Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life
1787
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life
1787
This is Mary Wollstonecraft's first published work, and reading it feels like watching a revolutionary mind take shape. Written in 1787, five years before her landmark Vindication of the Rights of Woman, this slender conduct book already contains her core conviction: that women are being miseducated into decorative uselessness. She argues forcefully for teaching daughters virtue, reason, and self-discipline over needlework and superficial accomplishments. Yet what makes the book fascinating is its strategic posture - Wollstonecraft argues for women's intellectual and practical education by framing it as making them better wives and mothers. She advocates teaching girls analytical thinking, honesty, and even marketable skills, acknowledging with quiet radicalism that some women might need to support themselves. The book ranges from infant care to moral philosophy, a young writer establishing the analytical powers that would later shake the foundations of political philosophy. For readers interested in the history of ideas, it offers something precious: the earliest surviving voice of a thinker who would redefine what it meant to be human.
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“... judicious books enlarge the mind and improve the heart ...””
— Mary Wollstonecraft
“To have in this uncertain world some stay, which cannot be undermined, is of the utmost consequence; and this stay it is, which gives that dignity to the manners, which shows that a person does not depend on mere human applause for comfort and satisfaction.””
— Mary Wollstonecraft
“Dissipation leads to poverty, which cannot be patiently borne by those who have lived on the vain applause of others, on account of outward advantages; these were the things they imagined of most consequence, and of course they are tormented with false shame, when by a reverse of fortune they are deprived by them.””
— Mary Wollstonecraft
“Forbearance and liberality of sentiment are the virtues of maturity.””
— Mary Wollstonecraft
“A benevolent mind often suffers more than the object it commiserates, and will bear an inconvenience itself to shelter another from it. It makes allowance for failings though it longs to meet perfection, which it seems formed to adore. The Author of all good continually calls himself, a God long-suffering; and those most resemble him who practice forbearance.””
— Mary Wollstonecraft
“Did our feelings and reason always coincide, our passage through this world could not justly be termed a warfare, and faith would no longer be a virtue. It is our preferring the things that are not seen, to those which are, that proves us to be the heirs of promise.””
— Mary Wollstonecraft
“The mind, too, should be soothed . . . whenever it sinks, soothing is, better than reasoning. The slackened nerves are not to be braced by words. When a mind is worried by care, or oppressed by sorrow, it cannot in a moment grow tranquil, and attend to the voice of reason.””
— Mary Wollstonecraft
“There are quite as many male coquets as female, and they are far more pernicious pests to society, as their sphere of action is larger, and they are less exposed to the censure of the world.””
— Mary Wollstonecraft
“Resentment, indeed, may and will be felt occasionally by the best of human beings; yet humility will soon conquer it, and convert scorn and contempt into pity, and drive out that hasty pride which is always guarding Self from insult; which takes fire on the most trivial occasions, and which will not admit of a superior, or even an equal.””
— Mary Wollstonecraft
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Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life. Lex, lex-books.com/book/thoughts-on-the-education-of-daughters-with-reflections-on-female-conduct-in-the-e4c47380-ade8-4223-9907-aafd434893c3.Wollstonecraft, M. (1787). Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/thoughts-on-the-education-of-daughters-with-reflections-on-female-conduct-in-the-e4c47380-ade8-4223-9907-aafd434893c3Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/thoughts-on-the-education-of-daughters-with-reflections-on-female-conduct-in-the-e4c47380-ade8-4223-9907-aafd434893c3.
