Education Quote by Daniel Defoe

Defoe swings a polite blade: he calls the denial of women’s education not merely unfair, but “barbarous,” a word chosen to embarrass a nation that prides itself on refinement. The move is rhetorical judo. By invoking “civilized” and “Christian,” he uses England’s own self-image as leverage, forcing readers to measure their daily practices against their loudly advertised virtues. If you claim moral superiority, he implies, you can’t keep half the population ill-equipped and still pretend your society is enlightened.

The subtext is strategic, not sentimental. Defoe isn’t just pleading for women; he’s indicting a culture that treats education as a male entitlement while cloaking the exclusion in tradition and piety. The line “considering us” is key: it’s a collective mirror, implicating the reader in the hypocrisy. He’s also careful with “advantages of learning” rather than “rights,” phrasing reform as practical uplift - the social and economic benefits of educated women - to make the argument palatable in a period when outright egalitarian language could sound revolutionary.

Context matters. In late 17th- and early 18th-century England, women’s formal schooling was limited and often reduced to “accomplishments” suited for marriage markets. Defoe, a journalist and commercial-minded observer of public life, frames the issue as a civilizational failure, not a private family choice. The bite of the sentence comes from its calm insistence: if England wants to keep congratulating itself, it must stop confusing patriarchy with progress.