Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale.

Mary Wollstonecraft
About This Quote

Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale. This quote is about women's education. Women's education was of great importance in the late 18th century (around 1785). At this time, most people believed that women were inferior in every way. They were thought to have no minds of their own, they needed men to guide them, they couldn't achieve the same level of education as men, and they weren't allowed to vote or hold public office.

So when it came to women in America in the early 1800s, there was a lot of work to be done. It was especially important for women in New York City in 1805 because that was the year that the city had its first female school board. The board accepted three girls into their school system after a grant from Congress.

This grant meant that these girls could not go to college but would be able to go to high school instead. Women started out doing very poorly compared with men in most areas of life. By 1810 American women had begun to make some progress at all levels of society, but by this time women's education was already starting to change dramatically.

By 1830 they were looking at changing roles for them within society, instead of just their roles within the home. The quote above shows how important it was for women's education during this time period.

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More Quotes By Mary Wollstonecraft
  1. What but a pestilential vapour can hover over society when its chief director is only instructed in the invention of crimes, or the stupid routine of childish ceremonies?
  2. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement...
  3. ...a being, with a capacity of reasoning, would not have failed to discover, as his faculties unfolded, that true happiness arose from the friendship and intimacy which can only be enjoyed by equals; and that charity is not a condescending distribution of alms, but an...
  4. It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.
  5. I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.
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