Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/31

Rh accomplih them, without cultivating their undertandings, they are taken out of their phere of duties, and made ridiculous and ueles when the hort-lived bloom of beauty is over, I preume that rational men will excue me for endeavouring to peruade them to become more maculine and repectable.

Indeed the word maculine is only a bugbear: there is little reaon to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude; for their apparent inferiority with repect to bodily trength, mut render them, in ome degree, dependent on men in the various relations of life; but why hould it be increaed by prejudices that give a ex to virtue, and confound imple truths with enual reveries?

Women are, in fact, o much degraded by mitaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I aert, that this artificial weaknes produces a propenity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of trength, which leads them to play off thoe contemptible infantine airs that undermine eteem even whilt they excite deire. Do not foter thee prejudices, and they will&ensp;