object of being attractive to men had not become the polar star of
feminine education and formation of character. And, this great
means of influence over the minds of women having been acquired, an
instinct of selfishness made men avail themselves of it to the
utmost as a means of holding women in subjection, by representing
to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all individual
will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of sexual
attractiveness. Can it be doubted that any of the other yokes which
mankind have succeeded in breaking, would have subsisted till now
if the same means had existed, and had been so sedulously used, to
bow down their minds to it? If it had been made the object of the
life of every young plebeian to find personal favour in the eyes of
some patrician, of every young serf with some seigneur; if
domestication with him, and a share of his personal affections, had
been held out as the prize which they all should look out for, the
most gifted and aspiring being able to reckon on the most desirable
prizes; and if, when this prize had been obtained, they had been
shut out by a wall of brass from all interests not centring in him,
all feelings and desires but those which he shared or inculcated;
would not serfs and seigneurs, plebeians and patricians, have been
as broadly distinguished at this day as men and women are? and
would not all but a thinker here and there, have believed the
distinction to be a fundamental and unalterable fact in human
nature?

The preceding considerations are amply sufficient to show that
custom, however universal it may be, affords in this case no
presumption, and ought not to create any prejudice, in favour of
the arrangements which place women in social and political
subjection to men. But I may go farther, and maintain that the
course of history, and the tendencies of progressive human society,
afford not only no presumption in favour of this system of
inequality of rights, but a strong one against it; and that, so far
as the whole course of human improvement up to the time, the whole
stream of modern tendencies, warrants any inference on the subject,
it is, that this relic of the past is discordant with the future,
and must necessarily disappear. 

For, what is the peculiar character of the modern world-- the
difference which chiefly distinguishes modern institutions, modern
social ideas, modern life itself, from those of times long past? It
is, that human beings are no longer born to their place in life,
and chained down by an inexorable bond to the would be infinitely
more, if complaint were not the greatest of all provocatives to a
repetition and increase of the ill-usage. It is this which
frustrates all attempts to maintain the power but protect the woman
against its abuses. In no other case (except that of a child) is
the person who has been proved judicially to have suffered an
injury, replaced under the physical power of the culprit who
inflicted it. Accordingly wives, even in the most extreme and
protracted cases of bodily ill-usage, hardly ever dare avail
themselves of the laws made for their protection: and if, in a
moment of irrepressible indignation, or by the interference of
neighbours, they are induced to do so, their whole effort
afterwards is to disclose as little as they can, and to beg off
their tyrant from his merited chastisement. All causes, social and
natural, combine to make it unlikely that women should be
collectively rebellious to the power of . men. They are so far in
a position different from all other subject classes, that their
masters require something more from them than actual service Men do
not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments.
All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most
nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one,
not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put
everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all
other slaves rely, for maintaining obedience, on fear; either fear
of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more
than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education
to effect their purpose. All women are brought up from the very
earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the
very opposite to that of men; not self-will, and government by
self-control, but submission, and yielding to the control of
others. All the moralities tell them that it is the duty of women,
and all the current sentimentalities that it is their nature, to
live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to
have no life but in their affections. And by their affections are
meant the only ones they are allowed to have--those to the men with
whom they are connected, or to the children who constitute an
additional and indefeasible tie between them and a man. When we put
together three things--first, the natural attraction between
opposite sexes; secondly, the wife's entire dependence on the
husband, every privilege or pleasure she has being either his gift,
or depending entirely on his will; and lastly, that the principal
object of human pursuit, consideration, and all objects of social
ambition, can in general be sought or obtained by her only through
him, it would be a miracle if the object of being attractive to men
had not become the polar star of feminine education and formation
of character. And, this great means of influence over the minds of
women having been acquired, an instinct of selfishness made men
avail themselves of it to the utmost as a means of holding women in
subjection, by representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and
resignation of all individual will into the hands of a man, as an
essential part of sexual attractiveness. Can it be doubted that any
of the other yokes which mankind have succeeded in breaking, would
have subsisted till now if the same means had existed, and had been
so sedulously used, to bow down their minds to it? If it had been
made the object of the life of every young plebeian to find
personal favour in the eyes of some patrician, of every young serf
with some seigneur; if domestication with him, and a share of his
personal affections, had been held out as the prize which they all