ABSTRACT
This chapter disusses that custom, from the earliest periods of antiquity, has endeavoured to place the female mind in the subordinate ranks of intellectual sociability. It says that woman has ever been considered as a lovely and fascinating part of the creation, but her claims to mental equality have not only been questioned, by envious and interested sceptics; but, by a barbarous policy in the other sex, considerably depressed, for want of liberal and classical cultivation. The chapter argues to let woman once assert her proper sphere, unshackled by prejudice, and unsophisticated by vanity; and pride, will establish her claims to the participation of power, both mentally and corporeally. It says that man is able to bear the temptations of human existence better than woman, because man is more liberally educated, and more universally acquainted with society. If woman be the weaker creature, her frailty should be the more readily forgiven.
