 a generation of independent and unattached women like herself, but that she seeks to develop wiser and more virtuous mothers. She believes that children's characters are formed before the age of seven, shuddering to think of the damage done by addle-headed mothers. Without stressing independence she believes that once women gain intellectual equality, they should be given political and economic equality as well.
In Chapter XII, "On National Education," Wollstonecraft develops her proposal. She feels that private education is confined to the �lite, and that school-children need the company of other children. She has an aversion to boarding schools because of the interruptions of vacations. She suggests day schools where children may spend time with other children. These need to be national establishments, so that school-matters are not left to the "caprice of the parents."18 Like Rousseau, she emphasizes that children must be allowed to play freely.
What is so radical about Wollstonecraft's idea is that girls are not educated relative to boys, but with them. She states:
If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship, nor will women ever fulfill the peculiar duties of their sex". Nay, marriage will never be held sacred till women, by being brought up with men, are prepared to be their companions rather than their mistresses.19
After the age of nine, girls and boys intended for domestic employments or mechanical trades will be removed to other schools. The two sexes will still study together in the mornings, and in the afternoons girls will learn millinery, mantua-making, and other fitting pursuits.
Girls and boys still together? I hear some readers ask: yes. And I should not fear any other consequence than that some early attachment might take place". Besides, this would be a sure way to promote early marriages, and from early marriages the most salutary physical and moral effects naturally flow.20
Women should be taught anatomy and medicine to make them rational nurses of their infants, parents, and husbands.
At the time of its publication in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Women was considered radical and revolutionary. By the end of the year Joseph Johnson published a second edition. An American edition appeared in Boston and Philadelphia, and a French translation appeared in Paris and Lyons. Aaron Burr admired it and attempted to raise his own daughter according to its principles, although he complained in 1793 that he had "not yet met a single person who had discovered or would allow the merit of this book."21 Contemporary reactions ranged from shock to amusement to enthusiasm. Despite a number of mean-spirited parodies, including A Sketch of the Rights of Boys and Girls and A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, there is no doubt her book had a tremendous impact on British and American feminism. Her argument that one must educate mothers so they may better raise their children would be echoed by the advocates of "Republican Motherhood" in the first years of the new American republic.22
Mary Wollstonecraft's ideas were savagely attacked after her death, when the horrors of the French Revolution had convinced most Englishmen that all revolutionary theories were dangerous. However, there is little doubt that her ideas live on, and like Rousseau's, still have an impact on education. Public education, teaching by the exploitation of natural curiosity, practical applications, are all ideas descended from Rousseau and Wollstonecraft. Most distinctive of these is Wollstonecraft's radical notion that women and men be educated together.
1As cited in Ralph M. Wardle, Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1951), p. 143.
2Helen Evans Misenheimer, Rousseau on the Education of Women (Washington, DC: University Press of America, Inc., 1981), p. 64.
3Confessions, I as cited by Misenheimer, p. 21.
4Ibid., p. 24.
5Claude Fervel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les femmes, as cit