Page:Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Vol3.djvu/42

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LETTERS.

Finding that I was observed, I told the good women, the two Mrs. ———s, simply that I was with child: and let them stare! and ———, and ———, nay, all the world, may know it for aught I care!—Yet I wish to avoid ———'s coarse jokes.

Considering the care and anxiety a woman must have about a child before it comes into the world, it seems to me, by a natural right, to belong to her. When men get immersed in the world, they seem to lose all sensations, excepting those necessary to continue or produce life!—Are these the privileges of reason? Amongst the feathered race, whilst the hen keeps the young warm, her mate stays by to cheer her; but it is sufficient for man to condescend to get a child, in order to claim it.—A man is a tyrant!

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