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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · ¶528

On this account also, I object to many females being shut up together in nurseries, schools, or convents. I cannot recollect without indignation, the jokes and hoiden tricks, which knots of young women indulged themselves in, when in my youth accident threw me, an awkward rustic, in their way. They were almost on a par with the double meanings, which shake the convivial table when the glass has circulated freely. But it is vain to attempt to keep the heart pure, unless the head is furnished with ideas, and set to work to compare them, in order, to acquire judgment, by generalizing simple ones; and modesty by making the understanding damp the sensibility.
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Mary Wollstonecraft · Gutenberg #3420 digital edition (2021 update); underlying printed edition unspecified
Mary Wollstonecraft · Gutenberg #3420 digital edition (2021 update); underlying printed edition unspecified
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