sentatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without
having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of
government." She had the insight to perceive that the first task of the
pioneer was to raise the whole broad issue of the subjection of her sex.
She begins by linking her argument with a splendid imprudence to the
revolutionary movement. It had proclaimed the supremacy of reason, and
based freedom on natural right. Why was it that the new Constitution
ignored women? With a fresh simplicity, she appeals to the French
Convention in the name of its own abstract principles, as modern women
appeal (with more experience of the limitations of male logic) to
English Liberalism. But she knew very well what was the enormous
despotism of interest and prejudice that she was attacking. The
sensualist and the tyrant were for her interchangeable terms, and with
great skill she enlists on her side the new passion for liberty. "All
tyrants want to crush reason, from the weak king to the weak father."
She demands the enlightenment of women, as the reformers demanded that
of the masses: "Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there
will be an end to blind obedience; but as blind obedience is ever
sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they
endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want
slaves, and the latter a plaything."

With a shrewd if instinctive insight into social psychology, she traces
to the unenlightened self-interest of the dominant sex the code of
morals which has been imposed upon women. Rousseau supplies her with the
perfect and finished statement of all that she opposed. He and his like
had given a sex to virtue. She takes her stand on a broad human
morality. "Freedom must strengthen the reason of woman until she
comprehend her duty." Against the perverted sex-morality which treated
woman in religion, in ethics, in manners as a being relative only to
men, she directs the whole of her argument. It is "vain to expect virtue
from women, till they are in some degree independent of men."

"Females have been insulated, as it were, and while they have been
stripped of the virtue that should clothe humanity, they have been
decked with artificial graces that enable them to exercise a short-lived
tyranny.... Their sole ambition is to be fair, to raise emotion instead
of inspiring respect; and this ignoble desire, like the servility in
absolute monarchies, destr