Love & Passion Quote by Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft comes in with a provocation that still has the power to make polite society reach for its smelling salts: erase the social meaning of sex. Not ignore bodies, not pretend biology doesn’t exist, but “confound” the distinctions that society has turned into a sorting system for power, education, and expectation. The verb matters. Confound isn’t a soft reformist ask; it’s sabotage of an entire grammar of gender.

The clause that follows is the masterstroke: “unless where love animates the behaviour.” She’s not granting a sentimental exception so much as drawing a boundary between public roles and private intimacy. In public life, gender should not be a credential, a cage, or a costume. In private, affection can legitimately shape how we act toward one another - not because women are naturally tender and men naturally strong, but because love is an ethical choice that can justify special regard. The subtext is surgical: if the only acceptable reason to treat someone differently is love, then tradition, propriety, and “nature” lose their alibi.

Context sharpens the edge. Writing in the wake of Enlightenment talk about “rights” and “reason,” Wollstonecraft is pointing out that universal principles had a glaring asterisk: women. Her aim isn’t to masculinize women or feminize men; it’s to strip away the social theater that keeps women childlike and men emotionally illiterate. The line anticipates a modern argument about gender as performance and policy, not destiny - and it does so with the cool audacity of someone tired of being told to be grateful for her chains.