Page:The case for women's suffrage.djvu/190

This page has been validated.
186
THE CASE FOR WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

though opinion has moved in the direction in which she pointed, as ahead of ours. In numerous passages she points out the inseparable connection between male and female chastity. One would have thought the fact so self-evident as to need no asseveration; but as a matter of experience we know that even now the mass of people mete out to the two partners the same action an entirely different degree of blame, and judge them by entirely different standards; the one who is condemned the most severely is not the one who has had the advantage, generally speaking, in wealth, education, experience, and knowledge of the world, and on whom therefore, if any difference be made, a greater responsibility ought to rest; "the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks" on him, and reserves all its terrors for her who stands at a disadvantage in all these respects. An action that is one and the same is regarded as in the last degree heinous in one of the actors and as quite excusable in the other. Against the essential immorality and injustice of this doctrine and practice Mary Wollstonecraft protested with her whole strength. She exposes the insincerity of those who profess zeal for virtue by pointing the finger of scorn at the woman who has transgressed, while her partner who may have tempted her by money, ease, and flattery to her doom, is received with every mark of consideration and respect. "To little respect has that woman a claim . . . who smiles on the libertine while she spurns the victims of his lawless appetites and their own folly." The injustice of this attitude of mind is as conspicuous as its hypocrisy; and in the different