In Chapter 5, Wollstonecraft turns to the miseducation of women, and uses a metaphor to clarify society's error regarding the way that women are educated. She argues that were women given agency in their education, they would be able to form coherent, independent thoughts. Their minds would develop freely and they would be able to reason for themselves. Her metaphor helps her clarify why the current system fails to properly value reason. She says:
The business of education in this case, is only to conduct the shooting tendrils to a proper pole; yet after laying precept upon precept, without allowing a child to acquire judgment itself, parents expect them to act in the same manner by this borrowed fallacious light, as if they had illuminated it themselves; and be, when they enter life, what their parents are at the close. They do not consider that the tree, and even the human body, does not strengthen its fibers till it has reached its full growth.
Wollstonecraft uses the imagery of trees to describe the development of the human mind, and by extension, her society's failure to teach the younger generation, especially women, about reason and judgment. They feed their children a system of reason without allowing them to learn how to reason for themselves, and then expect them to be fully developed immediately. Wollstonecraft compares the human mind to a tree, saying that both must reach their full growth before they can be strong enough to attain independence. She therefore is able to justify her claim that children should be taught to reason for themselves, which strengthens their minds and allows them to act independently. She ultimately extends this metaphor to women as well; they too should be given the time and benefit to grow and strengthen their ability to use their judgment independent of the lessons they are fed while being educated.
In Chapter 5, Wollstonecraft addresses passages from other writers wherein women are treated as objects of pity or contempt. After a long discussion of Rousseau’s work, she uses a metaphor to characterize this manner of condescending to women, and thereby makes it clear that she understands the intended effect of talking to—and about—women this way. Her disapproval of their rhetoric is emphasized by her use of descriptive language. She means to make it clear that men should respect women by speaking to them without treating them as lesser:
I particularly object to the lover-like phrases of pumped up passion, which are everywhere interspersed. If women be ever allowed to walk without leading-strings, why must they be cajoled into virtue by artful flattery and sexual compliments?—Speak to them the language of truth and soberness, and away with the lullaby strains of condescending endearment
In this section, Wollstonecraft characterizes the experience of being condescended to by comparing it to listening to the strains of a lullaby. Her metaphor helps her make it clear that condescension, which is intended to lull a woman into a state of comfort and complacency, is disrespectful. She understands that it is intended to be comforting, and that men compliment women and make advances because they expect women to find it flattering. On the contrary, she argues that women deserve to be communicated with directly, and uses the metaphor of a lullaby to make it clear that despite its intended effect, she finds men’s behavior disrespectful and belittling.
