VI.] MISS WOLLSTONECRAFT'S "VINDICATION." 153 her book "is the forerunner of a movement which will always be ranked as one of the most important of the nineteenth century." Certainly, Miss Wollstonecraft's work is very instructive as to the real character of the Woman's Rights movement. It is also quite undesignedly amusing. At all events, so it seems to me. But my readers shall judge for themselves, - very Miss Wollstonecraft begins her book with a rather' long dedicatory letter to "M. Talleyrand-Périgord, late Bishop of Autun," which gives the quintessence of the chapters that follow, and reveals the inspiration under which they were written. The lady, who was an ardent admirer of the French Revolution, regarded it as a flaw in the constitution which Talleyrand had a hand in manufacturing, that "women are excluded, without having a voice, from a participation in the natural rights of mankind." She protests "it is an affection for the whole human race which makes my pen dart rapidly along to support what I believe to be the cause of virtue," and "earnestly to wish to see woman placed in a state in which she would advance, instead of retarding, the progress of those glorious principles that give a substance to morality." What "those glorious principles principles" are, she nowhere indeed reveals. But she assigns as a special reason for dedicating her book to Talleyrand that "in France there is undoubtedly a more general diffusion of knowledge than in the other parts of the European world," a circumstance which she attributes "in a great measure to the social intercourse which has long subsisted between the sexes." Not, indeed, that her admiration of Frenchwomen is unbounded. On the contrary, she laments that "modesty, the fairest garb of virtue! has been more grossly insulted in France than even in England, till their women have treated as prudish that attention to decency which brutes instinctively observe." And she goes on to inform Talleyrand-whose face, as he read the dedication, it is worth while to picture to oneself that "the personal reserve and sacred respect for cleanliness and delicacy in domestic life, which Frenchwomen almost despise, are the graceful pillars of modesty." With these preliminaries, Miss Wollstonecraft comes to the point. "Contending for the rights of women," she declares, "my main argument is built on the simple principle that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of men, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue." "The education and situation of women," "must be thoroughly reformed." Such is Miss Wollstonecraft's main thesis. She does not develope it in her thirteen chapters with much order or method. She eddies round her subject, rhapsodizing rather than discussing, and giving us bombastic rhetoric in the place of sober logic. But the foundation of her argument appears to be that "the prevailing opinion of a sexual character is she urges, A SEXUAL CHARACTER. 155 erroneous; and to this proposition she devotes two chapters. The belief that women have naturally—that is, from their birth, independent of education-a fondness for doll-dressing and talking," she brands as "puerile and unworthy of serious refutation." "That a girl is naturally a coquette, and that a desire connected with the impulse of nature to propagate the species should appear even before an improper education has called it forth," she pronounces "an unphilosophical absurdity." "The desire of being always woman," she adds, "is the very consciousness that degrades the sex. Except with a lover, it would be well if they were only agreeable or rational companions. When a man squeezes the hand of a pretty woman, handing her to a carriage, whom he has never seen before, she will resent such an impertinent freedom in the light of an insult if she have any true delicacy, instead of being flattered by the unmeaning homage to her beauty." Indeed, throughout her book, Miss Wollstonecraft (if I may be allowed the expression) goes for pretty women. They are the constant objects of her aversion and contempt. "The poisoned source of female vices and follies," she declares, "has been the personal homage paid to beauty-to beauty of features, for it has been shrewdly observed by a German writer that a pretty woman, as an object of desire, is generally allowed to be so by men of all descriptions, whilst a fine woman who inspires more sublime emotions by displaying intellectual beauty, may be overlooked, or observed with indifference, by those who find their happiness in the gratification of their appetites." It is needless to remark that Miss Wollstonecraft was not a pretty woman. She appears, however, to have had a kind of coarse good looks, and was on a large scale. I will cite yet another passage in which one seems to hear the language of "spretæ injuria formæ." "The exclamations which any advice respecting female learning commonly produces, especially from pretty women, often arise from envy. When they chance to see that the lustre of their eyes, and the flippant sportiveness of refined coquetry will not always secure them attention during a whole evening, should a woman of more cultivated understanding endeavour to give a rational turn to the conversation, the common source of consolation is that such women seldom get husbands. What arts have I not seen silly women use to interrupt by flirtation-a very significant word to describe such a manoeuvre-a rational conversation which made the men forget that they were pretty women." Miss Wollstonecraft is hardly more indulgent to the tender passion than to the charms which inspire it. She does not indeed attempt "to reason love out of the world." But she would have it "restrained," and "not allowed to dethrone superior powers, or to usurp the sceptre which the VI.] "MASCULINE AND RESPECTABLE." 157 "Love, understanding should ever coolly wield." from its very nature, must be transitory," she tells us, although she admits that "a mistaken education, a narrow uncultivated mind, and many sexual prejudices, tend to make women more constant than men." She insists, however, that "in order to be able to fulfil the duties of life, and to be able to pursue with vigour the various employments which form the moral character, a master and mistress of a family ought not to love each other with passion." For "when the lover is not lost in the husband, the caresses which should excite confidence in his children are lavished on the overgrown child, his wife." "I wish "-thus she concludes her third chapter-" to sum up what I have said in a few words, and deny the existence of sexual virtues, not excepting modesty. For man and woman, truth, if I understand the meaning of the word, must be the same." Miss Wollstonecraft having thus traced woman's wrongs (as she accounts of them) to their source in the recognition of a sexual character, proceeds to propound her remedy, which is briefly this: to put women on an equality with men; to assimilate them as far as possible to the male sex; or, as she expresses it, "to persuade women to become more masculine and respectable." In order to this consummation, she would revolutionize their education, and, in her own words, would have them "rationally educated." She insists that "to improve both |