Almost from Émile's first appearance, Rousseau's treatment of the ideal education of women has provoked charges that it is both unjust and inconsistent with his own underlying principles. Mary Wollstonecraft dismissed his views on female education as “the reveries of fancy” and a “refined licentiousness” by which woman is falsely made “the slave of love.” “According to the tenour of [Rousseau's] reasoning, by which women are to be kept from the tree of knowledge, the important years of youth, the usefulness of old age, and the rational hopes of futurity, are,” she claims, “all to be sacrificed, to render women an object of desire for a short time. ”