Quotation
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“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”
Mary Wollstonecraft · Enlightenment feminism · Enlightenment · 1792
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a diagnosis of education: if girls are taught that beauty is their only sceptre, the mind forms itself around the body and spends its force decorating a confinement it has been told is a throne. The cage is gilt, which is the point. It looks like power. A rival reading treats the image as a contempt for women who care about appearance, but the target is the teaching, not a private taste; The sentence is her English in the Vindication, in the early chapters' attack on a female education in dependence.
Did Mary Wollstonecraft really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Wollstonecraft's own English in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The gilt cage is her image for an education that makes beauty the only power and the mind its ornament. Confirm the chapter: commonly chapter 2.
Where it comes from
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, chapter 2
Approximate date: 1792.
How to use it
A school in Surrey that praises girls chiefly for how they look at an event, and praises boys for what they built, is running the curriculum she describes, even if the cage is now a social-media filter rather than a gilt finish. The mind shaping itself to the body is the effect she cares about, the ambitions that never quite get formed because adornment took the room. The sentence is not a dress code; It is an account of how a supposed power keeps a person ornamental.
A mindset reading
Sceptre is her irony, a power that is really a prison. Quoting the cage as if she hated beauty as such misses the political claim. She thinks a mind given serious exercise will not have to live by that sceptre; A rival use turns the sentence into a personal attack on particular women, which repeats the policing she is trying to get behind; The infant teaching is the cause; The roaming around the cage is the result.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is the gilt cage, an education in beauty that confines while it flatters. The Vindication of 1792 argues that women are made weak and cunning by this shaping of the mind to the body. Chapter 2 is the usual home of the sentence, and the note records that the chapter should be confirmed. The English is hers; She wants power over themselves, stated elsewhere in the book, rather than a more dazzling prison.
- freedom
- self
- society
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a diagnosis of education: if girls are taught that beauty is their only sceptre, the mind forms itself around the body and spends its force decorating a confinement it has been told is a throne. The cage is gilt, which is the point. It looks like power. A rival reading treats the image as a contempt for women who care about appearance, but the target is the teaching, not a private taste; The sentence is her English in the Vindication, in the early chapters' attack on a female education in dependence.
Did Mary Wollstonecraft really say this?
Well attested. Wollstonecraft's own English in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The gilt cage is her image for an education that makes beauty the only power and the mind its ornament. Confirm the chapter: commonly chapter 2.
Which work is it in?
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, chapter 2 Approximate date: 1792.