I definitely agree that Wollstonecraft chastises women for propagating their state of dependence but it seems to me that under the surface she recognizes that women are not completely witless and powerless, that they have not just sat by passively and submissively while men treat them slaves but they have learned to work the system of subjugation to their own advantage. Wollstonecraft portrays women as wily and cunning as they play off of the female gender conceptions promoted by the men in their lives in order to advance in the world. On page 375 she explains “this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantine airs that undermine esteem even whilest they excite desire.” She also describes how women beautify themselves due to the “the desire of establishing themselves” since marriage is “the only way women can rise in the world” (375). While women do not occupy the same positions of power as men, they are hardly powerless.
In this same vein, I noticed how Lucy Aiken was fine with the societal structure as it existed and the status-quo agency that women had in domestic life. She wanted women to be empowered, but she did not think they should be overly ambitious. "No! instead of aspiring to be inferior men, let us content ourselves with becoming noble women."
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