"THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wollstonecraft Mary)

afterwards I shall more particularly point out their peculiar
designation.

I wish also to steer clear of an error which many respectable
writers have fallen into; for the instruction which has hitherto
been addressed to women, has rather been applicable to ladies, if
the little indirect advice that is scattered through "Sandford and
Merton" be excepted; but, addressing my sex in a firmer tone, I pay
particular attention to those in the middle class, because they
appear to be in the most natural state. Perhaps the seeds of false
refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the
great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and
affections of their race, in a premature unnatural manner,
undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption
through the whole mass of society! As a class of mankind they have
the strongest claim to pity; the education of the rich tends to
render them vain and helpless, and the unfolding mind is not
strengthened by the practice of those duties which dignify the
human character. They only live to amuse themselves, and by the
same law which in Nature invariably produces certain effects, they
soon only afford barren amusement.

But as I purpose taking a separate view of the different ranks of
society, and of the moral character of women in each, this hint is
for the present sufficient; and I have only alluded to the subject
because it appears to me to be the very essence of an introduction
to give a cursory account of the contents of the work it
introduces.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational
creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and
viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood,
unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true
dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to
endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to
convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart,
delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost
synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are
only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been
termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

Dismissing, then, those pretty feminine phrases, which the men
condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and despising
that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet
docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual charac- teristics of
the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to
virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a
character as a hurnan being, regardless of the distinction of sex,
and that secondary views should be brought to this simple
touchstone.