ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Wollstonecraft addressed the issue of sexual difference, as it arose in relation to female education, in connection to maternity. She held radical political views, but struggled with what she perceived as an inconsistency at the heart of the French Republic in its lack of true equality between men and women. Alongside this disillusionment with patriarchal radical politics, Wollstonecraft also contends with the contradictory nature of female models of behaviour intrinsic to representations of gender in eighteenth-century literature. Contradictions in Wollstonecraft's writing is the question whether woman can employ biological maternity in order to argue for empowering educational opportunities without being bound by patriarchal representations of ideal, modest motherhood under the guidance of their husbands. The chapter also presents the Rousseau's influence on English conduct literature of the late eighteenth century meant his interpretation of natural' feminine behaviour was often present in this literature. However, he criticised maternal educators for teaching girls to be feminine' in negative.
