Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/231

Rh not been taught to repect the human nature of their own ex, in thee particulars, will not long repect the mere difference of ex in their hubands? After their maidenih bahfulnes is once lot, I, in fact, have generally oberved, that women fall into old habits; and treat their hubands as they did their iters or female acquaintance.

Beides, women from neceity, becaue their minds are not cultivated, have recoure very often to what I familiarly term bodily wit; and their intimacies are of the ame kind. In hort, with repect to both mind and body, they are too intimate. That decent peronal reerve which is the foundation of dignity of character, mut be kept up between women, or their minds will never gain trength or modety.

On this account alo, I object to many females being hut up together in nureries, chools, or convents. I cannot recollect without indignation, the jokes and hoiden tricks, which knots of young women indulge themelves in, when in my youth accident threw me, an awkward rutic, in their way. They were almot on a par with the double meanings, which hake the convivial table when the glas has circulated freely. But, it is vain to attempt to keep the heart pure, unles the head is furnihed with ideas, and et to work to compare them, in order to acquire judgment, by generalizing imple ones; and modety, by making the undertanding damp the enibility.

It may be thought that I lay too great a tres on peronal reerve; but it is ever the handmaid of modety. So that were I to name the graces that ought to adorn beauty, I hould intantly Rh