"Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles, have increased the general tide of effeminacy and corruption."
— Hays, Mary (1760-1843)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
T. Knott
Date
1793
Metaphor
"Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles, have increased the general tide of effeminacy and corruption."
Metaphor in Context
Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles, have increased the general tide of effeminacy and corruption. To conform to the perpetual fluctuation of fashion (and few have the courage to dare the "slow and moving finger of scorn," which is pointed at every external singularity) requires almost their whole time and attention, and leaves little leisure for intellectual improvement.
(III, 19-20)
(III, 19-20)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Anne K. Mellor’s “The Rights of Woman and the Woman Writers of Wollstonecraft’s Day” in Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Claudia L. Johnson (Cambridge UP, 2002), 143.
Citation
Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous (London: Printed for T. Knott, 1793). <Link to ECCO>
Date of Entry
03/29/2012
