says, as it were, in parenthesis. These necessary reforms cannot be even begun until the equality of the sexes as human beings is proved beyond a doubt. The object of the "Vindication" is to demonstrate this equality, and to point out the preliminary measures by which it may be secured.

The book is now seldom read. Others of later date have supplanted it. Conservative readers are prejudiced against it because of its title. The majority of the liberal-minded have not the patience to master its contents because they can find its propositions expressed more satisfactorily elsewhere. Yet, as a work which marks an epoch, it deserves to be well known. A comprehensive analysis of it will therefore not be out of place.

It begins strangely, as it appears to this generation, with a dedication to Talleyrand. Mary had seen him often when he had been in London, and only knew what was best in him. She admired his principles, being ignorant of his utter indifference to them. He had lately published a pamphlet on National Education, and this was a subject upon which, in vindicating women's rights, she had much to say. He had, in pleading the cause of equality for all men, approached so closely to the whole truth that she thought, once this was pointed out to him, he could not fail to recognize it as she did. If he believed that, in his own words, "to see one half of the human race excluded by the other from all participation in government was a political phenomenon that, according to abstract principles, it was impossible to explain," he could not logically deny that prescription was unjust when applied to women. Therefore, as a new constitution—the first based upon reason—was about to be established in France, she reminds him that its framers would be tyrants like their predecessors if they did not allow women to participate in it. In order to command his interest, she explains briefly and concisely the truth which she proposes to prove by her arguments, and thus she gives immediately the keynote to her book.

"Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument," she tells him, "is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge; for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice. And how can woman be expected to co-operate unless she know why she ought to be virtuous; unless freedom strengthen her reason till she comprehend her duty, and see in what manner it is connected with her real good? If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interests of mankind; but the education and situation of woman, at present, shuts her out from such investigations.

"In this work I have produced many arguments, which to me were conclusive, to prove that the prevailing notion respecting a sexual character was subversive of morality; and I have contended, that to render the human body and mind more perfect, chastity must more universally prevail, and that chastity will never be respected in the male world till the person of a woman is not, as it were, idolized, when little virtue or sense embellish it with the grand traces of mental beauty or the interesting simplicity of affection."

In her Introduction Mary further states the object and scope of her work. She advances the importance of bringing to a more healthy condition women, who, like flowers nourished in over-luxuriant soil, have become beautiful at the expense of strength. She attributes their weakness to the systems of education which have aimed at making them alluring mistresses rather than rational wives, and taught them to crave love, instead of exacting respect. But, to prevent misunderstanding, she explains that she does not wish them to seek to transform themselves into men by cultivating essentially masculine qualities. They are inferior physically, and must be content to remain so. Enthusiasm never carried her to the absurd and exaggerated extremes which have made later champions of the cause laughing-stocks. She also expresses her intention of steering clear of an error into which most writers upon the subject, with the exception perhaps of the author of "Sandford and Merton," have fallen; namely, that of addressing their instruction to women of the upper classes. But she intends, while including all ranks of society, to give particular attention to the middle class, who appear to her to be in a more natural state. Then, warning her sex that she will treat them like rational creatures, and not as beings doomed to perpetual childhood, she tells them:—

"... I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex, and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone."

The Introduction is important because, as she says, it is the "very essence of an introduction to give a cursory account of the contents of the work it introduces." Having learnt from it what she intends to do, it remains to be seen how she accomplishes her task.

For the convenience of readers, the treatise may be divided into three parts, though the author does not make this division, and was probably unconscious of its possibility. The first chapters give a general statement of the case. The second part is an elaboration of the first, and is more concerned with individual forms of the evil than with it as a whole. The third part suggests the remedy by which women are to be delivered from social slavery.

Mary assumes as the basis of her entire argument that "the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society." The moral value of equality she demonstrates by the wretchedness and wickedness which result whenever there is a substitution of arbitrary power for the law of reason. The regal position, for example, is gained by vile intrigues and unnatural crimes and vices, and maintained by the sacrifice of true wisdom and virtue. Military discipline, since it demands unquestioning submission to the will of others, encourages thoughtless action. Even the clergy, because of the blind acquiescence required from them to certain forms of belief, have their faculties cramped. This being the case, it follows that society, "as it becomes more enlightened, should be very careful not to establish bodies of men who must necessarily be made foolish or vicious by the very constitution of their profession." Now women, that is to say, one half of the human race, have hitherto, on account of their sex, been absolutely debarred from the exercise of reason in forming their conduct. As women it has been supposed that they cannot have the same ideals as men. What is vice for the latter is for them virtue. Their duty is to acquire "cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety." They are to render themselves "gentle domestic brutes." In their education the training of their understanding is to be neglected for the cultivation of corporeal accomplishments. They are bidden to obey no laws save those of behavior, to which they are as complete slaves as soldiers are to the commands of their general, or the clergy to the ex cathedra utterances of their church. Fondness for dress, habits of dissimulation, and the affectation of a sickly delicacy are recommended for their cultivation as essentially feminine qualities; yet if virtue have but one eternal standard, it should be the same in quality for the two sexes, even if there must be a difference in the degree acquired by each. If women be moral beings, they should aim at unfolding all their faculties, and not, as Rousseau and his disciples would have them do, labor only to make themselves pleasing sexually. Even if this be counted a praiseworthy end, and they succeed in it, to what or how long will it avail them? The result proves the unsoundness of such doctrines:—

"The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much effect on her husband's heart when they are seen every day, when the summer is past and gone. Will she then have sufficient native energy to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties; or is it not more rational to expect, that she will try to please other men, and, in the emotions raised by the expectation of new conquests, endeavor to forget the mortification her love or pride has received? When the husband ceases to be a lover—and the time will inevitably come—her desire of pleasing will then grow languid, or become a spring of bitterness; and love, perhaps the most evanescent of all passions, give place to jealousy or vanity.

"I now speak of women who are restrained by principle or prejudice; such women, though they would shrink from an intrigue with real abhorrence, yet, nevertheless, wish to be convinced by the homage of gallantry, that they are cruelly neglected by their husbands; or days and weeks are spent in dreaming of the happiness enjoyed by congenial souls, till the health is undermined and the spirits broken by discontent. How, then, can the great art of pleasing be such a necessary study? It is only useful to a mistress; the chaste wife and serious mother should only consider her power to please as the polish of her virtues, and the affection of her husband as one of the comforts that render her task less difficult, and her life happier."

Coquettish arts triumph only for a day. Love, the most transitory of all passions, is inevitably succeeded by friendship or indifference.

The arguments which have been advanced to support this degrading system of female education are easily proved to have no foundation in reason. Women, it is said, are not so strong physically as men. True; but this does not imply that they have no strength whatsoever. Because they are weak relatively, it does not follow that they should be made so absolutely. The sedentary life to which they are condemned weakens them, and then their weakness is accepted as an inherent, instead of an artificial, quality. Rousseau concludes that a woman is naturally a coquette, and governed in all matters by the sexual instinct, because her earliest amusements consist in playing with dolls, dressing them and herself, and in talking. These conclusions are almost too puerile to be refuted:—

"That a girl, condemned to sit for hours listening to the idle chat of weak nurses or to attend at her mother's toilet, will endeavor to join the conversation, is indeed very natural; and that she will imitate her mother or aunts, and amuse herself by adorning her lifeless doll, as they do in dressing her, poor innocent babe! is undoubtedly a most natural consequence. For men of the greatest abilities have seldom had sufficient strength to rise above the surrounding atmosphere; and if the page of genius has always been blurred by the prejudices of the age, some allowance should be made for a sex, who, like kings, always see things through a false medium."

The truth is, were girls allowed the same freedom in the choice of amusements as boys, they would manifest an equal fondness for out-of-door sports, to the neglect of dolls and frivolous pastimes. But it is denied to them. Directors of their education have, as a rule, been blind adherents to the doctrine that whatever is, is right, and hence have argued that because women have always been brought up in a certain way they should continue to be so trained.

The worst of it is that the artificial delicacy of constitution thus produced is the cause of a corresponding weakness of mind; and women are in actual fact fair defects in creation, as they have been called. And yet, after having been unfitted for action, they are expected to be competent to take charge of a family. The woman who is well-disposed, and whose husband is a sensible man, may act with propriety so long as he is alive to direct her. But if he were to die how could she alone educate her children and manage her household with discretion? The woman who is ill-disposed is not only incapacitated for her duties, but, in her desire to please and to have pleasure, she neglects dull domestic cares.

"It does not require a lively pencil, or the discriminating outline of a caricature, to sketch the domestic miseries and petty vices which such a mistress of a family diffuses. Still, she only acts as a woman ought to act, brought up according to Rousseau's system. She can never be reproached for being masculine, or turning out of her sphere; nay, she may observe another of his grand rules, and, cautiously preserving her reputation free from spot, be reckoned a good kind of woman. Yet in what respect can she be termed good? She abstains, it is true, without any great struggle, from committing gross crimes; but how does she fulfil her duties? Duties—in truth, she has enough to think of to adorn her body and nurse a weak constitution.

"With respect to religion, she never presumes to judge for herself; but conforms, as a dependent creature should, to the ceremonies of the church which she was brought up in, piously believing that wiser heads than her own have settled that business; and not to doubt is her point of perfection. She therefore pays her tithe of mint and cummin, and thanks her God that she is not as other women are. These are the blessed effects of a good education! these the virtues of man's helpmate!"

At this point Mary, after having given the picture of woman as she is now, describes her as she ought to be. This description is worth quoting, but not because it contains any originality of thought or charm of expression. It is interesting as showing exactly what the first sower of the seeds of female enfranchisement expected to reap for her harvest. People who are frightened by a name are apt to suppose that women who defend their rights would have the world filled with uninspired Joans of Arc, and unrefined Portias. Those who judge Mary Wollstonecraft by her conduct, without inquiring into her motives or reading her book, might conclude that what she desired was the destruction of family ties and, consequently, of moral order. Therefore, in justice to her, the purity of her ideals of feminine perfection and her respect for the sanctity of domestic life should be clearly established. This can not be better done than by giving her own words on the subject:—

"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 vigor, 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 the 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 highest 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 hers, 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 endeavored 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."

Truly, if this be the result of the vindication of their rights, even the most devoted believer in Rousseau must admit that women thereby will gain, and not lose, in true womanliness.

From the primal source of their wrongs,—that is, the undue importance attached to the sexual character,—Mary next explains that minor causes have arisen to prevent women from realizing this ideal. The narrowness of mind engendered by their vicious education hinders them from looking beyond the interests of the present. They consider immediate rather than remote effects, and prefer to be "short-lived queens than to labor to attain the sober pleasures that arise from equality." Then, again, the desire to be loved or respected for something, which is instinctive in all human beings, is gratified in women by the homage paid to charms born of indolence. They thus, like the rich, lose the stimulus to exertion which this desire gives to men of the middle class, and which is one of the chief factors in the development of rational creatures. A man with a profession struggles to succeed in it. A woman struggles to marry advantageously. With the former, pleasure is a relaxation; with the latter, it is the main purpose of life. Therefore, while the man is forced to forget himself in his work, the woman's attention is more and more concentrated upon her own person. The great evil of this self-culture is that the emotions are developed instead of the intellect. Women become a prey to what is delicately called sensibility. They feel and do not reason, and, depending upon men for protection and advice, the only effort they make is to give their weakness a graceful covering. They require, in the end, support even in the most trifling circumstances. Their fears are perhaps pretty and attractive to men, but they reduce them to such a degree of imbecility that they will start "from the frown of an old cow or the jump of a mouse," and a rat becomes a serious danger. These fair, fragile creatures are the objects of Mary Wollstonecraft's deepest contempt, and she gives a good wholesome prescription for their cure, which, despite modern co-education and Women Conventions, female doctors and lawyers, might still be more generally adopted to great advantage. It is in such passages as the following that she proves the practical tendency of her arguments:—

"I am fully persuaded that we should hear of none of these infantine airs if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise and not confined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed and their powers of digestion destroyed. To carry the remark still further, if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps created, was treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. It is true they could not then with equal propriety be termed the sweet flowers that smile in the walk of man; but they would be more respectable members of society, and discharge the important duties of life by the light of their own reasons. 'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex, the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves."

Some philosophers have asserted with contempt, as evidence of the inferiority of the female understanding, that it arrives at maturity long before the male, and that women attain their full strength and growth at twenty, but men not until they are thirty. But this Mary emphatically denies. The seeming earlier precocity of girls she attributes to the fact that they are much sooner treated as women than boys are as men. Their more speedy physical development is assumed because with them the standard of beauty is fine features and complexion, whilst male beauty is allowed to have some connection with the mind. But the truth is, that "strength of body and that character of countenance which the French term a physionomie, women do not acquire before thirty any more than men."

There are some curious remarks in reference to polygamy as a mark of the inferiority of women, but they need not be given here, since this evil is not legally recognized by civilized people, with the exception of the Mormons. But there is a polygamy, not sanctioned by law, which exists in all countries, and which has done more than almost anything else to dishonor women. Mary's observations in this connection are among the strongest in the book. She understands the true difficulty more thoroughly than many social reformers to-day, and offers a better solution of the problem than they do. Justice, not charity, she declares, is wanted in the world. Asylums and Magdalens are not the proper remedies for the abuse. But women should be given the same chance as men to rise after their fall. The first offence should not be made unpardonable, since good can come from evil. From a struggle with strong passions virtue is often evolved.

To sum up in a few words Mary's statement of her subject, woman having always been treated as an irrational, inferior being, has in the end become one. Her acquiescence to her moral and mental degradation springs from a want of understanding. But "whether this arises from a physical or accidental weakness of faculties, time alone can determine." Women must be allowed to exercise their understanding before it can be proved that they have none.

While each individual man is much to blame in encouraging the false position of women, inconsistently degrading those from whom they pretend to derive their chief pleasure, still greater fault lies with writers who have given to the world in their works opinions which, seemingly favorable, are in reality of a derogatory character to the entire sex. Having set themselves up as teachers, they are doubly responsible. They add to their personal influence that of their written doctrine. They necessarily become leaders, since the majority of men are more than willing to be led. There were several writers of the eighteenth century who had dogmatized about women and their education and the laws of behavior. Rousseau was to many as an inspired prophet. No woman's library was then considered complete which did not include Dr. Fordyce's Sermons and Dr. Gregory's "Legacy to His Daughters." Mrs. Piozzi and Madame de Stael were minor authorities, and Lord Chesterfield's Letters had their admirers and upholders. These writers Mary treats separately, after she has shown the result of the tacit teaching of men, taken collectively; and here what may be called the second part of the book begins.

As Mary says, the comments which follow can all be referred to a few simple principles, and "might have been deduced from what I have already said." They are a mere elaboration of what has gone before, and it would be therefore useless to repeat them. She exposes the folly of Rousseau's ideal, the perfect Sophia who unites the endurance of a Griselda to the wiles of a Vivien, and whose principal mission seems to be to make men wonder, with the French cynic, of what use women over forty are in the world. She objects to Dr. Fordyce's eulogium of female purity and his Rousseau-inspired appeals to women to make themselves all that is desirable in men's eyes, expressed in "lover-like phrases of pumped-up passion." The sensuous piety of his Sermons, suggestive of the erotic religious poems of the East, were particularly offensive to her. She next regrets that Dr. Gregory, at such a solemn moment as that of giving last words of advice to his daughters, should have added the weight of his authority to the doctrine of dissimulation; she is indignant that Mrs. Piozzi and Madame de Stael should have so little realized the dignity of true womanhood as to have confirmed the fiat their tyrants had passed against them; and she vigorously condemns Lord Chesterfield's vicious system, which tends to the early acquirement of knowledge of the world and leaves but little opportunity for the free development of man's natural powers. These writers, no matter how much they differ in detail, agree in believing external behavior to be of primary importance; and Mary's criticisms of their separate beliefs may therefore be reduced to one leading proposition by which she contradicts their main assertions. Right and wrong, virtue and vice, must be studied in the abstract and not by the measure of weak human laws and customs. This is the refrain to all her arguments.

These remarks are followed by four chapters which, while they really relate to the subject, add little to the force of the book. Introduced as they are, they seem like disconnected essays. There is a dissertation upon the effect of early associations of ideas to prove what has already been asserted in an earlier chapter, that "females, who are made women of when they are mere children, and brought back to childhood when they ought to leave the go-cart forever," will inevitably have a sexual character given to their minds. Modesty is next considered, not as a sexual virtue but comprehensively, to show that it is a quality which, regardless of sex, should always be based on humanity and knowledge, and never on the false principle that it is a means by which women make themselves pleasing to men. To teach girls that reserve is only necessary when they are with persons of the other sex is at once to destroy in their minds the intrinsic value of modesty. Yet this is usually the lesson taught them. As a natural consequence, women are free and confidential with each other to a fault, and foolishly prudent and squeamish with men. They are never for a moment unconscious of the difference of sex, and, in affecting the semblance of modesty, the true virtue escapes them altogether. In their neglect of what is for what seems, they lose the substance and grasp a shadow. This consideration of behavior, arbitrarily regulated, rather than of conduct ruled by truth, leads women to care much more for their reputation than for their actual chastity or virtue. They gradually learn to believe that the sin is in being found out. "Women mind not what only Heaven sees." If their reputation be safe, their consciences are satisfied. A woman who, despite innumerable gallantries, preserves her fair name, looks down with contempt upon another who perhaps has sinned but once, but who has not been as clever a mistress of the art of deception.

"This regard for reputation, independent of its being one of the natural rewards of virtue, however, took its rise from a cause that I have already deplored as the grand source of female depravity, the impossibility of regaining respectability by a return to virtue, though men preserve theirs during the indulgence of vice. It was natural for women then to endeavor to preserve what, once lost, was lost forever, till, this care swallowing up every other care, reputation for chastity became the one thing needful for the sex."

As pernicious as the effects of distorted conceptions of virtue are those which arise from unnatural social distinctions. This is a return to the proposition relating to the necessity of equality with which the book opens. In treating it in detail the question of woman's work is more closely studied. The evils which the difference of rank creates are aggravated in her case. Men of the higher classes of society can, by entering a political or military life, make duties for themselves. Women in the same station are not allowed these channels of escape from the demoralizing idleness and luxury to which their social position confines them. On the other hand, women of the middle class, who are above menial service but who are forced to work, have the choice of a few despised employments. Milliners and mantua-makers are respected only a little more than prostitutes. The situation of governess is looked upon in the light of a degradation, since those who fill it are gentlewomen who never expected to be humiliated by work. Many women marry and sacrifice their happiness to fly from such slavery. Others have not even this pitiful alternative. "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?" It is a melancholy result of civilization that the "most respectable women are the most oppressed."

The next chapter, on Paternal Affection, leads to the third part of the treatise. It is not enough for a reformer to pull down. He must build up as well, or at least lay the foundation stone of a new structure. The missionary does not only tell the heathen that his religion is false, but he instructs him in the new one which is to take its place. The scientist, besides maintaining that old theories are exploded, explains to the student new facts which have superseded them. Mary, after demonstrating the viciousness of existing educational systems, suggests wherein they may be improved, so that women, their understandings trained and developed, may have the chance to show what they really are.

Family duties necessarily precede those of society. As the "formation of the mind must be begun very early, and the temper, in particular, requires the most judicious attention," a child's training should be undertaken, not from the time it is sent to school, but almost from the moment of its birth. Therefore a few words as to the relations between parents and children are an indispensable introduction to the larger subject of education, properly so called, which prepares the young for social life.

Father and mother are rightful protectors of their child, and should accept the charge of it, instead of hiring a substitute for this purpose. It is not even enough for them to be regulated in this matter by the dictates of natural affection. They must be guided by reason. For there are the two equally dangerous extremes of tyrannical exercise of power and of weak indulgence to be avoided. Unless their understanding be strengthened and enlightened, they will not know what duties to exact from their children. In their own disregard of reason as a guide to conduct, they "demand blind obedience," and, to render their demand binding, a "mysterious sanctity is spread around the most arbitrary principle." Parents have a right to expect their children throughout their lives to pay them due respect, give heed to their advice, and take care of them should illness or old age make it impossible for them to do this for themselves; but they should never desire to subjugate their sons and daughters to their own will, after they have arrived at years of discretion and can answer for their actions. To obey a parent, "only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason." These remarks are particularly applicable to girls, who "from various causes are more kept down by their parents, in every sense of the word, than boys," though in the case of the latter there is still room for improvement. That filial duty should thus be reduced to slavery is inexcusable, since children can very soon be made to understand why they are requested to do certain things habitually. This, of course, necessitates trouble; but it is the only way to qualify them for contact with the world, and the active life which must come with their maturity.

Once this rational foundation has been laid for the formation of a child's character, more immediate attention can be given to the development of its mental faculties and social tendencies.

The first step in solving the great problem of education—and here both sexes are referred to—is to decide whether it should be public or private. The objections to private education are serious. It is not good for children to be too much in the society of men and women; for they then "acquire that kind of premature manhood which stops the growth of every vigorous power of mind or body." By growing accustomed to have their questions answered by older people instead of being obliged to seek the answers for themselves, as they are forced to do when thrown with other children, they do not learn how to think for themselves. The very groundwork of self-reliance is thus destroyed. "Besides, in youth the seeds of every affection should be sown, and the respectful regard which is felt for a parent is very different from the social affections that are to constitute the happiness of life as it advances." "Frank ingenuousness" can only be attained by young people being frequently in society where they dare to speak what they think. To know how to live with their equals when they are grown up, children must learn to associate with them when they are young.

The evils which result from the boarding-school system are almost as great as those of private education. The tyranny established among the boys is demoralizing, while the acquiescence to the forms of religion demanded of them, encourages hypocrisy. Children who live away from home are unfitted for domestic life. "Public education of every denomination should be directed to form citizens, but if you wish to make good citizens, you must first exercise the affections of a son and a brother." Home-training on the one hand, and boarding-schools on the other, being equally vicious, the only way out of the difficulty is to combine the two systems, retaining what is best in each, and doing away with what is evil. This combination could be obtained by the establishment of national day-schools.

They must be supported by government, because the school-master who is dependent upon the parents of children committed to his charge, necessarily caters to them. In schools for the upper classes, where the number of pupils is small and select, he spends his energies in giving them a show of knowledge wherewith they may startle friends and relations into admiration of his superior system. In common schools, where the charges are small, he is forced, in order to support himself, to multiply the number of pupils until it is impossible for him to do any one of them justice. But if education were a national affair, school-masters would be responsible to a board of directors, whose interest would be given to the boys collectively and not individually, while the number of pupils to be received would be strictly regulated.

To perfect national schools the sexes must be educated together. By this means only can they be prepared for their after relations to each other, women thus becoming enlightened citizens and rational companions for men. The experiment of co-education is at all events worth making. Even should it fail, women would not be injured thereby, "for it is not in the power of man to render them more insignificant than they are at present."

Mary is very practical in this branch of her subject, and suggests an admirable educational scheme. In her levelling of rank among the young, she shows the influence of Plato; in her hint as to the possibility of uniting play and study in elementary education, she anticipates Froebel. Her ideas can be best appreciated by giving them in her own words:—

"To render this [that is, co-education] practicable, day-schools for particular ages should be established by government, in which boys and girls might be educated together. The school for the younger children, from five to nine years of age, ought to be absolutely free and open to all classes. A sufficient number of masters should also be chosen by a select committee, in each parish, to whom any complaint of negligence, etc., might be made, if signed by six of the children's parents.

"Ushers would then be unnecessary: for I believe experience will ever prove that this kind of subordinate authority is particularly injurious to the morals of youth....

"But nothing of this kind [that is, amusement at the expense of ushers] would occur in an elementary day-school, where boys and girls, the rich and poor, should meet together. And to prevent any of the distinctions of vanity, they should be dressed alike, and all obliged to submit to the same discipline, or leave the school. The schoolroom ought to be surrounded by a large piece of ground, in which the children might be usefully exercised, for at this age they should not be confined to any sedentary employment for more than an hour at a time. But these relaxations might all be rendered a part of elementary education, for many things improve and amuse the senses when introduced as a kind of show, to the principles of which, dryly laid down, children would turn a deaf ear. For instance, botany, mechanics, and astronomy, reading, writing, arithmetic, natural history, and some simple experiments in natural philosophy, might fill up the day; but these pursuits should never encroach on gymnastic plays in the open air. The elements of religion, history, the history of man, and politics might also be taught by conversations in Socratic form.

"After the age of nine, girls and boys intended for domestic employments or mechanical trades ought to be removed to other schools, and receive instruction in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual, the two sexes being still together in the morning; but in the afternoon the girls should attend a school where plain work, mantua-making, millinery, etc., would be their employment.

"The young people of superior abilities or fortune might now be taught, in another school, the dead and living languages, the elements of society, and continue the study of history and politics on a more extensive scale, which would not exclude polite literature. 'Girls and boys still together?' I hear some readers ask. Yes; and I should not fear any other consequence than that some early attachment might take place....

"Besides, this would be a sure way to promote early marriages, and from early marriages the most salutary physical and moral effects naturally flow....

"... Those (youths) who were designed for particular professions might attend, three or four mornings in the week, the schools appropriated for their immediate instruction....

"My observations on national education are obviously hints; but I principally wish to enforce the necessity of educating the sexes together to perfect both, and of making children sleep at home, that they may learn to love home; yet to make private ties support, instead of smothering, public affections, they should be sent to school to mix with a number of equals, for only by the jostlings of equality can we form a just opinion of ourselves....

"... The conclusion which I wish to draw is obvious: make women rational creatures and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives and mothers; that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers."

This is no place to enter into a discussion as to whether Mary Wollstonecraft's theories were right or wrong. National education and co-education are still subjects of controversy. But even those who object most strongly to her conclusions must admit that they were the logical results of her premises. Equality! was her battle-cry. All men and women are equal inasmuch as they are human. Her scheme is the only possible one by which this fundamental equality can be maintained. It covers the whole ground, too, by its recognition of the secondary distinctions of rank and sex, and the necessary division of labor. Mary was not a communist in her social philosophy. She knew such differences must always exist, and she allowed for them.

In the remaining chapter she cites instances of folly generated by women's ignorance, and makes reflections upon the probable improvement to be produced by a revolution in female manners. Some of the evils with which she deals are trifling, as, for example, the prevailing mania for mesmerism and fortune-telling. Others are serious, as, for instance, the incapacity of ignorant women to rear children. But all which are of real weight have already been more than amply discussed. She here merely repeats herself, and these last pages are of little or no consequence.

A plainness of speech, amounting in some places to coarseness, and a deeply religious tone, are to many modern readers the most curious features of the book. A just estimate of it could not be formed if these two facts were overlooked. A century ago men and women were much more straightforward in their speech than we are to-day. They were not squeamish. In real life Amelias listened to raillery from Squire Westerns not a whit more refined than Fielding's good country gentlemen. Therefore, when it came to serious discussions for moral purposes, there was little reason for writers to be timid. It was impossible for Mary to avoid certain subjects not usually spoken of in polite conversation. Had she done so, she would but have half stated her case. She was not to be deterred because she was a woman. Such mock-modesty would at once have undermined her arguments. According to her own theories, there was no reason why she should not think and speak as unhesitatingly as men, when her sex was as vitally interested as theirs. And therefore, with her characteristic consistency, she did so. But while her language may seem coarse to our over-fastidious ears, it never becomes prurient or indecent. In her Dedication she expresses very distinctly her disgust for the absence of modesty among contemporary Frenchwomen. Hers is the plain-speaking of the Jewish law-giver, who has for end the good of man; and not that of an Aretino, who rejoices in it for its own sake.

Even more remarkable than this boldness of expression is the strong vein of piety running through her arguments. Religion was to her as important as it was to a Wesley or a Bishop Watts. The equality of man, in her eyes, would have been of small importance had it not been instituted by man's Creator. It is because there is a God, and because the soul is immortal, that men and women must exercise their reason. Otherwise, they might, like animals, yield to the rule of their instincts and emotions. If women were without souls, they would, notwithstanding their intellects, have no rights to vindicate. If the Christian heaven were like the Mahometan paradise, then they might indeed be looked upon as slaves and playthings of beings who are worthy of a future life, and hence are infinitely their superiors. But, though sincerely pious, she despised the meaningless forms of religion as much as she did social conventionalities, and was as free in denouncing them. The clergy, who from custom cling to old rites and ceremonies, were, in her opinion, "indolent slugs, who guard, by liming it over, the snug place which they consider in the light of an hereditary estate," and "idle vermin who two or three times a day perform, in the most slovenly manner, a service which they think useless, but call their duty." She believed in the spirit, but not in the letter of the law. The scriptural account of the creation is for her "Moses' poetical story," and she supposes that very few who have thought seriously upon the subject believe that Eve was, "literally speaking, one of Adam's ribs." She is indignant at the blasphemy of sectarians who teach that an all-merciful God has instituted eternal punishment, and she is impatient of the debtor and creditor system which was then the inspiration of the religion of the people. She believes in God as the life of the universe, and she accepts neither the theory of man's innate wickedness nor that of his natural perfection, the two then most generally adopted, but advocates his power of development:—

"Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all was right originally; a crowd of authors that all is now right; and I, that all will be right."

She, in fact, teaches the doctrine of evolution. But where its modern upholders refer all things to an unknowable source, she builds her belief "on the perfectibility of God."

Even the warmest admirers of Mary Wollstonecraft must admit that the faults of the "Vindication of the Rights of Women" are many. Criticised from a literary stand-point, they exceed its merits. Perfection of style was not, it is true, the aim of the writer, as she at once explains in her Introduction. She there says, that being animated by a far greater end than that of fine writing,—

"... I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style. I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments than to dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed about things, not words! and, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation."

Yet she errs principally from the fault she determines to avoid, as the very sentence in which she announces this determination proves. Despite her sincerity, she is affected, and her arguments are often weakened by meretricious forms of expression. No one can for a moment doubt that her feelings are real, but neither can the turgidity and bombast of her language be denied. She borrows, unconsciously perhaps, the "flowery diction" which she so heartily condemns. Her style, instead of being clear and simple, as would have best suited her subject, is disfigured by the euphuism which was the fashion among writers of the last century. When she is enthusiastic, her pen "darts rapidly along" and her "heart bounds;" if she grows indignant at Rousseau's ideal of feminine perfection, "the rigid frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his voluptuous reveries." When she wants to prove that men of genius, as a rule, have good constitutions, she says:—

"... Considering the thoughtless manner in which they lavished their strength when, investigating a favorite science, they have wasted the lamp of life, forgetful of the midnight hour, or when, lost in poetic dreams, fancy has peopled the scene, and the soul has been disturbed, till it shook the constitution by the passions that meditation had raised, whose objects, the baseless fabric of a vision, faded before the exhausted eye, they must have had iron frames."

In her praise of the virtue of modesty, she exclaims:

"... It is the pale moon-beam that renders more interesting every virtue it softens, giving mild grandeur to the contracted horizon. Nothing can be more beautiful than the poetical fiction which makes Diana, with her silver crescent, the goddess of chastity. I have sometimes thought that, wandering in sedate step in some lonely recess, a modest dame of antiquity must have felt a glow of conscious dignity, when, after contemplating the soft, shadowy landscape, she has invited with placid fervor the mild reflection of her sister's beams to turn to her chaste bosom."

She is too ready to moralize, and her moralizing degenerates unfortunately often into commonplace platitudes. She is even at times disagreeably pompous and authoritative, and preaches rather than argues. This was due partly to a then prevailing tendency in literature. Every writer—essayist, poet, and novelist—preached in those days. Mary frequently forgets she has a cause to prove in her desire to teach a lesson. She exhorts her sisters as a minister might appeal to his brethren, and this resemblance is made still more striking by the oratorical flights or prayers with which she interrupts her argument to address her Creator. Moreover, the book is throughout, as Leslie Stephen says, "rhetorical rather than speculative." It is unmistakably the creation of a zealous partisan, and not of a calm advocate. It reads more like an extempore declamation than a deliberately written essay. Godwin says, as if in praise, that it was begun and finished within six weeks. It would have been better had the same number of months or years been devoted to it. Because of the lack of all method it is so full of repetition that the argument is weakened rather than strengthened. She is so certain of the truth of abstract principles from which she reasons, that she does not trouble herself to convince the sceptical by concrete proofs. Owing to this want of system, the "Vindication" has little value as a philosophical work. Women to-day, with none of her genius, have written on the same subject books which exert greater influence than hers, because they have appreciated the importance of a definite plan.

Great as are these faults, they are more than counterbalanced by the merits of the book. All the flowers of rhetoric cannot conceal its genuineness. As is always the case with the work of honest writers, it commands respect even from those who disapprove of its doctrine and criticise its style. Despite its moralizing it is strong with the strength born of an earnest purpose. It was written neither for money nor for amusement, too often the inspiration to book-making. The one she had not time to seek; the other she could have obtained with more certainty by translating for Mr. Johnson, or by contributing to the "Analytical Review." She wrote it because she thought it her duty to do so, and hence its vigor and eloquence. All her pompous platitudes cannot conceal the earnestness of her denunciation of shams. The "Rights of Women" is an outcry against them. The age was an artificial one. Ladies played at being shepherdesses, and men wept over dead donkeys. Sensibility was a cultivated virtue, and philanthropy a pastime. Women were the arch-sufferers from this evil; but, pleased at being likened unto angels, they failed to see that the ideal set up for them was false. It is to Mary's glory that she could penetrate the mists of prevailing prejudices and see the clear unadulterated truth. The excess of sentimentalism had given rise to the other extreme of naturalism. In France the reaction against arbitrary laws, empty forms, and the unjust privileges of rank, led to the French Revolution. In England its outcome was a Wesley in religious speculation, a Wilkes in political action, and a Godwin and a Paine in social and political theorizing. But those who were most eager to uphold reason as a guide to the conduct of men, had nothing to say in behalf of women. Even the reformers, by ignoring their cause, seemed to look upon them as beings belonging to another world. Day, in his "Sandford and Merton," was the only man in the least practical where the weaker sex was concerned. Mary knew that no reform would be complete which did not recognize the fact that what is law and truth for man must be so for women also. She carried the arguments for human equality to their logical conclusion. Her theories are to the philosophy of the Revolutionists what modern rationalism is to the doctrine of the right of private judgment. She saw the evil to which greater philosophers than she had been indifferent. The same contempt for conventional standards which characterized her actions inspired her thoughts. Once she had evolved this belief, she felt the necessity of proclaiming it to the world at large; and herein consists her greatness. "To believe your own thought," Emerson says, "to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius." The "Vindication of the Rights of Women" will always live because it is the work of inspiration, the words of one who speaketh with authority.