A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Women and Femininity Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

Rousseau declares that a woman should never, for a moment, feel herself independent, that she should be governed by fear to exercise her natural cunning, and made a coquettish slave in order to render her a more alluring object of desire, a sweeter companion to man, whenever he chooses to relax himself. (2.24)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau isn't going to win any awards for progressive gender politics. The guy pretty much thinks that women's only strength is their ability to manipulate and deceive men. He also thinks that their only purpose in life should be to look pretty and obey men.

Quote #2

[Women] were made to be loved, and must not aim at respect, lest they should be hunted out of society as masculine. (2.58)

Wollstonecraft knows that there's a big stigma against women who become well educated and try to gain power in male-dominated society. They'll get called manly or even the b-word just for demanding the same kind of respect that men do.

Quote #3

To preserve personal beauty, woman's glory! the limbs and faculties are cramped with worse than Chinese bands, and the sedentary life which they are condemned to live, whilst boys frolic in the open air. (3.12)

Wollstonecraft compares the limits placed on women's minds to the bandages that Chinese people traditionally wrapped around their daughters' feet to make the feet tiny and pretty. This was an extremely painful thing for the young women who endured it, and for Wollstonecraft, it's just as bad to put "binding" on women's minds by refusing to give them a good education.