Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/134

128 more are, as it may emphatically be termed, ruined before they know the difference between virtue and vice:—and thus prepared by their education for infamy, they become infamous. Aylums and Magdalens are not the proper remedies for thee abues. It is jutice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!

A woman who has lot her honour, imagines that he cannot fall lower, and as for recovering her former tation, it is impoible; no exertion can wah this tain away. Loing thus every pur, and having no other means of upport, protitution becomes her only refuge, and the character is quickly depraved by circumtances over which the poor wretch has little power, unles he poees an uncommon portion of ene and loftines of pirit. Neceity never makes protitution the buines of men's lives; though numberles are the women who are thus rendered ytematically vicious. This, however, aries, in a great degree, from the tate of idlenes in which women are educated, who are always taught to look up to man for a maintenance, and to conider their perons as the proper return for his exertions to upport them. Meretricious airs, and the whole cience of wantonnes, has then a more powerful timulous than either appetite or vanity; and this remark gives force to the prevailing opinion, that with chatity all is lot that is repectable in woman. Her character depends on the obervance of one virtue, though the only paion fotered in her heart—is love. Nay, the honour of a woman is not made even to depend on her will. When&ensp;