"Taught from infancy that beauty is a woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."
— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for J. Johnson
Date
1792
Metaphor
"Taught from infancy that beauty is a woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."
Metaphor in Context
Women are everywhere, in this deplorable state; for, in order to preserve their innocence, as ignorance is courteously termed, truth is hidden from them, and they are made to assume an artificial character before their faculties have acquired any strength. Taught from infancy that beauty is a woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. Men have various employments and pursuits which engage their attention, and give a character to the opening mind; but women, confined to one, and having their thoughts constantly directed to the most insignificant part of themselves, seldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour. But were their understanding once emancipated from the slavery to which the pride and sensuality of man and their short-sighted desire, like that of the dominion of tyrants, of present sway, has subjected them, we should probably read of their weaknesses with surprise.
(p. 38)
(p. 38)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Harriet Guest's "Eighteenth-century Feminity: 'a Supposed sexual Character'"
Citation
7 entries in ESTC (1792, 1793, 1794, 1796).
See A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. by Mary Wollstonecraft. (London: Printed for J. Johnson, No 72, St. Paul's Church Yard, 1792). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading Wollstonecraft, M. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Modern Library (New York: Random House, 2001). Also The Vindications, eds. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2001).
See also Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (London: J. Johnson, 1792). <Link to OLL>
See A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. by Mary Wollstonecraft. (London: Printed for J. Johnson, No 72, St. Paul's Church Yard, 1792). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading Wollstonecraft, M. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Modern Library (New York: Random House, 2001). Also The Vindications, eds. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2001).
See also Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (London: J. Johnson, 1792). <Link to OLL>
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
