Is knowledge naturally possessed or is it bestowed upon one by sheer luck? In the eighteenth century men seemed to think that woman were inferior to them therefore denied the right to be educated. As stated by Mary Wollstonecraft in " A vindication of the rights of woman":

"Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of Propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man;"

These are the lessons that women were taught when they were young, and as far as women were concerned writing their names and learning how to read was the height of their education. Men considered it a miraculous gift for a woman to maintain a good education, which is there reason for the scarcity...