An age that believed in freedom and equality could not long stand by the privilege of sex, and Emilie, although she suffers some of the restrictions imposed on Sophie, shares the natural education of Emile, and is taught to practise most of his virtues. She gains her knowledge, as he does, from experience; Nature is the wise Mistress who refuses her request for more lessons, and had Emilie’s mother followed her own inclination, it is likely that the little girl at ten years old “Would not yet have known how to read.”