Page:Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Vol2.djvu/74

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
64
WRONGS OF WOMAN.
[CH. XI.

led me out of myself, to expatiate on the misery peculiar to my sex. 'Are not,' I thought, 'the despots for ever stigmatized, who, in the wantonness of power, commanded even the most atrocious criminals to be chained to dead bodies? though surely those laws are much more inhuman, which forge adamantine fetters to bind minds together, that never can mingle in social communion! What indeed can equal the wretchedness of that state, in which there is no alternative, but to extinguish the affections, or encounter infamy?'"

CHAP.