Gendered Virtues
In Britain, as elsewhere, those who worried about virtue disagreed on how best to defend it—through tradition, revolution, or reform. Their disagreements were colored by different attitudes toward greed and lust, which began to play separate roles in the discourse of self-interest.
Edmund Burke believed that religion could discourage both vices. William Godwin denounced greed, but declared that lust would never be a problem. His wife’s life and his daughter’s elopement seemed to undermine that declaration. Mary Wollstonecraft, less respected than her husband at the time, proved the more prophetic thinker. Her basic argument was bold in its simplicity: whatever rights men enjoyed, women should enjoy too. Jeremy Bentham also argued for a gender-neutral morality. He favored the indulgence of both economic and sexual self-interest, so long as they did no harm to others.