rousseau1

     Rousseau says that men and women are given unlimited desires. But, he further says
that men have reason so that they can govern their passions, and that women have
modesty so that they can constrain their desires.
     Women, he says, should be able to love, judge, and cultivate their minds. But
"ought to learn many things but only those things that are suitable for them to
know.(p.364)" In short, he says that this is limited to education as it relates to men.
     "To please men, to be useful to them, to make herself loved an honored by them,
      to raise them when young, to care for them when grown, to counsel them, to
      console them, to make their lives agreeable - these are the duties of women at all
      times, and they ought to be taught from childhood."
Some women complain that men raise girls to be just to be their servants. However, he
says it is not man's fault but the fault women who are complaining because if they did not
like the way the girls were being educated, they should have done it more themselves(he
does not mention how these women would have the education themselves to pass on).
And, the things that women complain about are exactly the things that women teach - to
spend so much time getting dressed up, in the example of their mother. But, if they really
don't like it so much, let them raise their daughters like men. "The men will gladly consent
to it! The more women want to resemble them, the less women will govern them, and then men will truly be the masters.(p.363)"
     Women, according to Rosseau, must satisfy the desires of a man only after acting
repulsed by him and trying to defend herself, physically, from him. He seems to describe
the act of sex as a situation with an attacker and an attacked, men of course being the
attacker. Although women should always defend herself, the aggressor can only find
"victory" if the women has permitted or arranged it.(p.359)
     As girls, they should be allowed to laugh and play, even in silliness. But, he says,
"do not allow for a single instant in their lives that they no longer know restraint.
Accustom them to being interrupted in the midst of their games and brought back to other
cares without grumbling.(p.370)" He goes on to say that this subservient way of thinking
must be made habit in women.

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