Mary Wollstonecraft — "I am not a mere ornament, but a helpmate."
I am not a mere ornament, but a helpmate.
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More from Mary Wollstonecraft
"The desire of appearing beautiful is a very natural one, and should be encouraged, though it cannot be satisfied by art."
"The desire of being always admired is the reason why women are so often useless."
"My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable …"
"I am not a saint, but a sinner."
"To be useful is more honorable than to be ornamental."
About Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
English writer and proto-feminist philosopher whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is the founding text of modern feminist theory. Closely associated with Thomas Paine (Rights of Man co-conspirator and revolutionary contemporary) and William Godwin (her husband and philosopher of anarchism). For an intellectual contrast, see Edmund Burke, Anglo-Irish conservative and parliamentarian — Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) was the explicit target of Wollstonecraft's first book — A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), written in the weeks after Burke's appeared. She extended the argument to women in her second Vindication two years later. Burke's tradition-and-prescription conservatism is the worldview Wollstonecraft's career was structured against.