A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · ¶485

This habitual slavery, to first impressions, has a more baneful effect on the female than the male character, because business and other dry employments of the understanding, tend to deaden the feelings and break associations that do violence to reason. But females, who are made women of when they are mere children, and brought back to childhood when they ought to leave the go-cart forever, have not sufficient strength of mind to efface the superinductions of art that have smothered nature.

Mary Wollstonecraft · Gutenberg #3420 digital edition (2021 update); underlying printed edition unspecified
Mary Wollstonecraft · Gutenberg #3420 digital edition (2021 update); underlying printed edition unspecified
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.