Who did Mary Wollstonecraft compare women to?

Question

http://www.bartleby.com/144/103.html

Its written somewhere on this website, but I can't understand anything it says!

Answer 1

Women are compared to flowers: The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for,

1) Like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, women's strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty;

2) After using their beauty to attract men and having pleased a fastidious eye, women's beauty fades, like a flower's beauty fades

3) Women's strength and usefulness are disregarded, long before women die, just like a flower that arrives too early at full maturity

4) The barren blooming Mary Wollstonecraft attributed to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than wives; that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.

Answer 2

Flowers planted in too rich a mixture of soil. The analogy being that ........that their natural strengths and determinations were sacrificed in the name of companionship and procreation.

Answer 3

That is quite confusing.