; but did not her conduct during his life, and after his death, clearly show how grossly he was mistaken who called her a celestial innocent.15
She treats his description of Sophie with smug indignation, as when Rousseau describes Sophie's garb, "simple as it seems, was only put in its proper order to be taken to pieces by the imagination." To this she retorts, "Is this modesty? Is this a preparation for immortality?"16 She correctly accuses Rousseau of depicting not a wife and sensible mother, but a pleasing mistress.
Getting to the heart of Rousseau's error, she determines:
Men have superior strength of body, but were it not for mistaken notions of beauty, women would acquire sufficient to enable them to earn their own subsistence, the true definition of independence". Let us then, by being allowed to take the same exercise as boys, not only during infancy, but youth, arrive at perfection of boys, that we may know how far the natural superiority of man extends.17
She cautions that she has no desire to breed 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