Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/178

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174
THE CASE FOR WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

more they will resemble men, and the less power will they have over the other sex. "This is the very point," Mary Wollstonecraft says, "I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves."

Rousseau in many respects gave a compendium of all Mary Wollstonecraft most objected to in his views relating to the position of women. Profoundly influenced by his writings as she had at one time been, she was intensely antagonistic to his professions and his practice in regard to all that touched upon the position of women and upon domestic life. There is nothing in her book to show that she was aware of the indelible stain on Rousseau as a man which has been left by his disposing of his five children immediately after their birth by placing them in the turnstile of the Foundling Hospital. The knowledge of this fact has perhaps relieved posterity from the necessity of paying any very strenuous attention to his arguments on the cultivation of the domestic virtues. Mary Wollstonecraft speaks contemptuously of Rousseau's wife as "the fool Theresa," and she probably knew what we know also, that Theresa was a kitchen wench whose state of mind closely approached absolute imbecility. "She could never," says Mr. John Morley, "be taught to read with any approach to success. She could never follow the order of the twelve months of the year, nor master a single arithmetical figure, nor count a sum of money, nor reckon the price of a thing. A month's instruction was not enough to give knowledge of the hours of the day upon a dial-