Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life

Advice to mothers in the polite conduct-book manner, written by a failed schoolmistress who keeps letting the manner slip.

by Mary Wollstonecraft60 passages held

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1787(aged 28)
Original language: English
Form: Conduct book

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Overview

The school at Newington Green had run out of money and its founder was in debt. Joseph Johnson bought the copyright for ten guineas. Wollstonecraft gave the ten guineas away — to the parents of Fanny Blood, the friend she had opened the school with and who had died in Lisbon the year before, so that they could get to Ireland. What Johnson published in 1787 looks from the outside like every other conduct book a middle-class girl was handed: short chapters on moral discipline, on artificial manners, on boarding schools. Inside it the advice keeps turning against the genre. Teach a girl to reason, Wollstonecraft tells mothers, rather than to acquire accomplishments; teach her honesty, self-command, and a skill she could actually live by. One chapter stops advising altogether: the chapter on the unfortunate situation of females, fashionably educated, and left without a fortune, which counts the three openings such a woman has — companion, schoolteacher, governess — and finds all three a form of upper service. She had held two of them, and took the third — governess to the Kingsborough children in Ireland — in the months between writing the chapter and seeing it printed. The book barely landed. One periodical, the English Review, noticed it kindly; a Dublin printer reprinted it; then it went out of print and stayed out for nearly two centuries, until feminist scholarship went looking late in the twentieth century. Almost everything she is now read for is here in first draft — the attack on ornamental education, the woman with no money and no training, the conviction that a mind is made rather than decorated — pitched at mothers rather than legislators, and asking permission rather than rights.

Key concepts

How does artificial manner differ from genuine virtue in this book?

Artificial manner imitates virtue’s outward signs without forming the judgment that makes conduct trustworthy. Wollstonecraft treats polished behavior, fashionable manners, and affectation as dangers when they train a girl to manage appearances rather than tell the truth or govern herself. A pleasing manner may conceal a dependent character. Appearance is not character.

Why does habit matter more than occasional good intentions?

Habit turns moral advice into conduct that survives changing circumstances. Wollstonecraft presents repeated actions as the means by which honesty, self-command, and useful attention become part of a girl’s character, rather than occasional performances produced by praise or supervision. Education therefore works slowly, through practice. Character is trained.

What does self-command require when passions and sensibility pull conduct apart?

Self-command requires a person to examine and govern strong feeling instead of allowing passion to dictate action. Wollstonecraft does not treat sensibility as worthless, but she distrusts feeling that lacks judgment, since it can feed vanity, affectation, or unstable conduct. A well-educated girl must make emotion answerable to reason. Feeling needs direction.

Can benevolence make a person virtuous without judgment?

Benevolence becomes virtue only when humane feeling joins judgment and duty. Wollstonecraft distinguishes useful concern for others from the sentimental display of goodness, which may flatter the person who performs it while leaving real obligations unmet. Her moral education asks girls to turn sympathy into steady action, not merely to appear tender. Good intentions must work.

What does resignation mean when circumstances leave women with few choices?

Resignation means meeting difficult circumstances without surrendering the judgment and self-respect that make action possible. In a book addressed to mothers, Wollstonecraft treats endurance as a moral discipline, not permission to educate girls for helpless dependence or to call submission virtue. Even when fortune narrows a woman’s choices, character still requires agency. Endurance is not servility.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Minds Made, Not Decorated

Should a girl be prepared for life by learning to reason, or by acquiring the accomplishments that make her pleasing to others? For Wollstonecraft, the answer decides whether education gives women judgment and useful independence or leaves them dependent as companions, schoolteachers, or governesses.

Wollstonecraft turns the conduct book against its usual lesson: mothers should cultivate reason, honesty, self-command, and a useful skill, not vanity, affectation, or ornamental accomplishments. In 1787, that advice carried an immediate economic edge. Her chapter on females left without a fortune names three prospects—companion, schoolteacher, governess—and exposes each as upper service rather than independence. She had worked in two of those roles before becoming a governess in Ireland. Five years later, the argument returned as a claim about women’s rights.

education
virtue
reason
character
parenting
benevolence
vanity
passion
moral education
duty
judgment
affectation
moral development
intellectual development
nature
resignation
sensibility
love
pride
leisure
religion
aesthetics
compassion
women's education
marriage
moral psychology
suffering
authenticity
child-rearing
friendship

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 60
distinct concepts: 171
by passages held, corpus-wide: #623

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “compassion” and “moral education”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 13 pairings. 36 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
compassion	moral education	3
benevolence	compassion	2
education	parenting	2
moral education	parenting	2
benevolence	love	1
benevolence	moral education	1
benevolence	parenting	1
compassion	religion	1
education	virtue	1
love	religion	1
love	virtue	1
moral education	religion	1
religion	virtue	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1787 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life you are here EN
1788 Original Stories from Real Life
Edmund Burke handed her a political subject not long after it appeared, and the argument moved from a schoolroom to a nation.
EN
1790 A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Burke's Reflections turned a writer on education into a political author. The pamphlet war it opened went on to produce Thomas Paine's Rights of Man and William Godwin's Political Justice.
EN
1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
For two centuries her name has meant this title alone, and the rest of the shelf has been read, when read at all, as approach or aftermath. Behind it stand two books on the schooling of girls; ahead of it, a history of the French Revolution written in France under the Terror.
EN
1794 An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution
Where A Vindication of the Rights of Men answered Burke in a pamphlet, this answers him again four years later at the length of a history.
EN

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