t
for this reason believe that they must be removed to a new sphere of
action. She defended their rights, not to unfit them for duties assigned
them by natural and social necessities, but that they might fulfil them
the better. She eloquently denied their inferiority to men, not that they
might claim superiority, but simply that they might show themselves to be
the equals of the other sex. Woman was to fight for her liberty that she
might in deed and in truth be worthy to have her children and her husband
rise up and call her blessed!

CHAPTER VII.

VISIT TO PARIS.

1792-1793.

The "Vindication of the Rights of Women" made Mary still more generally
known. Its fame spread far and wide, not only at home but abroad, where
it was translated into German and French. Like Paine's "Rights of Man,"
or Malthus' "Essay on the Theory of Population," it advanced new
doctrines which threatened to overturn existing social relations, and it
consequently struck men with fear and wonder, and evoked more censure
than praise. To-day, after many years' agitation, the question of women's
rights still creates contention. The excitement caused by the first word
in its favor may, therefore, be easily imagined. If one of the bondsmen
helping to drag stones for the pyramids, or one of the many thousand
slaves in Athens, had claimed independence, Egyptians or Greeks could not
have been more surprised than Englishmen were at a woman's assertion
that, mentally, she was man's equal. Some were disgusted with such a bold
breaking of conventional chains; a few were startled into admiration.
Much of the public amazement was due not only to the principles of the
book, but to its warmth and earnestness. As Miss Thackeray says, the
English authoresses of those days "kept their readers carefully at pen's
length, and seemed for the most part to be so conscious of their
surprising achievement in the way of literature, as never to forget for a
single minute that they were in print." But here was a woman who wrote
eloquently from her heart, who told people boldly what she thought upon
subjects of which her sex, as a rule, pretended to know nothing, and who
forgot herself in her interest in her work. It was natural that curiosity
was felt as to what manner of being she was, and that curiosity changed
into surprise when, instead of the virago expected, she was found to be,
to use Godwin's words, "lovely in her person, and, in the best and most
engagin