 Moreover, she defines virtue in such a way that it applies to both sexes.Traditionally, as Kelly explains, virtue was tied to femininity and chastity, but Wollstonecraft's text rejects this definition and argues instead that virtue should be characterized by reason and self-control.Myers has also pointed out that Mrs. Mason's desire to instill rationality in her charges is potentially liberating for women readers and their daughters as such a pedagogy was in direct contrast to much that was being written at the time by conduct book writers such as James Fordyce and John Gregory and philosophers such as Rousseau, who asserted the intellectual weakness of women and the secondary status of their gender.