Blushing Wives and Single Mothers; Femininity and Maternity in Wollstonecraft’s writing.

In John Gregory’s conduct manual of 1774, A Fathers Legacy to his Daughters, Gregory announces several problematic claims in attempt to produce daughters into modest, ‘blushing wives’. He asserts to “point out those virtues and accomplishments which render you most respectable and most amiable in the eyes of my own sex” (Gregory, 45). Yet his idealised, blushing female is barren one;