Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/314

308 of a few women, who, by accident, or following a trong bent of nature, have acquired a portion of knowledge uperiour to that of the ret of their ex, has often been overbearing; but there have been intances of women who, attaining knowledge, have not dicarded modety, nor have they always pedantically appeared to depie the ignorance which they laboured to dipere in their own minds. The exclamations then which any advice repecting female learning, commonly produces, epecially from pretty women, often arie from envy. When they chance to ee that even the lutre of their eyes, and the flippant portivenes of refined coquetry will not always ecure them attention, during a whole evening, hould a woman of a more cultivated undertanding endeavour to give a rational turn to the converation, the common ource of conolation is, that uch women eldom get hubands. What arts have I not een illy women ue to interrupt by flirtation, a very ignificant word to decribe uch a manœuvre, a rational converation which made the men forget that they were pretty women.

But, allowing what is very natural to man, that the poeion of rare abilities is really calculated to excite over-weening pride, diguting in both men and women—in what a tate of inferiority mut the female faculties have ruted when uch a mall portion of knowledge as thoe women attained, who have neeringly been termed learned women, could be ingular?—Sufficiently o to puff up the poeor, and excite envy in her contemporaries, and ome of the other ex. Nay, has not a little rationality expoed many women to&ensp;