244 Ruth Abbey
- Taylor (2003, 53, 58) attributes to Wollstonecraft a capacious, rather than
Cartesian, conception of reason that includes feeling and imagination (Sapiro
1996, 35; Green 1995, 84 – 85). - Chapter seven’s insistence on modesty for men and women provides a good
illustration of this general position. See Halldenius (2007, 90 – 91) on how
Wollstonecraft reconciles her adamancy about a single standard of morality
with her belief in the sexes’ different social functions. - At one point Wollstonecraft even suggests that the virtue and knowledge
stored up by an individual can be carried into the next life (128). If so, most
women will be traveling light. See Taylor (2003, 106) on this dimension of
Wollstonecraft’s religious thought. - Her ideal is “a meritocracy based on reason” (Brody 1985, 63).
- She endorses “conversations, in the socratic form” for use in classrooms
(199). Gunther-Canada compares the Rights of Woman to “the intensely po-
litical pedagogy of Plato’s Republic” (2001, 118). - This conviction lies behind chapter seven’s critique of female chastity, for its
preservation amounts to observing social norms (or manners) rather than any
rational appreciation of the virtue of modesty. Wollstonecraft complains that
maintaining a reputation for chastity is seen as not just necessary, but also
suffi cient, for feminine “virtue” (165 –166). - At one point she calls them “beautiful fl aws in nature” (62). Another formu-
lation has women everywhere appearing “a defect in nature” (82). - Yet rather than repudiate the art of pleasing, Wollstonecraft distinguishes a
superfi cial from a substantive form. While repeatedly attacking the former,
she alludes to “the moral art of pleasing” (218). This would be based on
the pleasure one rational being takes in the mind and virtue of another, and
within this aesthetic, physical beauty becomes inseparable from moral and
mental attainments (202–203). - Marriage and motherhood are duties for most, but not all, women (91, 176;
see also Frazer 2008, 246). - Emphasis original. As chapter eleven indicates, Wollstonecraft also wants to
dismantle any conception of the divine right of parents (187). Parents should
encourage children’s capacity for reason from an early age, and familial af-
fection should, as quickly as possible, come to be founded on, and reinforced
by, the mutual respect of reasoners (Brody 1985, 59). Frazer (2008, 40) de-
tects this theme in Wollstonecraft’s Thoughts on the Education of Daughters,
written six years earlier. - Frazer fi nds in Wollstonecraft “a perfectionist, virtue-based, causal, theory of
politics” (2008, 240) with friendship at its center.