Sophie Gee

And as she says in the book, famously, I do not wish them, meaning women, to have power over men, but over themselves, which I think stands as one of the great statements of all time about women's autonomy.

She also says in Vindication that a slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind, which I find really interesting, that she's sort of tracking back the condition of women entrapped in marriages.

She's tracking it back to a sort of unnecessary obedience and sort of tyrannical authority on the part of parents.

And that, I think, is playing out constantly in Jane Austen's books.

And then she says...

Again, this is two more quotes from Vindication, which is just one of those books that's filled with fridge magnet and calendar worthy quotations.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me if I treat them like rational creatures instead of flattering their fascinating graces and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.

I mean... No?

You don't think that's going to get me there?

Feministic... No, of course you're right.

But, you know, it's so fascinating to me that she's writing about women being treated as though they were in a state of perpetual childhood.

This is, of course, where Kant and other, you know, major European philosophers have...

called enlightenment itself as this moment of coming out of childhood, coming into maturity and adulthood.

And so Mary Wollstonecraft is sort of turning that around and thinking about how women have to be liberated from their own state of perpetual childhood.

So think on that as you chug your beer, Jonty.

So Mary Wollstonecraft has a number of adventures in love.

She has an affair with the artist Henry Vuzeli, who, to be fair, and we've made this joke before, has affairs with almost every woman in Europe.

So she's in a happy majority there.

Yeah.

And then she has sort of a real relationship with the American...