A dying Edinburgh physician’s advice to his motherless girls: conceal your learning, especially good sense; let wit be softened by diffidence; expect to be loved rather than to choose. It was among the most reprinted books of its century, and Wollstonecraft’s demolition of it is one of the best passages she wrote.
The eighteenth century’s model of the ideal daughter — and the book feminism cut its teeth on. Download the free EPUB.