What do you think?
Rate this book
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
In the present state of society, it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground. To clear my way, I must be allowed to ask some plain questions, and the answers will probably appear as unequivocal as the axioms on which reasoning is built; though, when entangled with various motives of action, they are formally contradicted, either by the words or conduct of men.In what does man's pre-eminence over the brute creation consist?The answer is as clear as that a half is less than the whole; inReason.
166 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1792
About the author
Mary Wollstonecraft
223 books820 followersMary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attention than her writing because of her unconventional, and often tumultuous, personal relationships. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement; they had one daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts.
During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.
Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org
During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.
Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,306 reviews
May 30, 2019
Wollstonecraft is not passionate; she does not offer any inspiring words or flowery language. Wollstonecraft writes with no embellishment or artistry; yet, her words are commanding and exceedingly persuasive because what she does have is cold, hard, logic. And she knows it.
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
She refused to appeal to the sensibilities and imaginations of her readers. Instead she wished to display her rational intellect, an intellect free of flights of fancy and one that had the ability to access the situation in all its reality. She argued that women, in their current state, had no means of proving their worth. She believed that women were physically inferior to men, but in terms of intellect they were equal and that they so desperately needed a noble, edifying, pursuit in which to show this.
Wollstonecraft offers many compelling arguments in here, though for me her most logical pertains to human progress; she argues that without education it will simply stop: a very true point. Humanity needs to continue to develop, but this is impossible if only half of humanity is educated. She argues that women cannot teach their children if they in turn are not educated. How can she impart any wisdom or teach any sense of patriotism if she has not learnt to love mankind? Wollstonecraft believed that the key to overturning sexism began and ended with education.
“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”
Due to the lack of education women recieved, Wollstonecraft suggests that they have been rendered wretched and weak. They are merely classified as females rather than members of mankind. She wants to see women take on manly qualities, well, traits associated with manhood. She wanted to break the oppressive gender boundaries that limited the faculty of her sex. As such, she was satirised by many novelists and critics for being manly herself. The ironic thing is that such a label only serves to achieve what she is arguing for. She wanted women to be many, to be equal to men.
However, Wollstonecraft was at times very condescending towards women. Whilst she does not blame them for their predicament, that blame lays at the door of the patriarchy and men in general, she does chastise them for not trying to break through their shackles. Though what she fails to recognise is that for many women they do not have the benefit of looking beyond earning enough money to get through the week and looking after their families. Wollstonecraft is distinctively middle-class, and as such, at times, she lacks the ability to empathise with the reality of the situation some women will find themselves in. She also undervalues the lessons and teachings uneducated people can still pass on to their children, the value of hard work and honesty for example.
Such minor issues with her writing by no means downplay the power and logic behind her arguments, arguments that would go on to inspire the next generation of writers (including her daughter and her daughter’s husband, no doubt.) I also noticed some very particular phrasing that was later mirrored almost verbatim in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Wollstonecraft’s ideas were carried further by a medium she deplored, the novel. She really underestimated its power as a learning device.
Wollstonecraft is certainly a powerful literary figure to be admired, and, this, as a seminal work in the development of feminism is, certainly, a work of undying success and potency.
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
She refused to appeal to the sensibilities and imaginations of her readers. Instead she wished to display her rational intellect, an intellect free of flights of fancy and one that had the ability to access the situation in all its reality. She argued that women, in their current state, had no means of proving their worth. She believed that women were physically inferior to men, but in terms of intellect they were equal and that they so desperately needed a noble, edifying, pursuit in which to show this.
Wollstonecraft offers many compelling arguments in here, though for me her most logical pertains to human progress; she argues that without education it will simply stop: a very true point. Humanity needs to continue to develop, but this is impossible if only half of humanity is educated. She argues that women cannot teach their children if they in turn are not educated. How can she impart any wisdom or teach any sense of patriotism if she has not learnt to love mankind? Wollstonecraft believed that the key to overturning sexism began and ended with education.
“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”
Due to the lack of education women recieved, Wollstonecraft suggests that they have been rendered wretched and weak. They are merely classified as females rather than members of mankind. She wants to see women take on manly qualities, well, traits associated with manhood. She wanted to break the oppressive gender boundaries that limited the faculty of her sex. As such, she was satirised by many novelists and critics for being manly herself. The ironic thing is that such a label only serves to achieve what she is arguing for. She wanted women to be many, to be equal to men.
However, Wollstonecraft was at times very condescending towards women. Whilst she does not blame them for their predicament, that blame lays at the door of the patriarchy and men in general, she does chastise them for not trying to break through their shackles. Though what she fails to recognise is that for many women they do not have the benefit of looking beyond earning enough money to get through the week and looking after their families. Wollstonecraft is distinctively middle-class, and as such, at times, she lacks the ability to empathise with the reality of the situation some women will find themselves in. She also undervalues the lessons and teachings uneducated people can still pass on to their children, the value of hard work and honesty for example.
Such minor issues with her writing by no means downplay the power and logic behind her arguments, arguments that would go on to inspire the next generation of writers (including her daughter and her daughter’s husband, no doubt.) I also noticed some very particular phrasing that was later mirrored almost verbatim in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Wollstonecraft’s ideas were carried further by a medium she deplored, the novel. She really underestimated its power as a learning device.
Wollstonecraft is certainly a powerful literary figure to be admired, and, this, as a seminal work in the development of feminism is, certainly, a work of undying success and potency.
June 18, 2020
OH MY GOD , this uncoventional, feminist woman is mother of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, who was one of my favorite author only after Rowling, Wilde, Plath...etc.?
SHELLEY, you never tell me how cool your mother was!!! . I thought we were best friends.
SHELLEY, you never tell me how cool your mother was!!! . I thought we were best friends.
June 7, 2020
Reading this messy, brilliant book gave me that strange impression you sometimes get with essayists – of encountering a perfectly modern mind that is trapped in the past, looking around with modern sensibilities and baffled by what it sees. The effect now is not one of genius, but merely of contemporary common sense, applied somehow, magically, anachronistically. At one point, during a close reading of Rousseau, Wollstonecraft adds an asterisk, and comments simply in a footnote: ‘What nonsense!’ Here you have the book in two words: a smart woman looking around at late-eighteenth-century London, and saying, What nonsense!
Yet despite the timelessness, its context is important. A couple of years before this came out, Burke had published his famous conservative critique of popular uprisings, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Mary Wollstonecraft had been more or less the first to react, tearing off A Vindication of the Rights of Men just a few weeks later. She would be followed by many others (not least her occasional dinner companion Thomas Paine), but while the rest of them wittered on about inherent freedoms, she was the only one to look around and consider the novelty of extending those freedoms to the other half of the species. So this follow-up was written in a specifically revolutionary context, and was intended, as she says, ‘to effect a revolution in female manners’.
This general ‘down with the nobs’, anti-aristocratic sensibility is for Wollstonecraft a handy analogue for all that is wrong with female socialisation. She equates women with rich military officers, whose primary concern is to look dashing, or with titled nobility – for ‘wealth and female softness equally tend to debase mankind, and are produced by the same cause’.
The point of similarity is the fact that both women and monarchs are pictured as separate, higher beings by ordinary men – but in the case of women it's even more pernicious because it's based on an underlying assertion of inferiority. A woman is ‘exalt[ed …] on a quicksand’ and polarised as either ‘a slave or a despot’ (a dichotomy still much in evidence today). She sees nothing but hypocrisy in the ‘paternal solicitude’ of men ‘who outwardly respect and inwardly despise the weak creatures whom they thus sport with’, since the angelic qualities which women are supposed to possess are, in fact, just euphemisms of their subordinate status. Today we might talk of ‘benevolent sexism’; Wollstonecraft talks about the ‘negative virtues’ ascribed to women, namely:
‘I […] deny the existence of sexual virtues,’ she says. (‘Sexual’ at this time meant ‘belonging to the sex’, i.e. ‘female, feminine’.) Virtues are universal or they are meaningless.
But it's significant that she is calling for a revolution in female manners, since her main target is the women who aid and abet this behaviour. Like not a few feminist writers after her, Wollstonecraft wants to defend women from the unfair position they've been put in, but she is often more animated, one feels, by frustration at all the vapid bitches around her. She has no time whatever for women who have ‘chosen rather to be short-lived queens than labour to obtain the sober pleasures that arise from equality’, or who refuse to talk to men on intellectual even ground. ‘What arts have I not seen silly women use to interrupt by flirtation […] a rational conversation which made the men forget that they were pretty women.’ Often, to her disgust, this involves playing up their physical weaknesses for flirtatious effect.
This is very funny. Frequently these critiques sound startlingly modern:
I can get that door myself! Who knew that was an argument that went back to 1792? It can be disheartening to realise, as you read this, how many of these issues are still with us more than two centuries later. But at other times you're made to feel, with a jolt, how much things have changed. She asks rhetorically at one point why there are no women who have become famous for their own merits and successes, for instance, and her speculation about women earning their own money is, for her time, pure utopian fantasy:
In the end, though, she understands exactly why women behave as they do – because that's how they've been taught. ‘[C]an they deserve blame for acting according to principles so constantly inculcated?’ she demands. After all,
…as reaction to the book would prove. She sums things up with admirable clarity. ‘If men be demi-gods – why let us serve them!’ If women are truly subservient animals, ‘it will be expedient to open a fresh trade with Russia for whips’. But if not…perhaps we can start acting like we're all human beings?
Wollstonecraft considers all of these social problems, ultimately, to be the result of ‘firmly rooted prejudices which sensualists have planted’; in other words, women are the way they are because it's more gratifying to men's sexual desires. Behind gender inequality lurks her bogeyman: ‘want of chastity in men’. Frustratingly for modern readers, she concedes that men ‘are certainly more under the influence of their appetites than women’ (a belief that had only emerged relatively recently), but whereas today our instinct would be to destigmatise freer sexual expression in women, for Wollstonecraft the solution is rather to suppress sexual expression in everyone.
This leads her to some strange places. She regrets ‘the depravity of the appetite which brings the sexes together’, and urges married women to ‘calmly let passion subside into friendship’. The ‘master and mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other with passion,’ she asserts (which would certainly lead to some interesting self-help books today. Has your relationship lost the spark? GOOD). The armies of sex workers in Georgian London upset her; she refers to them, with barely-disguised revulsion, as ‘literally speaking, standing dishes to which every glutton may have access’. But her call for reserve goes much further than this: she also inveighs against women living together, talking too casually (she is appalled by French women who speak openly about having indigestion), and generally being ‘too intimate’. Her image of an ideal woman's life builds to a vision that now seems nauseatingly insipid:
Oh great, the sleep of death! You can see that Wollstonecraft has somehow argued herself into this awkward polarisation, whereby reason and intellect are good, and everything to do with feeling and emotion is consequently bad. This false dichotomy is something that feminism took a long, long time to shake off, and in some ways maybe still struggles with.
It's particularly interesting, because the events of Mary Wollstonecraft's own private life (she was shortly to suggest a ménage to Henry Fuseli and his wife, before going off to Paris to have a baby with someone out of wedlock) would belie these principles so comprehensively. So the impression in Woman is not of sexual desire's being written off, but rather of its being repressed, forced down, in a way that makes the book deeply psychologically interesting, even while it weakens its politics.
For modern readers, there is a lot in here that can be frustrating – her religiosity, her occasional flights of flowery rhetoric – but the overall impression is of a kindred spirit trying her best to use tired old language to say completely new things. And the arguments are still totally compelling. That this book was produced when and where it was already seems like a miracle; that it should be so funny and smart and engaging is more than there was any right to expect.
Yet despite the timelessness, its context is important. A couple of years before this came out, Burke had published his famous conservative critique of popular uprisings, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Mary Wollstonecraft had been more or less the first to react, tearing off A Vindication of the Rights of Men just a few weeks later. She would be followed by many others (not least her occasional dinner companion Thomas Paine), but while the rest of them wittered on about inherent freedoms, she was the only one to look around and consider the novelty of extending those freedoms to the other half of the species. So this follow-up was written in a specifically revolutionary context, and was intended, as she says, ‘to effect a revolution in female manners’.
This general ‘down with the nobs’, anti-aristocratic sensibility is for Wollstonecraft a handy analogue for all that is wrong with female socialisation. She equates women with rich military officers, whose primary concern is to look dashing, or with titled nobility – for ‘wealth and female softness equally tend to debase mankind, and are produced by the same cause’.
A king is always a king – and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex, ever stand between them and rational converse.
The point of similarity is the fact that both women and monarchs are pictured as separate, higher beings by ordinary men – but in the case of women it's even more pernicious because it's based on an underlying assertion of inferiority. A woman is ‘exalt[ed …] on a quicksand’ and polarised as either ‘a slave or a despot’ (a dichotomy still much in evidence today). She sees nothing but hypocrisy in the ‘paternal solicitude’ of men ‘who outwardly respect and inwardly despise the weak creatures whom they thus sport with’, since the angelic qualities which women are supposed to possess are, in fact, just euphemisms of their subordinate status. Today we might talk of ‘benevolent sexism’; Wollstonecraft talks about the ‘negative virtues’ ascribed to women, namely:
patience, docility, good-humour, and flexibility; virtues incompatible with any vigorous exertion of intellect.
‘I […] deny the existence of sexual virtues,’ she says. (‘Sexual’ at this time meant ‘belonging to the sex’, i.e. ‘female, feminine’.) Virtues are universal or they are meaningless.
But it's significant that she is calling for a revolution in female manners, since her main target is the women who aid and abet this behaviour. Like not a few feminist writers after her, Wollstonecraft wants to defend women from the unfair position they've been put in, but she is often more animated, one feels, by frustration at all the vapid bitches around her. She has no time whatever for women who have ‘chosen rather to be short-lived queens than labour to obtain the sober pleasures that arise from equality’, or who refuse to talk to men on intellectual even ground. ‘What arts have I not seen silly women use to interrupt by flirtation […] a rational conversation which made the men forget that they were pretty women.’ Often, to her disgust, this involves playing up their physical weaknesses for flirtatious effect.
In the most trifling dangers they cling to their support, with parasitical tenacity, piteously demanding succour; and their natural protector extends his arms, or lifts up his voice, to guard the lovely trembler – from what? Perhaps the frown of an old cow, or the jump of a mouse; a rat, would be a serious danger.
This is very funny. Frequently these critiques sound startlingly modern:
So ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude, to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.
I can get that door myself! Who knew that was an argument that went back to 1792? It can be disheartening to realise, as you read this, how many of these issues are still with us more than two centuries later. But at other times you're made to feel, with a jolt, how much things have changed. She asks rhetorically at one point why there are no women who have become famous for their own merits and successes, for instance, and her speculation about women earning their own money is, for her time, pure utopian fantasy:
How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry […] ?
In the end, though, she understands exactly why women behave as they do – because that's how they've been taught. ‘[C]an they deserve blame for acting according to principles so constantly inculcated?’ she demands. After all,
the regal homage which [women] receive is so intoxicating, that till the manners of the times are changed, and formed on more reasonable principles, it may be impossible to convince them that the illegitimate power, which they obtain, by degrading themselves, is a curse…
…as reaction to the book would prove. She sums things up with admirable clarity. ‘If men be demi-gods – why let us serve them!’ If women are truly subservient animals, ‘it will be expedient to open a fresh trade with Russia for whips’. But if not…perhaps we can start acting like we're all human beings?
Wollstonecraft considers all of these social problems, ultimately, to be the result of ‘firmly rooted prejudices which sensualists have planted’; in other words, women are the way they are because it's more gratifying to men's sexual desires. Behind gender inequality lurks her bogeyman: ‘want of chastity in men’. Frustratingly for modern readers, she concedes that men ‘are certainly more under the influence of their appetites than women’ (a belief that had only emerged relatively recently), but whereas today our instinct would be to destigmatise freer sexual expression in women, for Wollstonecraft the solution is rather to suppress sexual expression in everyone.
This leads her to some strange places. She regrets ‘the depravity of the appetite which brings the sexes together’, and urges married women to ‘calmly let passion subside into friendship’. The ‘master and mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other with passion,’ she asserts (which would certainly lead to some interesting self-help books today. Has your relationship lost the spark? GOOD). The armies of sex workers in Georgian London upset her; she refers to them, with barely-disguised revulsion, as ‘literally speaking, standing dishes to which every glutton may have access’. But her call for reserve goes much further than this: she also inveighs against women living together, talking too casually (she is appalled by French women who speak openly about having indigestion), and generally being ‘too intimate’. Her image of an ideal woman's life builds to a vision that now seems nauseatingly insipid:
Her children have her love, and her brightest hopes are beyond the grave, where her imagination often strays. […] The task of her life thus fulfilled, she calmly waits for the sleep of death.
Oh great, the sleep of death! You can see that Wollstonecraft has somehow argued herself into this awkward polarisation, whereby reason and intellect are good, and everything to do with feeling and emotion is consequently bad. This false dichotomy is something that feminism took a long, long time to shake off, and in some ways maybe still struggles with.
It's particularly interesting, because the events of Mary Wollstonecraft's own private life (she was shortly to suggest a ménage to Henry Fuseli and his wife, before going off to Paris to have a baby with someone out of wedlock) would belie these principles so comprehensively. So the impression in Woman is not of sexual desire's being written off, but rather of its being repressed, forced down, in a way that makes the book deeply psychologically interesting, even while it weakens its politics.
For modern readers, there is a lot in here that can be frustrating – her religiosity, her occasional flights of flowery rhetoric – but the overall impression is of a kindred spirit trying her best to use tired old language to say completely new things. And the arguments are still totally compelling. That this book was produced when and where it was already seems like a miracle; that it should be so funny and smart and engaging is more than there was any right to expect.
March 8, 2024
‘Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.’
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft dropped a bomb into the intellectual world with A Vindication of the Rights of Women, widely considered the first feminist manifesto. It will come as no surprise that there was a hostile reception, though it was reviewed positively in many magazines, received a second printing almost immediately, and quickly came to the US and was translated into French. Mary delivers a strong rallying cry for the education of women and sharp criticisms of social norms that oppress women and coach them into submission, ideas that would resonate through the ages and inspire generations of feminist thought that would expand upon them. This includes her own daughter, famed author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley who also shocked the world releasing Frankenstein at the age of 18, and many of her ideas about women given the space for their own financial mobility feel like prototypes for Simone de Beauvoir’s arguments in The Second Sex. Sharp, witty, and full of fiery intensity, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (published here as The Feminist Papers) is an excellent historical document on the fight for women’s liberation and still remains an engrossing read today.
‘It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.’
A Vindication of the Rights of Women may well be one of the earliest feminist manifestos, though the term “feminism” was not coined for another century. This novel-length manifesto may feel dated in many ways—I mean it was 1792 so don’t expect the nuance of modern discourse around gender—yet also reads as impressively ahead of it’s time. She knows her audience, though, and couches much of her arguments in religious contexts seeing as her readers would likely be religious and, in an appeal for reason, writes in a context that reason was bestowed and decreed by God. Similarly, acknowledging that men would largely be reading this, much of it is addressed diretly to the men of her time to urge them to be active in undoing the shackles of patriarchal rule and acknowledge that their actions are what have lead to the oppression and mistreatment of women. In this way, she also counteracts many typical responses against women’s liberation, namely that even with equality women would still be “lesser” than men. ‘Let men prove this, and I shall grant that woman only exists for man,’ she writes, arguing that without being given the opportunity to see what happens under a more equal society their argument is meaningless conjecture. She writes ‘there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude,’ in response to the slippery-slope claims that giving women financial agency or a space in the workforce outside the home would cause them to become ‘too masculine’ or become oppressors themselves. To any fearmongering against women’s equality, she proclaims ‘what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!’ and calls for space for women instead of neglecting it by assuming the worst.
‘I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.’
The key to her manifesto is the establishment of a National Education system that gives equal opportunities and access to men and women. The argument is that if education allowed men to thrive, women would also thrive under greater enlightenment. This was written in response to a report by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord which has called for women to only receive a “domestic education,” something she saw as society ensuring women would have no agency beyond the duties of a housewife. Wollstonecraft argues that without proper enrichment in the sciences, the scope of women’s interest will never extend beyond superficial household issues and the gatekeeping of education is also gatekeeping them from fulfillment in a larger society. Her statement that without a proper education women will be ‘dependent on the novelist for amusement,’ a nice jab at the men of letters (also hilarious considering her own daughter’s success as a writer later on) but implying that women will have no scope of the world beyond the entertainment of fiction, or in modern parlance, saying they will want nothing beyond sitting and watching bad tv.
This manifesto does mostly to serve the needs of a middle class in its critique of the wealthy ruling class. She writes that ‘after the age of nine, girls and boys, intended for domestic employments, or mechanical trades, ought to be removed to other schools, and receive instruction, in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual,’ so the poorer working class will still be given some education but expected to remain laborers. This isn’t a perfect manifesto that achieves Fannie Lou Hamer’ statement that ‘nobody's free until everybody's free,’ but all the same this was radically progressive for its time.
‘My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.’
I really enjoyed the way Wollstonecraft dissects society to show how the belief of women as lesser and submissive to men is something coached by social norms and is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy dictated by patriarchal rule. As society is ruled from the top down in terms of wealth, so too is society ruled with regard to gender under an assumption that men are more capable and deserving of ruling. She looks at the way the treatment of women, such as the lack of access to education or employment, leaves them with no social agency or mobility and thus, in resignation, become the very thing men wish them to be. ‘All the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience,’ she writes, insisting women stop allowing themselves to be pigeonholed into these roles.
This extends to topics such as marriage, and while she admits there isn’t much opportunity for women without being married, urges women to not allow themselves to become a slave to their husband. She says how men act like tyrants in marriage and that there in no reason for it to be an institution of oppression, something Beauvoir would expand upon greatly in The Second Sex charting how possession of women became equated with possession of property as another way that equality was denied simply by seeming ridiculous in a society where women were dehumanized as objects.
‘It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.’
In a society where reason and virtue is valued, Mary Wollstonecraft argues that without the access to education and equality for women, than it is all meaningless signaling. A Vindication of the Rights of Women remains a sharp, insightful text and excellent look at the early wave-making of feminist thought that would grow and gain power and force over generations. It is certainly not perfect, and reads rather dated (it can also be assumed women’s rights likely just meant white women) but is still quite interesting. This was an excellent read for Women’s History Month, and while it is a bit of a denser read, it is still quite accessible and interesting. Mary Wollstonecraft helped light a fuse that continues in the fight for women’s rights and a more just, equitable society.
4/5
‘Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the justice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of man will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet.’
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft dropped a bomb into the intellectual world with A Vindication of the Rights of Women, widely considered the first feminist manifesto. It will come as no surprise that there was a hostile reception, though it was reviewed positively in many magazines, received a second printing almost immediately, and quickly came to the US and was translated into French. Mary delivers a strong rallying cry for the education of women and sharp criticisms of social norms that oppress women and coach them into submission, ideas that would resonate through the ages and inspire generations of feminist thought that would expand upon them. This includes her own daughter, famed author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley who also shocked the world releasing Frankenstein at the age of 18, and many of her ideas about women given the space for their own financial mobility feel like prototypes for Simone de Beauvoir’s arguments in The Second Sex. Sharp, witty, and full of fiery intensity, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (published here as The Feminist Papers) is an excellent historical document on the fight for women’s liberation and still remains an engrossing read today.
‘It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.’
A Vindication of the Rights of Women may well be one of the earliest feminist manifestos, though the term “feminism” was not coined for another century. This novel-length manifesto may feel dated in many ways—I mean it was 1792 so don’t expect the nuance of modern discourse around gender—yet also reads as impressively ahead of it’s time. She knows her audience, though, and couches much of her arguments in religious contexts seeing as her readers would likely be religious and, in an appeal for reason, writes in a context that reason was bestowed and decreed by God. Similarly, acknowledging that men would largely be reading this, much of it is addressed diretly to the men of her time to urge them to be active in undoing the shackles of patriarchal rule and acknowledge that their actions are what have lead to the oppression and mistreatment of women. In this way, she also counteracts many typical responses against women’s liberation, namely that even with equality women would still be “lesser” than men. ‘Let men prove this, and I shall grant that woman only exists for man,’ she writes, arguing that without being given the opportunity to see what happens under a more equal society their argument is meaningless conjecture. She writes ‘there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude,’ in response to the slippery-slope claims that giving women financial agency or a space in the workforce outside the home would cause them to become ‘too masculine’ or become oppressors themselves. To any fearmongering against women’s equality, she proclaims ‘what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!’ and calls for space for women instead of neglecting it by assuming the worst.
‘I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.’
The key to her manifesto is the establishment of a National Education system that gives equal opportunities and access to men and women. The argument is that if education allowed men to thrive, women would also thrive under greater enlightenment. This was written in response to a report by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord which has called for women to only receive a “domestic education,” something she saw as society ensuring women would have no agency beyond the duties of a housewife. Wollstonecraft argues that without proper enrichment in the sciences, the scope of women’s interest will never extend beyond superficial household issues and the gatekeeping of education is also gatekeeping them from fulfillment in a larger society. Her statement that without a proper education women will be ‘dependent on the novelist for amusement,’ a nice jab at the men of letters (also hilarious considering her own daughter’s success as a writer later on) but implying that women will have no scope of the world beyond the entertainment of fiction, or in modern parlance, saying they will want nothing beyond sitting and watching bad tv.
This manifesto does mostly to serve the needs of a middle class in its critique of the wealthy ruling class. She writes that ‘after the age of nine, girls and boys, intended for domestic employments, or mechanical trades, ought to be removed to other schools, and receive instruction, in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual,’ so the poorer working class will still be given some education but expected to remain laborers. This isn’t a perfect manifesto that achieves Fannie Lou Hamer’ statement that ‘nobody's free until everybody's free,’ but all the same this was radically progressive for its time.
‘My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.’
I really enjoyed the way Wollstonecraft dissects society to show how the belief of women as lesser and submissive to men is something coached by social norms and is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy dictated by patriarchal rule. As society is ruled from the top down in terms of wealth, so too is society ruled with regard to gender under an assumption that men are more capable and deserving of ruling. She looks at the way the treatment of women, such as the lack of access to education or employment, leaves them with no social agency or mobility and thus, in resignation, become the very thing men wish them to be. ‘All the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience,’ she writes, insisting women stop allowing themselves to be pigeonholed into these roles.
This extends to topics such as marriage, and while she admits there isn’t much opportunity for women without being married, urges women to not allow themselves to become a slave to their husband. She says how men act like tyrants in marriage and that there in no reason for it to be an institution of oppression, something Beauvoir would expand upon greatly in The Second Sex charting how possession of women became equated with possession of property as another way that equality was denied simply by seeming ridiculous in a society where women were dehumanized as objects.
‘It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.’
In a society where reason and virtue is valued, Mary Wollstonecraft argues that without the access to education and equality for women, than it is all meaningless signaling. A Vindication of the Rights of Women remains a sharp, insightful text and excellent look at the early wave-making of feminist thought that would grow and gain power and force over generations. It is certainly not perfect, and reads rather dated (it can also be assumed women’s rights likely just meant white women) but is still quite interesting. This was an excellent read for Women’s History Month, and while it is a bit of a denser read, it is still quite accessible and interesting. Mary Wollstonecraft helped light a fuse that continues in the fight for women’s rights and a more just, equitable society.
4/5
‘Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the justice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of man will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet.’
May 18, 2022
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is an early work of the feminist canon. Written in the late 18th century, this work brings out Wollstonecraft's views and theories on how to improve and cultivate the minds of women so that they could become better citizens. Though the time wasn't ripe and the society wasn't ready to receive such ideas pouring from a woman's mind, nonetheless, it held thoughts that are valuable and worthy to consider.
The whole context of her work is revolved around one goal. That is to expound on how to elevate the minds and persons of women. Wollstonecraft was of the opinion that the present inferior condition of the person and state of mind of women was injurious to society. Women were raised from their childhood with one idea instilled in their minds, and that is to please men. They were taught all the charming trivialities and little domestic duties so they can "catch" a husband. But the question is how are they to hold on to that "catch" to the mutual satisfaction? Without any cultivation of the mind can a woman become the companion or friend of her husband when the initial passion dies? And can a woman even become a good mother and a child's first teacher, when she is no more than an overgrown child herself? The answer to these questions, says Wollstonecraft, is a big "No". And to this problem, she provides the following solutions.
If women are to become good wives and prudent mothers, their minds and persons need to be developed in such a manner that they become rational beings, able to reason and judge for themselves and be of strong physical constitution. The only solution to achieve this state in self is to educate women correctly. Theirs shouldn't be a "sham" education, where only domestic duties and good etiquette are taught. It must be an education that exercises their faculties and make them able to think for themselves, to judge what is right from wrong for themselves without depending on their male counterpart. To achieve the state of the physical self, they need to be allowed some sort of exercise, not vigorous, but suitable for women's constitution to become strong beings, and not sick weaklings once their youthful bloom is over. All these can be achieved only through a properly guided education. If this is not done, and women continue to be the silly and inferior beings, and they have knowledge only to charm and please men, they will be unfit wives and twice over unfit mothers. The result will be marital disharmony and domestic disorder.
Mary Wollstonecraft's opinions and theories address the women's position of her time which is three centuries ago. For this reason, some of her ideas are quite outdated. Yet some of her views, especially on women's education, still stand true to some extent. Even in modern-day, we find some inequality in male and female education around the world. I'm not quite aware of how this work was received in her lifetime, but I presume that the time was not right and that society wasn't ready to receive and concede them. Nevertheless, A Vindication of the Rights of Women is an important piece of literature in the feminine canon. And a crown of laurel must be presented to Mary Wollstonecraft from that half of the human race who benefitted from education for standing up and voicing strongly on women's education at a time when it was so looked down upon equally by both sexes.
The whole context of her work is revolved around one goal. That is to expound on how to elevate the minds and persons of women. Wollstonecraft was of the opinion that the present inferior condition of the person and state of mind of women was injurious to society. Women were raised from their childhood with one idea instilled in their minds, and that is to please men. They were taught all the charming trivialities and little domestic duties so they can "catch" a husband. But the question is how are they to hold on to that "catch" to the mutual satisfaction? Without any cultivation of the mind can a woman become the companion or friend of her husband when the initial passion dies? And can a woman even become a good mother and a child's first teacher, when she is no more than an overgrown child herself? The answer to these questions, says Wollstonecraft, is a big "No". And to this problem, she provides the following solutions.
If women are to become good wives and prudent mothers, their minds and persons need to be developed in such a manner that they become rational beings, able to reason and judge for themselves and be of strong physical constitution. The only solution to achieve this state in self is to educate women correctly. Theirs shouldn't be a "sham" education, where only domestic duties and good etiquette are taught. It must be an education that exercises their faculties and make them able to think for themselves, to judge what is right from wrong for themselves without depending on their male counterpart. To achieve the state of the physical self, they need to be allowed some sort of exercise, not vigorous, but suitable for women's constitution to become strong beings, and not sick weaklings once their youthful bloom is over. All these can be achieved only through a properly guided education. If this is not done, and women continue to be the silly and inferior beings, and they have knowledge only to charm and please men, they will be unfit wives and twice over unfit mothers. The result will be marital disharmony and domestic disorder.
Mary Wollstonecraft's opinions and theories address the women's position of her time which is three centuries ago. For this reason, some of her ideas are quite outdated. Yet some of her views, especially on women's education, still stand true to some extent. Even in modern-day, we find some inequality in male and female education around the world. I'm not quite aware of how this work was received in her lifetime, but I presume that the time was not right and that society wasn't ready to receive and concede them. Nevertheless, A Vindication of the Rights of Women is an important piece of literature in the feminine canon. And a crown of laurel must be presented to Mary Wollstonecraft from that half of the human race who benefitted from education for standing up and voicing strongly on women's education at a time when it was so looked down upon equally by both sexes.
June 13, 2021
3.5-4★
“. . . as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.”
I saw reference several times to Mary Wollstonecraft around International Women’s Day recently and thought I should find this book. I read and enjoyed about a third of it, but I eventually got bogged down in the repletition and the language. The English literary style of the late 1700s is not easily skimmed, and I really just wanted a sense of her propositions, not chapter and verse.
I know I didn't read it all, but I read enough to recognise its importance and her passion, for which I give her four stars.
She certainly lets the fellows have it with both barrels! She frequently says that what might pass for an acceptable lifestyle in the seraglio (harem) is hardly an appropriate goal for young women. She rails against the injustice of inequality of power. The power of the rich over the poor, men over women, and men over soldiers who go straight into the military with no other education.
She hopes women won’t take offense at her appealing to their good sense and seeming to overlook their feminine attractions.
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
If that’s all women ever learn – how to be simpering coquettes, then no wonder men tire of them eventually when
“they are taken out of their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when the short lived bloom of beauty is over*. . .
(*Footnote. A lively writer, I cannot recollect his name, asks what business women turned of forty have to do in the world.)”
Anyone here over 40? You might as well give it up now.
It’s not just women she’s fighting for, though that was revolutionary enough. She was after equality generally. She’s not happy with royalty or with lords and ladies (the silly ones who spend all day on their fading looks).
“. . . the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society. . .
After attacking the sacred majesty of kings, I shall scarcely excite surprise, by adding my firm persuasion, that every profession, in which great subordination of rank constitutes its power, is highly injurious to morality.”
Women were to be uneducated (except in household duties), protected and innocent.
“Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.”
Well said, Mary. Forewarned is forearmed. Turn the light on and wake women up.
“Gentleness, docility, and a spaniel-like affection are, on this ground, consistently recommended as the cardinal virtues of the sex; and, disregarding the arbitrary economy of nature, one writer has declared that it is masculine for a woman to be melancholy. She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it must jingle in his ears, whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused.”
Toy, my foot! And she goes on about both men and women being physically fit and active instead of sitting around these days (not enough battles???), and that’s about where I left her.
She died not long after giving birth to her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein and wife of famous poet many of us read in school, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Quite a family! Her work is available for free now online.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3420
“. . . as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.”
I saw reference several times to Mary Wollstonecraft around International Women’s Day recently and thought I should find this book. I read and enjoyed about a third of it, but I eventually got bogged down in the repletition and the language. The English literary style of the late 1700s is not easily skimmed, and I really just wanted a sense of her propositions, not chapter and verse.
I know I didn't read it all, but I read enough to recognise its importance and her passion, for which I give her four stars.
She certainly lets the fellows have it with both barrels! She frequently says that what might pass for an acceptable lifestyle in the seraglio (harem) is hardly an appropriate goal for young women. She rails against the injustice of inequality of power. The power of the rich over the poor, men over women, and men over soldiers who go straight into the military with no other education.
She hopes women won’t take offense at her appealing to their good sense and seeming to overlook their feminine attractions.
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
If that’s all women ever learn – how to be simpering coquettes, then no wonder men tire of them eventually when
“they are taken out of their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when the short lived bloom of beauty is over*. . .
(*Footnote. A lively writer, I cannot recollect his name, asks what business women turned of forty have to do in the world.)”
Anyone here over 40? You might as well give it up now.
It’s not just women she’s fighting for, though that was revolutionary enough. She was after equality generally. She’s not happy with royalty or with lords and ladies (the silly ones who spend all day on their fading looks).
“. . . the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society. . .
After attacking the sacred majesty of kings, I shall scarcely excite surprise, by adding my firm persuasion, that every profession, in which great subordination of rank constitutes its power, is highly injurious to morality.”
Women were to be uneducated (except in household duties), protected and innocent.
“Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.”
Well said, Mary. Forewarned is forearmed. Turn the light on and wake women up.
“Gentleness, docility, and a spaniel-like affection are, on this ground, consistently recommended as the cardinal virtues of the sex; and, disregarding the arbitrary economy of nature, one writer has declared that it is masculine for a woman to be melancholy. She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it must jingle in his ears, whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused.”
Toy, my foot! And she goes on about both men and women being physically fit and active instead of sitting around these days (not enough battles???), and that’s about where I left her.
She died not long after giving birth to her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein and wife of famous poet many of us read in school, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Quite a family! Her work is available for free now online.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3420
Read
September 26, 2017Idly I wondered if to "kiss the rod" in the context of women's behaviour after being chastised by her husband was meant to be a double entendre - but probably not as she is high minded, but luckily I made my idle observation in a dejected off- hand way because later she says Respect for man, as man, is the foundation of every noble sentiment. How much more modest is the libertine who obeys the call of appetite or fancy than the lewd joker who sets the table in a roar! (p232), so shame on you if you were tempted to smile at the thought of rod kissing.
I did allow myself to be intimidated in to putting off reading this book which has been languishing on the shelf since last year despite reading her impressively passionate Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark in part by the terrifying title - vindication, rights, woman. All suggestive of great earnestness and grappling with fundamental issues, small wonder, I plead, that I allowed myself to be distracted by more lascivious and light hearted reading. Though plainly Mary W. is also an absolutely sweet person and if one was, through odd circumstances, transported back in time to 1790s London one would be sure to drag her in off the street from the rain , push her into an armchair by the fire, give her tea , a slab of fruit cake and a reviving glass of Marsala or Maderia wine.
Obviously I am disabled in various ways in reviewing Wollstonecraft, on account of sex and age and expectation.
The last maybe is the most difficult for the idea of "Feminism" will hang over the reader, but she is Wollstoncraftian, and more besides, she is Mary , not the several hundred following years of thought, experience and expectation that come after her.
From fairly early on she seemed to me to be standing at a cultural crossroads, in what she writes one can see the currents which will flow off in some odd directions, her instance on the cultivation of virtue and sports seems to prefigure Muscular Christianity and Jolly Hockey sticks, her views on the centrality of the middle class - the upper class too feminised and Frenchified - the lower obviously too low coupled with (the deep roots of Brexit) her vehement ( & more than slightly surprising considering her politics) anti-continental prejudices is pure Jane Eyre, and yet the broader context of this work is her support for the declaration of the rights of man in revolutionary Paris. In that anti-continental feeling and her horror of Popery , taking me back twenty years to hearing the late Iain Paisley resplendent in his orange sash on television, she drives me like a steady drummer back towards the pages of Linda Colley's Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 Her desire for woman to assert herself through virtue and through virtue and motherhood to assume or earn a familial and social centrality seems to prefigure The Angel in the House and a rather primly respectable Victorianism.
Curiously alongside her delight in breast-feeding mothers full of joy watching their children grow to sensible British adulthood is a horror of sex surprising to find in a mother of two she hoists the flag early of no sex please, we're British reminding me of a line in George Mike's How to be an alien to the effect of that people on the continental mainland have sex-lives, while in Britain there are hot water bottles. While I haven't spent a day with binoculars trained on the windows of neighbouring houses I'm dubious that people are, or were, so busily engaged in copulation as to cause mass miscarriages and barrenness in women, I imagine her strong distaste for intimacy between husband and wife and celebration of chastity reflects her experience of her parent's married life. While on the one hand it is quite fun to see so sensible a woman being silly, on the other hand in her vision of men and women as sexual beings and the social value of repression and sublimation one can see her as thinking along similar lines to Freud . At its root it is quite a powerful vision of human nature and society.
In addition to being a forerunner of Mary Whitehouse, some other elements remain contemporary, her picture of women only valued for their transient youthful beauty could with small changes to her eighteenth century habits of expression could have come straight from a newspaper column about the disappearance of women of a certain age from television screens. More darkly I felt her picture of emancipated woman not as a person at ease but ideally forever on guard and dedicated to serious thinking who forcefully rejects with outrage all fripperies as abominations devoting herself to her breast-fed children was also modern - the great pillar of shoulds and social requirements towering over the small naked figure of the actual individual trying to live their lives as best they can. And if you don't want to be, or can't be, a breast- feeding mother then Mary Wollstonecraft is not going to be forgiving. Perhaps dark also in her criticism of female behaviour that doesn't come up to her high minded ideals. The rights and wrongs of woman's behaviour and dress are never to be a private matter it seems, but always an issue of burning public interest.
Actually as a man reading a book like this one is enormously reassured because in her account its all about the men. Man oppresses woman, only man has the potential to emancipate woman, woman cannot free herself - which may I suppose be simply the fairly sober reality of woman's lack of legal status in eighteenth century Britain, man is at the centre anyhow. Wollstonecraft's portrayal is dialectical, man and woman are in a dynamic relationship but one based on (male) false consciousness - man thinks he is doing himself a favour by raising and limiting woman to simply be a voluptuous sexual companion but by doing so he deprives himself of a sturdy and sensible mother to his children, who won't be out all night gambling and boozing or tyrannising the household due to her petty ignorances or hanging about around astrologers.
If in her sensible and reasonable views on the monarchy, British system of government, and tax policy, she remains sadly considerably ahead of our times, in other ways radicalism withheld is an important theme of her work. Liberation is for the middle class woman, and her liberation requires the continued drudgery of lower class woman . Still one of the many problems in opening your trap and allowing words to tumble out, or in putting pen to paper is that others can see potentials and possibilities that you yourself are blind to. And in her message of emancipation of woman as good for man we can see the potential that the liberation of the lower classes must logically be equally good for all society, the same arguments for the release of talent and the strengthening of the individual must hold. In this way the potential of Wollstonecraft's work is bigger and more impressive than her written argument. Her sense of the constriction of women's lives primarily as a phenomenon of mentalité is particularly powerful, merely changing laws is insufficient and silly, it is our interior culture which requires Reformation.
This in the way of some pre-modern writing is a little unstructured and so under powered as a result she looses her self early on up a dead end with a discussion of man's natural dominance over woman as a result of strength, as though among men strength ever played a role in dominance - when was the undisputed champion boxer Pontif Maximus, when the faster runner chief Judge or mightiest weight lifter King? Softer skills of persuasion and cunning or more vaguely of charisma are more typical of our leaders than muscles.
I feel I've rather run around here and I don't think any amount of tea will get the review properly afloat again.
In terms of the argument, the Rights of Man, and the ink fought wars fought in the British press over the rights and woeful wrongs of the French Revolution are unspoken in the background. Indeed this book is one soldier in that battle. Nor is Wollenstonecraft ever explicit about what the Rights of Woman are, though she is explicit that this is about Middle-class women, not all women. Woman is enslaved and educated into a limited culture of dependence and sensuality, the answer to her mind is universal primary mixed sex education , well after a hundred odd years of that I'd say in relation to her hope in the trans-formative power of education that optimists are terribly nice people, but I'm glad I'm not one of them. Her view is slightly curious in that early on she sees the inferior status of woman as a social phenomena, perpetuated through social structures, nor does she see any potential conflict between child rearing and middle-class women having professional careers - but then she assumes a dependant servant class.
Any review is going to be slightly unfair in that she originally envisioned her polemic as a multi volume work, typically enough maybe this was the only part which was completed, had she written her heart out, no doubt she'd have thrown up other issues and answers.
taught only to please, women are always on the watch to please, and with true heroic ardour endeavour to gain hearts merely to resign or spurn them when the victory is decided and conspicuous (p147)
For such women who seek to risk the path of self-emancipation Wollstonecraft recommends gardening, natural philosophy, and literature - though biographies in preference to romances.
She doesn't like that private vices might be public virtues, for her virtue seeds virtue. So her's is an austere vision, with rights come duties, most demandingly towards oneself, rarely can a vision of freedom have entailed so much work, the playful rococo gives way to sharp and simple lines, of profound moral seriousness & weight.
I did allow myself to be intimidated in to putting off reading this book which has been languishing on the shelf since last year despite reading her impressively passionate Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark in part by the terrifying title - vindication, rights, woman. All suggestive of great earnestness and grappling with fundamental issues, small wonder, I plead, that I allowed myself to be distracted by more lascivious and light hearted reading. Though plainly Mary W. is also an absolutely sweet person and if one was, through odd circumstances, transported back in time to 1790s London one would be sure to drag her in off the street from the rain , push her into an armchair by the fire, give her tea , a slab of fruit cake and a reviving glass of Marsala or Maderia wine.
Obviously I am disabled in various ways in reviewing Wollstonecraft, on account of sex and age and expectation.
The last maybe is the most difficult for the idea of "Feminism" will hang over the reader, but she is Wollstoncraftian, and more besides, she is Mary , not the several hundred following years of thought, experience and expectation that come after her.
From fairly early on she seemed to me to be standing at a cultural crossroads, in what she writes one can see the currents which will flow off in some odd directions, her instance on the cultivation of virtue and sports seems to prefigure Muscular Christianity and Jolly Hockey sticks, her views on the centrality of the middle class - the upper class too feminised and Frenchified - the lower obviously too low coupled with (the deep roots of Brexit) her vehement ( & more than slightly surprising considering her politics) anti-continental prejudices is pure Jane Eyre, and yet the broader context of this work is her support for the declaration of the rights of man in revolutionary Paris. In that anti-continental feeling and her horror of Popery , taking me back twenty years to hearing the late Iain Paisley resplendent in his orange sash on television, she drives me like a steady drummer back towards the pages of Linda Colley's Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 Her desire for woman to assert herself through virtue and through virtue and motherhood to assume or earn a familial and social centrality seems to prefigure The Angel in the House and a rather primly respectable Victorianism.
Curiously alongside her delight in breast-feeding mothers full of joy watching their children grow to sensible British adulthood is a horror of sex surprising to find in a mother of two she hoists the flag early of no sex please, we're British reminding me of a line in George Mike's How to be an alien to the effect of that people on the continental mainland have sex-lives, while in Britain there are hot water bottles. While I haven't spent a day with binoculars trained on the windows of neighbouring houses I'm dubious that people are, or were, so busily engaged in copulation as to cause mass miscarriages and barrenness in women, I imagine her strong distaste for intimacy between husband and wife and celebration of chastity reflects her experience of her parent's married life. While on the one hand it is quite fun to see so sensible a woman being silly, on the other hand in her vision of men and women as sexual beings and the social value of repression and sublimation one can see her as thinking along similar lines to Freud . At its root it is quite a powerful vision of human nature and society.
In addition to being a forerunner of Mary Whitehouse, some other elements remain contemporary, her picture of women only valued for their transient youthful beauty could with small changes to her eighteenth century habits of expression could have come straight from a newspaper column about the disappearance of women of a certain age from television screens. More darkly I felt her picture of emancipated woman not as a person at ease but ideally forever on guard and dedicated to serious thinking who forcefully rejects with outrage all fripperies as abominations devoting herself to her breast-fed children was also modern - the great pillar of shoulds and social requirements towering over the small naked figure of the actual individual trying to live their lives as best they can. And if you don't want to be, or can't be, a breast- feeding mother then Mary Wollstonecraft is not going to be forgiving. Perhaps dark also in her criticism of female behaviour that doesn't come up to her high minded ideals. The rights and wrongs of woman's behaviour and dress are never to be a private matter it seems, but always an issue of burning public interest.
Actually as a man reading a book like this one is enormously reassured because in her account its all about the men. Man oppresses woman, only man has the potential to emancipate woman, woman cannot free herself - which may I suppose be simply the fairly sober reality of woman's lack of legal status in eighteenth century Britain, man is at the centre anyhow. Wollstonecraft's portrayal is dialectical, man and woman are in a dynamic relationship but one based on (male) false consciousness - man thinks he is doing himself a favour by raising and limiting woman to simply be a voluptuous sexual companion but by doing so he deprives himself of a sturdy and sensible mother to his children, who won't be out all night gambling and boozing or tyrannising the household due to her petty ignorances or hanging about around astrologers.
If in her sensible and reasonable views on the monarchy, British system of government, and tax policy, she remains sadly considerably ahead of our times, in other ways radicalism withheld is an important theme of her work. Liberation is for the middle class woman, and her liberation requires the continued drudgery of lower class woman . Still one of the many problems in opening your trap and allowing words to tumble out, or in putting pen to paper is that others can see potentials and possibilities that you yourself are blind to. And in her message of emancipation of woman as good for man we can see the potential that the liberation of the lower classes must logically be equally good for all society, the same arguments for the release of talent and the strengthening of the individual must hold. In this way the potential of Wollstonecraft's work is bigger and more impressive than her written argument. Her sense of the constriction of women's lives primarily as a phenomenon of mentalité is particularly powerful, merely changing laws is insufficient and silly, it is our interior culture which requires Reformation.
This in the way of some pre-modern writing is a little unstructured and so under powered as a result she looses her self early on up a dead end with a discussion of man's natural dominance over woman as a result of strength, as though among men strength ever played a role in dominance - when was the undisputed champion boxer Pontif Maximus, when the faster runner chief Judge or mightiest weight lifter King? Softer skills of persuasion and cunning or more vaguely of charisma are more typical of our leaders than muscles.
I feel I've rather run around here and I don't think any amount of tea will get the review properly afloat again.
In terms of the argument, the Rights of Man, and the ink fought wars fought in the British press over the rights and woeful wrongs of the French Revolution are unspoken in the background. Indeed this book is one soldier in that battle. Nor is Wollenstonecraft ever explicit about what the Rights of Woman are, though she is explicit that this is about Middle-class women, not all women. Woman is enslaved and educated into a limited culture of dependence and sensuality, the answer to her mind is universal primary mixed sex education , well after a hundred odd years of that I'd say in relation to her hope in the trans-formative power of education that optimists are terribly nice people, but I'm glad I'm not one of them. Her view is slightly curious in that early on she sees the inferior status of woman as a social phenomena, perpetuated through social structures, nor does she see any potential conflict between child rearing and middle-class women having professional careers - but then she assumes a dependant servant class.
Any review is going to be slightly unfair in that she originally envisioned her polemic as a multi volume work, typically enough maybe this was the only part which was completed, had she written her heart out, no doubt she'd have thrown up other issues and answers.
taught only to please, women are always on the watch to please, and with true heroic ardour endeavour to gain hearts merely to resign or spurn them when the victory is decided and conspicuous (p147)
For such women who seek to risk the path of self-emancipation Wollstonecraft recommends gardening, natural philosophy, and literature - though biographies in preference to romances.
She doesn't like that private vices might be public virtues, for her virtue seeds virtue. So her's is an austere vision, with rights come duties, most demandingly towards oneself, rarely can a vision of freedom have entailed so much work, the playful rococo gives way to sharp and simple lines, of profound moral seriousness & weight.
March 8, 2022
HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY TO EVERYBODY!
"Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of man will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet."
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie (c. 1797)
"Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of man will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet."
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie (c. 1797)
March 30, 2022
"I do not wish [women] to have power over men, but over themselves." ~Mary Wollstonecraft
Doubly impressive when considered within the context of 18th century sensibilities, Wollstonecraft took on the educational and political theorists who held women in comparative low regard (if not outright contempt).
From a 21st century perspective it is disheartening to see all the similarities. After 230+ years the struggle for equal worth should by now be a historical footnote and not still an ongoing process.
Doubly impressive when considered within the context of 18th century sensibilities, Wollstonecraft took on the educational and political theorists who held women in comparative low regard (if not outright contempt).
From a 21st century perspective it is disheartening to see all the similarities. After 230+ years the struggle for equal worth should by now be a historical footnote and not still an ongoing process.
March 15, 2023
“Yo no deseo que las mujeres tengan más poder sobre los hombres, sino sobre sí mismas.”
Mary Wollstonecraft fue la madre de Mary Shelley, autora de “Frankenstein” y fue una gran activista en defensa de los derechos de las mujeres.
“Vindicación de los derechos de la mujer” fue escrito y publicado en 1792 y tuvo todo tipo de contratiempos, acusaciones y problemas debido a esto.
No era para menos, a fines del siglo XVIII una mujer se plantaba ante la sociedad patriarcal y machista de Inglaterra para decirles por primera vez NO a muchas reglas injustas creadas por los hombres.
Instantáneamente, el ensayo se transformó en el primer manifiesto feminista de la historia y aún sigue dando que hablar.
Lo que más me sorprendió durante la lectura fue su enérgico desafío a los escritos de Jean Jacques Rousseau, transformándose por momentos en ataques con sobrados fundamentos de su parte en pos de sostener los derechos de las mujeres bien alto.
Obviamente, también hace referencia a la literatura y fue a partir del siglo siguiente que esta empezó a responder favorablemente y totalmente en contra de la mujer.
En los casos a favor nos encontramos con los escollos que debió sufrir su propia hija para publicar una novela del tenor de “Frankenstein”, pasando por los obstáculos casi insalvables de las hermanas Brontë para publicar sus novelas, a punto tal de que debían utilizar el seudónimo Bell en el apellido para evitar represalias.
No obstante esto, crearon personajes legendarios como los de Jane Eyre (tal vez la primera novela feminista), Agnes Grey y obviamente la inolvidable Catherine Earnshaw de “Cumbres Borrascosas”.
Vendrían también otros personajes femeninos que romperían los moldes de la pacatez de la época en la que fueron publicados, me estoy refiriendo a “Madame Bovary” de Gustave Flaubert y a Constance Chatterley en “El amante de lady Chatterley” de D. H. Lawrence. Ambas novelas sacudieron los cánones machistas de su época por la audacia, valor y desafíos que planteaban ambos personajes.
Lamentablemente, no todos las autoras o personajes defendieron estas ideas. En el lado opuesto, nos encontramos con las tontas y frívolas mujeres que encarnan los personajes de Jane Austen, autora muy sobrevalorada que prefería la comodidad y el amparo machista para dibujar mujeres endebles y sometidas a los misóginos valores de la sociedad victoriana.
Pasaron los años y otras escritoras se animaron a escribir en defensa del feminismo, tal es el caso de Virginia Woolf (quien también debió enfrentar a la sociedad inglesa por su elección sexual en el lesbianismo) con “Una habitación propia” o mucho más tarde en los libros publicados por Simone de Beauvoir con “La mujer rota” y “El segundo sexo”.
El feminismo está más firme que nunca en estos tiempos pero en parte se lo debe a estas mujeres que se atrevieron a un desafío que les podría haber costado caro y en el caso de Mary Wollstonecraft podemos decir que en lo que a defensa del feminismo respecta, fue la primera.
Mary Wollstonecraft fue la madre de Mary Shelley, autora de “Frankenstein” y fue una gran activista en defensa de los derechos de las mujeres.
“Vindicación de los derechos de la mujer” fue escrito y publicado en 1792 y tuvo todo tipo de contratiempos, acusaciones y problemas debido a esto.
No era para menos, a fines del siglo XVIII una mujer se plantaba ante la sociedad patriarcal y machista de Inglaterra para decirles por primera vez NO a muchas reglas injustas creadas por los hombres.
Instantáneamente, el ensayo se transformó en el primer manifiesto feminista de la historia y aún sigue dando que hablar.
Lo que más me sorprendió durante la lectura fue su enérgico desafío a los escritos de Jean Jacques Rousseau, transformándose por momentos en ataques con sobrados fundamentos de su parte en pos de sostener los derechos de las mujeres bien alto.
Obviamente, también hace referencia a la literatura y fue a partir del siglo siguiente que esta empezó a responder favorablemente y totalmente en contra de la mujer.
En los casos a favor nos encontramos con los escollos que debió sufrir su propia hija para publicar una novela del tenor de “Frankenstein”, pasando por los obstáculos casi insalvables de las hermanas Brontë para publicar sus novelas, a punto tal de que debían utilizar el seudónimo Bell en el apellido para evitar represalias.
No obstante esto, crearon personajes legendarios como los de Jane Eyre (tal vez la primera novela feminista), Agnes Grey y obviamente la inolvidable Catherine Earnshaw de “Cumbres Borrascosas”.
Vendrían también otros personajes femeninos que romperían los moldes de la pacatez de la época en la que fueron publicados, me estoy refiriendo a “Madame Bovary” de Gustave Flaubert y a Constance Chatterley en “El amante de lady Chatterley” de D. H. Lawrence. Ambas novelas sacudieron los cánones machistas de su época por la audacia, valor y desafíos que planteaban ambos personajes.
Lamentablemente, no todos las autoras o personajes defendieron estas ideas. En el lado opuesto, nos encontramos con las tontas y frívolas mujeres que encarnan los personajes de Jane Austen, autora muy sobrevalorada que prefería la comodidad y el amparo machista para dibujar mujeres endebles y sometidas a los misóginos valores de la sociedad victoriana.
Pasaron los años y otras escritoras se animaron a escribir en defensa del feminismo, tal es el caso de Virginia Woolf (quien también debió enfrentar a la sociedad inglesa por su elección sexual en el lesbianismo) con “Una habitación propia” o mucho más tarde en los libros publicados por Simone de Beauvoir con “La mujer rota” y “El segundo sexo”.
El feminismo está más firme que nunca en estos tiempos pero en parte se lo debe a estas mujeres que se atrevieron a un desafío que les podría haber costado caro y en el caso de Mary Wollstonecraft podemos decir que en lo que a defensa del feminismo respecta, fue la primera.
February 21, 2023
This work of literature is particularly significant because of when it was written. Published in 1792, it is often referenced as being the founding text or manifesto of Western feminism. The author was writing in reaction to contemporary Enlightenment philosophers who had extolled the use of reason for determining proper political and social reforms, but had failed to properly consider the role of women.
Mary Wollstonecraft in her writing was concerned that some of these age-of-reason writers had incorrectly (i.e. failed to use reason) in determining the proper role of women. Many of these writers had suggested that women should only concern themselves with domestic affairs and stay out of the political arena. In her response she acknowledged she herself was critical of the prevailing behavior of many women, but she maintained that their undesirable behavior was a product of their lack of correct eduction and social and cultural expectations imposed on them.
Wollstonecraft maintained that women will be either the companions of men or their slaves. She believed that in a true age-of-reason men and women should be companions adhering to the same truths and moral values. She also thought it was important that women be well educated to enable them to teach their children to become good citizens.
It is my understanding that most intellectuals responded favorably to this book when it was first published. However, later hostility to the work arose because of the demise of the author’s reputation caused by her husband’s memoirs published about her life. In this memoir he mentioned her frequent disregard of traditional 18th century morality. In that regard she was ahead of her time in more than one way.
The writing style is obviously a product of late 18th century vocabulary and social concerns. In particular her frequent used of the words “sensibility” and “virtue” require some elaboration for a 21st century reader. I’m not sure I’m qualified to clarify their meanings, but I’ll provide my general impressions. It seemed to me that “sensibility” as used by this author refers to susceptibility for having emotional feelings, and when applied to women those feelings are often irrational.
With regard to the word “virtue,” I was also bothered by what the author meant when she at one point admitted that “men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue.” In this context she must be including physical strength as part of what constitutes virtue. During a discussion of this book with Great Books KC it was pointed out to me that the word "virtue" comes from the Latin root vir, for man. Thus the early definition for virtue was manliness or valor. Over time it settled into the sense of moral excellence. Thus Wollstonecraft may have been influenced by her knowledge of the word's origins when she made the statement quoted above.
Another thought I've had about this book is that it's kind of like the Bible. It contains so much varied narrative that by selectively choosing certain quotations a reader can come to a variety of contradictory conclusions. This is apparent in the Wikipedia article about the book. There have been a variety of commentary's written about the book's contents that have reached differing interpretations.
One interesting issue to note is that Wollstonecraft was not sufficiently extreme in her call for women's rights to fit the definition of feminism as it later evolved. Thus my statement in the first paragraph of this review about it being the founding manifesto of the feminist movement needs an asterisk explaining that not all feminist would be comfortable with that characterization.
Mary Wollstonecraft in her writing was concerned that some of these age-of-reason writers had incorrectly (i.e. failed to use reason) in determining the proper role of women. Many of these writers had suggested that women should only concern themselves with domestic affairs and stay out of the political arena. In her response she acknowledged she herself was critical of the prevailing behavior of many women, but she maintained that their undesirable behavior was a product of their lack of correct eduction and social and cultural expectations imposed on them.
Wollstonecraft maintained that women will be either the companions of men or their slaves. She believed that in a true age-of-reason men and women should be companions adhering to the same truths and moral values. She also thought it was important that women be well educated to enable them to teach their children to become good citizens.
It is my understanding that most intellectuals responded favorably to this book when it was first published. However, later hostility to the work arose because of the demise of the author’s reputation caused by her husband’s memoirs published about her life. In this memoir he mentioned her frequent disregard of traditional 18th century morality. In that regard she was ahead of her time in more than one way.
The writing style is obviously a product of late 18th century vocabulary and social concerns. In particular her frequent used of the words “sensibility” and “virtue” require some elaboration for a 21st century reader. I’m not sure I’m qualified to clarify their meanings, but I’ll provide my general impressions. It seemed to me that “sensibility” as used by this author refers to susceptibility for having emotional feelings, and when applied to women those feelings are often irrational.
With regard to the word “virtue,” I was also bothered by what the author meant when she at one point admitted that “men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue.” In this context she must be including physical strength as part of what constitutes virtue. During a discussion of this book with Great Books KC it was pointed out to me that the word "virtue" comes from the Latin root vir, for man. Thus the early definition for virtue was manliness or valor. Over time it settled into the sense of moral excellence. Thus Wollstonecraft may have been influenced by her knowledge of the word's origins when she made the statement quoted above.
Another thought I've had about this book is that it's kind of like the Bible. It contains so much varied narrative that by selectively choosing certain quotations a reader can come to a variety of contradictory conclusions. This is apparent in the Wikipedia article about the book. There have been a variety of commentary's written about the book's contents that have reached differing interpretations.
One interesting issue to note is that Wollstonecraft was not sufficiently extreme in her call for women's rights to fit the definition of feminism as it later evolved. Thus my statement in the first paragraph of this review about it being the founding manifesto of the feminist movement needs an asterisk explaining that not all feminist would be comfortable with that characterization.
July 14, 2015
I particularly liked the bit where she said if women didn't get a proper education, they might find themselves "dependent on the novelist for amusement."
Awkward.
Awkward.
Read
January 9, 2011As convenient as it can sometimes be, a disadvantage of reading from anthologies is that one can graduate from college with the vague notion that one has read a work in its entirety, only to discover later that in fact one has read only a page and a half of it in a long-forgotten Eighteenth-Century British Literature class. Which, as you may have guessed, is exactly what happened to me with Mary Wollstonecraft's seminal 1792 treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. I'm happy to have rectified my mistake at last and read Vindication from cover to cover. Unsurprisingly, Wollstonecraft's arguments assume a significant degree more complexity and idiosyncrasy on what I had, until recently, been thinking of as my "second time through."
And in fact, as much as she would probably have disapproved of the comment, it was Wollstonecraft's own character that particularly appealed to me throughout this reading. I agreed with her on some points and disagreed with her on others, but throughout I enjoyed her forthrightness, her willingness, to use a modern phrase, to call bullshit on all the male arguments used to claim that women's natural state is one of gentle, slavish devotion, and that women should not be allowed physical or mental exertion. In her impatience with sickly-sweet yet fundamentally condescending verbiage about the "angelic innocence" of women, and with male writers' self-serving insistence that women are formed for the sole purpose of pleasing men, I spied a kindred spirit and was cheering (and sometimes, out of recognition) chuckling along with her outrage. I love how, for example, halfway through a passage quoted from Rousseau on his proposed method of educating women, she can't stand to wait until the end to comment and appends a footnote reading only, "What nonsense!" Neither is she afraid of the exclamation point: "Without knowledge there can be no morality!" she exclaims, and "Ignorance is a frail base for virtue!" I felt throughout, however, that she earned those exclamation points: these are infuriatingly simple and logical conclusions that are nonetheless STILL often disregarded when we educate girls to be sexy rather than smart, charming and flighty rather than honest and self-respecting.
I'm reminded of the men who yell at me as I walk down the street lost in thought: "You'd be prettier if you smiled!" As if being eye candy for random men is somehow supposed to be my top priority. Oh sorry! I forgot to think about PLEASING STRANGE MEN while I was cogitating on existential literature! And again:
THANK YOU, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. Her discussions of what has come to be called "the male gaze"��the way in which girls and women are taught to think always of how their conduct will appear to men, and act accordingly, rather than acting to please themselves or in accordance with what is most appropriate to the situation—struck me as particularly insightful. In the paragraph following the one I quoted on Fordyce, for example, she points out that he (a preacher) tries to lure women into religious piety by arguing that men find it sexually attractive when women are lost in pious contemplation. Seriously, how insulting! I'm not even religious, and I understand how disrespectful that argument is to the deeply-held beliefs of people engaged with their faith. And yet, have things really changed? I'm reminded of so-called "womens' magazines" and the arguments they use to convince women to go to the gym: it's all about appearing more sexually attractive to a potential partner; and only lip-service is paid to the idea that a woman would value herself enough to want to make her body stronger and healthier for her own sake.
Not that there weren't areas where Wollstonecraft and I diverge. She shares, for example, the common Enlightenment belief in humankind's ability to approach perfection through rational discourse, to achieve a state closer to God through the application of reason. Although I agree with her that men and women both benefit by the frequent exercise of their physical and mental faculties, I'm skeptical about how perfectible or rational the human race, or any individual, really is. Moreover, either because or in spite of my religious atheism/agnosticism, I tend to find Enlightenment arguments about the human ability to know God through logic a bit silly:
I mean, what? Judeo-Christian friends: is that sound theology? Why does one quality necessarily imply the others? I can easily imagine omnipotence without goodness, for example, just like every day I experience perfectly robust morality with no particular basis in divinity. Arguments like this always strike me as simply a human being imagining all the good things he can think of, combining them in his imagination into one Being, and then claiming that because he can conceptualize this Being, it must exist. And when I say "he," I mean Descartes. But apparently Mary Wollstonecraft as well. It's as if I made a drawing of my dream house, and then claimed that because I drew it, it must be available for purchase. My drawing doesn't prove that the house isn't available; but neither is it proof that it is.
Not only that, but in her quest to agitate for the education of women as strong, rational creatures, Wollstonecraft veers so far in favor of strength and reason that she leaves little room for human vulnerability. Take the passage quoted above, for example, on the treatment of fear in girls and boys. While I agree that kids shouldn't be encouraged to be shrieking and cowering away from every little thing when they wouldn't be doing that naturally, I can hardly agree that their fear should be treated like that of boys in the sense of being sternly reprimanded, shamed, told that "boys don't cry," and so on. My personal ideal for both genders is a happy medium between the affected over-sensitivity that has historically been associated with women, and the repressive, uncommunicative stoicism that has often been expected of men. Humans feel fear, tenderness, anger, and so on for reasons, and it's illogical and unwise, in my opinion, to teach children to distort or disregard their true feelings rather than acknowledging those feelings and taking them into account when deciding how to act. (Not, of course, that a passing emotion should be the ONLY criterion for action; just that it should be, ideally, one piece of valid data among others.) Moreover, there's a difference between "fear" and "cowardice"; in equating the two, it seems to me Wollstonecraft is removing the possibility of courage, which I'd define as following through on a difficult action despite feeling afraid.
(And in passing, Wollstonecraft's aversion to instinct struck me as one of the strangest facets of the book. She denigrates it even to the point of arguing that animal instinct somehow doesn't reflect her God: "Thus [sensibility] is defined by Dr. Johnson, and the definition gives me no other idea than of the most exquisitely polished instinct. I discern not a trace of the image of God in either sensation or matter." Yet where else would it come from, given her own belief in an all-powerful creator Being? I realize that, for Enlightenment thinkers, the gift of reason is what elevates humans above animals, but surely a benevolent God wouldn't endow the animals with an outright malevolent quality? A very odd, if minor, point.)
Like most philosophers, then, Wollstonecraft takes certain positions with which I personally disagree; her feminism is, unsurprisingly, neither so radical nor so inclusive as that of certain more recent writers. Still, as an early, passionate step toward female equality, not to mention as a document of the tumultuous times (Wollstonecraft's argument is very tied up with the Republican rhetoric of democracy and equality which were giving rise to the American and French revolutions), Vindication of the Rights of Woman is an important and thought-provoking read, and one I'm glad to have in my repertoire.
And in fact, as much as she would probably have disapproved of the comment, it was Wollstonecraft's own character that particularly appealed to me throughout this reading. I agreed with her on some points and disagreed with her on others, but throughout I enjoyed her forthrightness, her willingness, to use a modern phrase, to call bullshit on all the male arguments used to claim that women's natural state is one of gentle, slavish devotion, and that women should not be allowed physical or mental exertion. In her impatience with sickly-sweet yet fundamentally condescending verbiage about the "angelic innocence" of women, and with male writers' self-serving insistence that women are formed for the sole purpose of pleasing men, I spied a kindred spirit and was cheering (and sometimes, out of recognition) chuckling along with her outrage. I love how, for example, halfway through a passage quoted from Rousseau on his proposed method of educating women, she can't stand to wait until the end to comment and appends a footnote reading only, "What nonsense!" Neither is she afraid of the exclamation point: "Without knowledge there can be no morality!" she exclaims, and "Ignorance is a frail base for virtue!" I felt throughout, however, that she earned those exclamation points: these are infuriatingly simple and logical conclusions that are nonetheless STILL often disregarded when we educate girls to be sexy rather than smart, charming and flighty rather than honest and self-respecting.
I particularly object to the lover-like phrases of pumped up passion, which are every where interspersed [in Fordyce's sermons]. If women be ever allowed to walk without leading-strings, why must they be cajoled into virtue by artful flattery and sexual compliments? Speak to them the language of truth and soberness, and away with the lullaby strains of condescending endearment! Let them be taught to respect themselves as rational creatures, and not led to have a passion for their own insipid persons. It moves my gall to hear a preacher descanting on dress and needle-work; and still more, to hear him address the British fair, the fairest of the fair, as if they had only feelings.
I'm reminded of the men who yell at me as I walk down the street lost in thought: "You'd be prettier if you smiled!" As if being eye candy for random men is somehow supposed to be my top priority. Oh sorry! I forgot to think about PLEASING STRANGE MEN while I was cogitating on existential literature! And again:
To carry the remark still further, if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps, created, were treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. It is true, they could not then with equal propriety be termed the sweet flowers that smile in the walk of man; but they would be more respectable members of society, and discharge the important duties of life by the light of their own reason. 'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.
THANK YOU, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. Her discussions of what has come to be called "the male gaze"��the way in which girls and women are taught to think always of how their conduct will appear to men, and act accordingly, rather than acting to please themselves or in accordance with what is most appropriate to the situation—struck me as particularly insightful. In the paragraph following the one I quoted on Fordyce, for example, she points out that he (a preacher) tries to lure women into religious piety by arguing that men find it sexually attractive when women are lost in pious contemplation. Seriously, how insulting! I'm not even religious, and I understand how disrespectful that argument is to the deeply-held beliefs of people engaged with their faith. And yet, have things really changed? I'm reminded of so-called "womens' magazines" and the arguments they use to convince women to go to the gym: it's all about appearing more sexually attractive to a potential partner; and only lip-service is paid to the idea that a woman would value herself enough to want to make her body stronger and healthier for her own sake.
Not that there weren't areas where Wollstonecraft and I diverge. She shares, for example, the common Enlightenment belief in humankind's ability to approach perfection through rational discourse, to achieve a state closer to God through the application of reason. Although I agree with her that men and women both benefit by the frequent exercise of their physical and mental faculties, I'm skeptical about how perfectible or rational the human race, or any individual, really is. Moreover, either because or in spite of my religious atheism/agnosticism, I tend to find Enlightenment arguments about the human ability to know God through logic a bit silly:
The only solid foundation for morality appears to be the character of the supreme Being; the harmony of which arises from a balance of attributes;—and, to speak with reverence, one attribute seems to imply the necessity of another. He must be just, because he is wise, he must be good, because he is omnipotent.
I mean, what? Judeo-Christian friends: is that sound theology? Why does one quality necessarily imply the others? I can easily imagine omnipotence without goodness, for example, just like every day I experience perfectly robust morality with no particular basis in divinity. Arguments like this always strike me as simply a human being imagining all the good things he can think of, combining them in his imagination into one Being, and then claiming that because he can conceptualize this Being, it must exist. And when I say "he," I mean Descartes. But apparently Mary Wollstonecraft as well. It's as if I made a drawing of my dream house, and then claimed that because I drew it, it must be available for purchase. My drawing doesn't prove that the house isn't available; but neither is it proof that it is.
Not only that, but in her quest to agitate for the education of women as strong, rational creatures, Wollstonecraft veers so far in favor of strength and reason that she leaves little room for human vulnerability. Take the passage quoted above, for example, on the treatment of fear in girls and boys. While I agree that kids shouldn't be encouraged to be shrieking and cowering away from every little thing when they wouldn't be doing that naturally, I can hardly agree that their fear should be treated like that of boys in the sense of being sternly reprimanded, shamed, told that "boys don't cry," and so on. My personal ideal for both genders is a happy medium between the affected over-sensitivity that has historically been associated with women, and the repressive, uncommunicative stoicism that has often been expected of men. Humans feel fear, tenderness, anger, and so on for reasons, and it's illogical and unwise, in my opinion, to teach children to distort or disregard their true feelings rather than acknowledging those feelings and taking them into account when deciding how to act. (Not, of course, that a passing emotion should be the ONLY criterion for action; just that it should be, ideally, one piece of valid data among others.) Moreover, there's a difference between "fear" and "cowardice"; in equating the two, it seems to me Wollstonecraft is removing the possibility of courage, which I'd define as following through on a difficult action despite feeling afraid.
(And in passing, Wollstonecraft's aversion to instinct struck me as one of the strangest facets of the book. She denigrates it even to the point of arguing that animal instinct somehow doesn't reflect her God: "Thus [sensibility] is defined by Dr. Johnson, and the definition gives me no other idea than of the most exquisitely polished instinct. I discern not a trace of the image of God in either sensation or matter." Yet where else would it come from, given her own belief in an all-powerful creator Being? I realize that, for Enlightenment thinkers, the gift of reason is what elevates humans above animals, but surely a benevolent God wouldn't endow the animals with an outright malevolent quality? A very odd, if minor, point.)
Like most philosophers, then, Wollstonecraft takes certain positions with which I personally disagree; her feminism is, unsurprisingly, neither so radical nor so inclusive as that of certain more recent writers. Still, as an early, passionate step toward female equality, not to mention as a document of the tumultuous times (Wollstonecraft's argument is very tied up with the Republican rhetoric of democracy and equality which were giving rise to the American and French revolutions), Vindication of the Rights of Woman is an important and thought-provoking read, and one I'm glad to have in my repertoire.
January 19, 2020
For me, I found this to be an inspiring and persuasive read, and the way in which Wollstonecraft writes has very much to do with that. She does not write in a fancy, graceful manner, but instead, she writes in a no-frills kind of manner, and with this she shows her wondrous intellect, and therefore produces an efficacious result.
"My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone".
Wollstonecraft has included many interesting arguments in here, but one that really shone, was that she believed that all women should all be educated, and informs us that only half of us are in fact educated. She then goes on to say that one cannot teach our children, if we are not educated ourselves, which in my opinion, is an excellent point, but, I also disagree with it. I think an undereduated parent can still teach their children how to be honest and kind, despite not having an education.
Although I agreed with many of the arguments that Wollstonecraft presented, I did find that she was rather patronising in parts, towards women and the situations that they may be in. She believes that they should simply "break free" regardless of their family situation, even if that does not allow them to. It is quite obvious Wollstonecraft is from a middle class background, and it certainly shows with her lack of compassion towards women in difficult situations.
Overall, this was a powerful feminist read, and Wollstonecraft is definitely an individual to be applauded.
"My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone".
Wollstonecraft has included many interesting arguments in here, but one that really shone, was that she believed that all women should all be educated, and informs us that only half of us are in fact educated. She then goes on to say that one cannot teach our children, if we are not educated ourselves, which in my opinion, is an excellent point, but, I also disagree with it. I think an undereduated parent can still teach their children how to be honest and kind, despite not having an education.
Although I agreed with many of the arguments that Wollstonecraft presented, I did find that she was rather patronising in parts, towards women and the situations that they may be in. She believes that they should simply "break free" regardless of their family situation, even if that does not allow them to. It is quite obvious Wollstonecraft is from a middle class background, and it certainly shows with her lack of compassion towards women in difficult situations.
Overall, this was a powerful feminist read, and Wollstonecraft is definitely an individual to be applauded.
January 9, 2016
Ce livre est un pamphlet politique britannique paru en 1792, en réaction aux débats de l'Assemblée Constituante en France quant à l'établissement de l'instruction publique, plus particulièrement un rapport de Talleyrand de l'année précédente invitant à écarter les femmes à l'accès aux fonctions publiques. Par là on néglige de les instruire, puisque cela serait parfaitement inutile et dispendieux. Mary Wollstonecraft s'est emparé de cette question pour faire un vibrant plaidoyer: les femmes de doivent pas être écartées par principe des places et des responsabilités, et elles ont autant vocation à développer leurs capacités pour pouvoir se rendre utile aux autres, et par là trouver le bonheur et l'estime de soi.
Pour appuyer son opinion, elle esquisse un tableau sous les couleurs les plus noires, volontairement outré: si les femmes sont décrétées inutiles aux fonctions les plus hautes, et qu'on les laisse dans l'ignorance, que leur reste-t-il sinon vivre sous la dépendance des hommes, soit comme des êtres craintifs et avilis, à qui il ne reste que la tromperie, la ruse, la duplicité et la perfidie pour pouvoir agir, soit sous le joug d'une obéissance passive et obscure, payée de mépris et de déréliction? Dans tous les cas, l'espèce humaine dégénère sous un commerce délétère d'amabilités fausses, et de rapports viciés et corrompus. Comme Alceste à Célimène, elle pourrait s'écrier:
Plus on aime quelqu’un, moins il faut qu’on le flatte ;
À ne rien pardonner le pur amour éclate ;
Et je bannirais, moi, tous ces lâches amants
Que je verrais soumis à tous mes sentiments,
Et dont, à tous propos, les molles complaisances
Donneraient de l'encens à mes extravagances.
Et à qui viendrait lui reprocher des paroles excessives:
Mais ce flegme, Monsieur, qui raisonnez si bien,
Ce flegme pourra-t-il ne s’échauffer de rien ?
Ses arguments s'appuient sur une psychologie héritée de la philosophie classique grecque. Il s'agit de fustiger l'emprise des sens sur l'esprit, la raison devant avoir le dessus, et ne pas se laisser dominer par le plaisir. Le dérèglement des libertins, esclaves de leurs passions, ne mène qu'à une illusion de bien qui n'est que le passager empire que l'on gagne sur une victime, et qui ne dépend pas de nous, tandis que le vrai sage se domine lui-même et ne fait pas dépendre son bonheur d'autrui. De nombreuses références sont faites à la vie éternelle, à la liberté de l'âme par rapport au dictament fatidique de la matière.
Vainly then do they beat and foam, restrained by the power that struggling planets in their orbits, matter yields to the great governing Spirit. But an immortal soul, not restrained by mechanical laws and struggling to free itself from the shackles of matter, contributes to, instead of disturbing, the order of creation, when, co-operating with the Father of spirits, it tries to govern itself by the invariable rule.
On pourrait trouver à redire sur cette curieuse métaphysique, mais ici, il s'agit surtout de morale: il faut inspirer à la femme l'estime de soi fondé sur des raisons solides, l'orgueil de la vertu, le courage persévérant, et la haine de la résignation. C'est ce que à quoi vise cette doctrine de la liberté. Tout ça est très stoïcien, mais c'est aussi présent de manière diffuse dans la culture religieuse et politique.
On pourrait situer Mary dans une certaine tradition. Depuis les Évangiles qui affirment que il n'y a plus ni homme ni femme (Épitre aux Galates 3,28); en passant par des auteurs de la renaissance comme Luis Vives qui fait un vibrant défenseur de l'éducation des femmes dans son Education de la femme chrétienne et ses Devoirs du mari; par un auteur comme Comenius qui propose dans sa Grande Didactique (1632) de tout enseigner à tous. Les matérialistes français des lumières reprennent cette généreuse idée, comme le baron d'Holbach dans son Ethocratie. On retrouve encore pendant la révolution un Condorcet qui défend l'instruction des filles dans ses Cinq mémoires sur l'instruction publique. Il y en a sûrement d'autres mais je me limite à ceux que je connais.
En bref, c'est un livre qui respire la vertu et le bon sens, même si, comme elle l'a reconnu-elle même, il aurait pu être mieux organisé si les circonstances l'avaient permis. Mais quelle différence avec les impatientants sophismes de Mme de Genlis, sa contemporaine! Malheureusement, les choses n'ont pas l'air d'être allé dans son sens, puisqu'il y a même eu un Projet d'une loi portant défense d'apprendre à lire aux femmes en 1801. J'ai maintenant envie de mieux connaitre ce sympathique auteur, car malheureusement, cette édition anglaise qui a pour symbole un manchot n'est doté ni d'introduction, ni d'appareil critique.
Pour appuyer son opinion, elle esquisse un tableau sous les couleurs les plus noires, volontairement outré: si les femmes sont décrétées inutiles aux fonctions les plus hautes, et qu'on les laisse dans l'ignorance, que leur reste-t-il sinon vivre sous la dépendance des hommes, soit comme des êtres craintifs et avilis, à qui il ne reste que la tromperie, la ruse, la duplicité et la perfidie pour pouvoir agir, soit sous le joug d'une obéissance passive et obscure, payée de mépris et de déréliction? Dans tous les cas, l'espèce humaine dégénère sous un commerce délétère d'amabilités fausses, et de rapports viciés et corrompus. Comme Alceste à Célimène, elle pourrait s'écrier:
Plus on aime quelqu’un, moins il faut qu’on le flatte ;
À ne rien pardonner le pur amour éclate ;
Et je bannirais, moi, tous ces lâches amants
Que je verrais soumis à tous mes sentiments,
Et dont, à tous propos, les molles complaisances
Donneraient de l'encens à mes extravagances.
Et à qui viendrait lui reprocher des paroles excessives:
Mais ce flegme, Monsieur, qui raisonnez si bien,
Ce flegme pourra-t-il ne s’échauffer de rien ?
Ses arguments s'appuient sur une psychologie héritée de la philosophie classique grecque. Il s'agit de fustiger l'emprise des sens sur l'esprit, la raison devant avoir le dessus, et ne pas se laisser dominer par le plaisir. Le dérèglement des libertins, esclaves de leurs passions, ne mène qu'à une illusion de bien qui n'est que le passager empire que l'on gagne sur une victime, et qui ne dépend pas de nous, tandis que le vrai sage se domine lui-même et ne fait pas dépendre son bonheur d'autrui. De nombreuses références sont faites à la vie éternelle, à la liberté de l'âme par rapport au dictament fatidique de la matière.
Vainly then do they beat and foam, restrained by the power that struggling planets in their orbits, matter yields to the great governing Spirit. But an immortal soul, not restrained by mechanical laws and struggling to free itself from the shackles of matter, contributes to, instead of disturbing, the order of creation, when, co-operating with the Father of spirits, it tries to govern itself by the invariable rule.
On pourrait trouver à redire sur cette curieuse métaphysique, mais ici, il s'agit surtout de morale: il faut inspirer à la femme l'estime de soi fondé sur des raisons solides, l'orgueil de la vertu, le courage persévérant, et la haine de la résignation. C'est ce que à quoi vise cette doctrine de la liberté. Tout ça est très stoïcien, mais c'est aussi présent de manière diffuse dans la culture religieuse et politique.
On pourrait situer Mary dans une certaine tradition. Depuis les Évangiles qui affirment que il n'y a plus ni homme ni femme (Épitre aux Galates 3,28); en passant par des auteurs de la renaissance comme Luis Vives qui fait un vibrant défenseur de l'éducation des femmes dans son Education de la femme chrétienne et ses Devoirs du mari; par un auteur comme Comenius qui propose dans sa Grande Didactique (1632) de tout enseigner à tous. Les matérialistes français des lumières reprennent cette généreuse idée, comme le baron d'Holbach dans son Ethocratie. On retrouve encore pendant la révolution un Condorcet qui défend l'instruction des filles dans ses Cinq mémoires sur l'instruction publique. Il y en a sûrement d'autres mais je me limite à ceux que je connais.
En bref, c'est un livre qui respire la vertu et le bon sens, même si, comme elle l'a reconnu-elle même, il aurait pu être mieux organisé si les circonstances l'avaient permis. Mais quelle différence avec les impatientants sophismes de Mme de Genlis, sa contemporaine! Malheureusement, les choses n'ont pas l'air d'être allé dans son sens, puisqu'il y a même eu un Projet d'une loi portant défense d'apprendre à lire aux femmes en 1801. J'ai maintenant envie de mieux connaitre ce sympathique auteur, car malheureusement, cette édition anglaise qui a pour symbole un manchot n'est doté ni d'introduction, ni d'appareil critique.
January 29, 2023
One of those books I was mildly embarrassed not to have read, so here I am finally getting around to it. Reading A Vindication of the Rights of Woman at a remove of more than two centuries from when it was first published, it was striking to me how much Mary Wollstonecraft's ideas seemed both very relevant (nepo babies! abolish the British monarchy! educate kids equally and let women have careers!) and very dated (classism, racism, and xenophobia, oh my! the Enlightenment Cult of Reason everywhere!) all at once.
For all that she has blinkers on when it comes to issues of class and race, Wollstonecraft is surprisingly acute at making the connection between broader issues of hierarchy and oppression and discrimination against women. Her flaying of Rousseau was also super satisfying ("'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves."), and I appreciated throughout Wollstonecraft's willingness to call bullshit, even if I didn't always agree with the points she was making.
Wollstonecraft probably has made all of her main points by halfway through A Vindication, and the internal structure of the book could have used some refining to make it less repetitive, but it still retains enough of its power that you can see why it was such a landmark manifesto.
For all that she has blinkers on when it comes to issues of class and race, Wollstonecraft is surprisingly acute at making the connection between broader issues of hierarchy and oppression and discrimination against women. Her flaying of Rousseau was also super satisfying ("'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves."), and I appreciated throughout Wollstonecraft's willingness to call bullshit, even if I didn't always agree with the points she was making.
Wollstonecraft probably has made all of her main points by halfway through A Vindication, and the internal structure of the book could have used some refining to make it less repetitive, but it still retains enough of its power that you can see why it was such a landmark manifesto.
February 16, 2015
I imagine Mary ruffled a few feathers when this book was published in 1792, but she only said what needed to be said. Examples of the suppression of women were many, but Wollstonecraft chronicles the ones that were most important to her and provides an intelligent, common sense analysis of what needed to be done in each instance. One of the most important was education, and her belief that young girls needed and deserved the same type of education that was made available to young men. Progress has been made since 1792, but in her examples you will see that shades of the past still linger in certain areas. This is an important work and should be read by everyone, but it suffers from it's length, it's language and writing style. Eighteenth century writing can be tedious, especially non-fiction, but the message is there and it is certainly worth reading.
September 25, 2018
« … the Rights of Woman must be respected, … I loudly demands JUSTICE for one half of the human race. »
Mary Wollstonecraft
While I read a book, I always have take some notes about beautiful words, interesting thoughts… I underline, not on the book pages, I hate this ! But on my red spiral notepad next to me, the quotes to remember or to use for my review. This time, I should have noticed nearly everything because each paragraph is important, each chapter is interesting.
I learned more about the history of women, how they were (and still are in a way), underestimated by men. And Mary Wollstonecraft has great and very modern thoughts about the children’s education, boys and girls, and so many other subjects.
I would have liked to quote all the book for you, readers, because Mary Wollstonecraft was so intelligent, courageous, cultivated, in a time were women were, because they had to be, uncultivated and afraid.
Mary Wollsronecraft tells us, women, the reason why we see ourselves the way we do, and still nowadays… if she knew ! I can’t write a longer review, because all I could do would be paraphrasing her.
Here are just few quotes :
« Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue—and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath. »
She’d like the women to stop « eating the bitter bread of dependence. »
And she is « persuaded that the heart, as well as the understanding, is opened by cultivation. »
PS: I read this book in French...
Mary Wollstonecraft
While I read a book, I always have take some notes about beautiful words, interesting thoughts… I underline, not on the book pages, I hate this ! But on my red spiral notepad next to me, the quotes to remember or to use for my review. This time, I should have noticed nearly everything because each paragraph is important, each chapter is interesting.
I learned more about the history of women, how they were (and still are in a way), underestimated by men. And Mary Wollstonecraft has great and very modern thoughts about the children’s education, boys and girls, and so many other subjects.
I would have liked to quote all the book for you, readers, because Mary Wollstonecraft was so intelligent, courageous, cultivated, in a time were women were, because they had to be, uncultivated and afraid.
Mary Wollsronecraft tells us, women, the reason why we see ourselves the way we do, and still nowadays… if she knew ! I can’t write a longer review, because all I could do would be paraphrasing her.
Here are just few quotes :
« Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue—and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath. »
She’d like the women to stop « eating the bitter bread of dependence. »
And she is « persuaded that the heart, as well as the understanding, is opened by cultivation. »
PS: I read this book in French...
March 7, 2021
Written in 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft work is one of the first feminist writings and very much ahead of its time. It was an very interesting read and it give me a glimps on how life looked for women at the time.
November 28, 2019
To make her case for the proper education of women, Wollstonecraft asserts that the present state of women derives from acquired habit and learned associations — not from a fault of the innate nature of females — and censures Milton's inconsistent discussions on the female sex in Paradise Lost as well as Rousseau's condescension of women in his work Émile. There are many instances when she appeals to the propounded values of the male intelligentsia of the late eighteenth century to emphasize the importance of educating women. She relies on religiously founded arguments (e.g., if women do indeed possess immortal souls, should they not then cultivate these souls with equal vigor as that of the opposite sex, instead of concentrating on more trivial and delicate employments?) as well as those founded on the highest virtue of Reason.
Wollstonecraft's boldness is all the more compelling given the time in which this book was written. A particularly comedic expression of her temerity is her footnote "What nonsense!" in response to a quotation from Rousseau's book. Wollstonecraft sincerely believed women were only rendered inadequate from want of opportunity, not want of the necessary faculties. Thus, a seminal text that everybody should read and relish. One can simply not but be impressed by her forthrightness and her fervor.
Wollstonecraft's boldness is all the more compelling given the time in which this book was written. A particularly comedic expression of her temerity is her footnote "What nonsense!" in response to a quotation from Rousseau's book. Wollstonecraft sincerely believed women were only rendered inadequate from want of opportunity, not want of the necessary faculties. Thus, a seminal text that everybody should read and relish. One can simply not but be impressed by her forthrightness and her fervor.
November 12, 2022
simultaneously progressive of its time in the name of feminism but also ridiculously backwards by contemporary standards, mary wollstonecraft’s a vindication of the rights of woman is a philosophical look into the feminism of a radical of her time. understandably divisive, i found myself both agreeing with and disagreeing with many of her points, but, despite this, thoroughly understand how key this novel was and still is when debating the ideas surrounding equality for women. reading it with two mindsets: what was believed at the time of the publication date and what is believed now, centuries in the future, is the answer to reading the mind of wollestonecraft, for you will find a range of her points resonate, and others leave you startled at how they were ever commonplace amongst the early feminists. undoubtedly a good read.
April 27, 2016
3.5/5
Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.Sound familiar? The quote I started my review of Beauvoir's The Second Sex with runs in a similarly powerful vein, and is why I am, for the first time, rounding my half star up instead of down. When it comes to this work, one must mercilessly separate the wheat from the chaff if the aim is Wollstonecraft's spirit and not her letter, but what remains is a svelte and shining sword of a spine that can be run through even her own obstinate instances of bad faith. To ancient works that offer me this ironclad potential of self-reflexivity, I will give the full benefit of my attention. The phrases "ahead of the times", "represented the times", "behind the times", etc, etc, mean nothing to me, for it was not too long ago when the closest semblance to humanity was a heap of atoms squirming in the muck and the lightning. Our species will not survive long enough to merit me wasting my time on grading morality on a curve.
[M]oss-covered opinions assume the disproportioned form of prejudices, when they are indolently adopted only because age has given them venerable aspect, though the reason on which they were built ceases to be a reason, or cannot be traced. Why are we to love prejudices, merely because they are prejudices?A true mark of a thinker is how receptive they are to you taking bits and pieces of their thought and applying them wholesale to other realms of their own insight. Out of context? Hardly. I'm not talking some eclectic mathematical formula transposed warts and all into some tenet of Hindu philosophy out of some misguided effort to propagate yet another Orientalizing confabulation. In the quote above, Wollstonecraft treats with prejudice in its entirety, so it would only be fitting to apply to this statement to each and every instance of her own displays of this misbegotten stagnation of critical thinking. That's the problem with using the entirety of humanity in order to prove an ethical point, you see. When you say all, you better mean all, else what are you doing opening your mouth in the first place.
On what ground can religion or morality rest when justice is thus set as defiance?Before Wollstonecraft gifted me with the useful terms of defiance and vain-glory, I characterized my honing of morality on the general public as seeing who got angry and for what reasons. I'd do the same with her if I got the chance, for people inclined towards cisnormativity, heteronormativity, slut-shaming, islamophobia, Sew Work Exclusionary Radical Feminism (Swerf), white feminism, classism, ableism, and probably a great deal of others I missed would have a field day with this work. If I questioned her about these and this and those, which instances would she suppress as defiance? If I poked holes in her trend of immortal souls and biz by pointing out that, yes, they are women as well, how high would her vain-glory raise its genocidal head? I have no use for people who'd prefer it if I were exterminated. The subtlety of some is merely a survival mechanism; all they need is a conflagration for the seeds to sprout.
He wished to crush Carthage, not to save Rome, but to promote its vain-glory; and, in general, it is to similar principles that humanity is sacrificed, for genuine duties support each other.
Parents often love their children in the most brutal manner, and sacrifice every relative duty to promote their advancement in the world.—To promote, such is the perversity of unprincipled prejudices, the future welfare of the very beings whose present existence they imbitter by the most despotic stretch of power.One aspect of Wollstonecraft's treatise that I didn't expect and very much appreciate is her taking on the subject of pedagogy, especially in the realms of paternity and maternity. Children take on all sorts of roles in this world of mine: economic strip mine, free labor, emotional chew toy, blow up doll, cultural bridge, translator of the foreign/modern/the times they are a-changin', child, human being, perpetrators of matricide and/or patricide. I don't give a fuck what reasons you have/had/will have for bringing life into this world. I really don't. Barring some exigencies like the genocidal attitude governments have for certain ethnic populations, the way you raise your child is the way you will be convicted. If you're not willing to make the effort to earn the rights you think you have to the autonomy of your offspring regardless if they're gay, trans, disabled, female, young, not financially independent by eighteen, not on whatever is your definition of the right "track", any surprise on your part at what follows is obscene. Nothing more, nothing less.
For man and woman, truth, if I understand the meaning of the word, must be the same; yet the fanciful female character, so prettily drawn by poets and novelists, demanding the sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue becomes a relative idea, having no other foundation than utility, and of that utility men pretend arbitrarily to judge, shaping it to their own convenience.Wollstonecraft misappropriates the word "slave" a lot, especially in light of The Book of Night Women, and what useful analyses she has to make of the white middle to upper class have to be put on the rack before they're applicable anywhere else, but she's got some valuable things to say about various holisms of morality, justice, and psychology shaped by any variation of tyranny. I'm just glad I didn't get to this before class thrust it upon me, cause the relation between the effort it takes one to sieve through prose and the amount one is bowled over by it in the process is a direct one, and I wouldn't have done myself or anyone else favors by cutting Wollstonecraft's words any slack. The 1790's are dead and gone, people. Let's not pull an anti-vacc on a less biological yet equally powerful front, mmkay?
Let the husband beware of trusting too implicitly to this servile obedience; for if his wife can with winning sweetness caress him when angry, and when she ought to be angry, unless contempt had stifled a natural effervescence, she may do the same after parting with a lover.
[T]hose who can see pain unmoved, will soon learn to inflict it.
August 19, 2023
2023 Review of 3rd complete read
I am reading a new-to-me Norton Anthology, The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Period edited by M.H. Abrams and others. There will be selections that I will read and will want to read more of. Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one such example.
Here I find how daring were these thoughts of Wollstonecraft. Here a few ideas that caught my attention.
* Wollstonecraft called on men of value to find inherent and practical value in educating women.
* They would be have resources to be better mothers, able to help children with supporting early education and with having improved ability to be mother with some wisdom and with less interest in spoiling children.
*Wollstonecraft pointed out that when women's education was limited that the women were up limited in numerous ways and that women were not able not participate in companionate marriage, being the long-time friends she wishes wives to become to husbands.
Wollstonecraft did not argue for equal education throughout educational process, just for the few years would boys and girls be educated together in all educational endeavors. After that, girls might receive similar education but not to the same degree.
As a result of Wollstonecraft's arguments being taken up, I can retrace the historical trajectory of women's academies where sewing and cooking were emphasized and of Home Economics degrees at university level. The MRS degrees which were a great improvement and allowed for better companionate marriages.
Wollstonecraft was early philosopher of men and women's rights. Think of A Vindication of the Rights of Men. We are right to consider Wollstonecraft when we think of the philosophers of the Enlightment.
2017 Review of 2nd complete read
I read this as a buddy read with members of Catching up on the Classics. I have read this essay before as a undergraduate/graduate student or maybe both. Also discussed Western Civilization as undergrad.
I think of this essay from time to time, thinking about the most educated women before the opening of female seminaries. So in August 2016 I read -Governess: The Life and Times of the Real Jane Eyres- and -Courtesans: Money, Sex, and Fame in the NineteenThe Century-. While we commonly think of Wollstonecraft, her relationships with men, and her daughters along with her writing, we commonly forget that she was educated enough to live in prestigious households as a governess While I can be sad at the thought, I can also be grateful so that this essay had Genesis in a woman who knew from personal experience, living among and not among the wealthy.
I have written extensive notes on the buddy reads page, and cannot possibly summarize here. Know that I am grateful wherever you are today Mary Wollstonecraft.
I am reading a new-to-me Norton Anthology, The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Period edited by M.H. Abrams and others. There will be selections that I will read and will want to read more of. Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one such example.
Here I find how daring were these thoughts of Wollstonecraft. Here a few ideas that caught my attention.
* Wollstonecraft called on men of value to find inherent and practical value in educating women.
* They would be have resources to be better mothers, able to help children with supporting early education and with having improved ability to be mother with some wisdom and with less interest in spoiling children.
*Wollstonecraft pointed out that when women's education was limited that the women were up limited in numerous ways and that women were not able not participate in companionate marriage, being the long-time friends she wishes wives to become to husbands.
Wollstonecraft did not argue for equal education throughout educational process, just for the few years would boys and girls be educated together in all educational endeavors. After that, girls might receive similar education but not to the same degree.
As a result of Wollstonecraft's arguments being taken up, I can retrace the historical trajectory of women's academies where sewing and cooking were emphasized and of Home Economics degrees at university level. The MRS degrees which were a great improvement and allowed for better companionate marriages.
Wollstonecraft was early philosopher of men and women's rights. Think of A Vindication of the Rights of Men. We are right to consider Wollstonecraft when we think of the philosophers of the Enlightment.
2017 Review of 2nd complete read
I read this as a buddy read with members of Catching up on the Classics. I have read this essay before as a undergraduate/graduate student or maybe both. Also discussed Western Civilization as undergrad.
I think of this essay from time to time, thinking about the most educated women before the opening of female seminaries. So in August 2016 I read -Governess: The Life and Times of the Real Jane Eyres- and -Courtesans: Money, Sex, and Fame in the NineteenThe Century-. While we commonly think of Wollstonecraft, her relationships with men, and her daughters along with her writing, we commonly forget that she was educated enough to live in prestigious households as a governess While I can be sad at the thought, I can also be grateful so that this essay had Genesis in a woman who knew from personal experience, living among and not among the wealthy.
I have written extensive notes on the buddy reads page, and cannot possibly summarize here. Know that I am grateful wherever you are today Mary Wollstonecraft.
September 26, 2017
“Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet.”
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft had the guts and awareness to write a common sense response to the prevailing mentality of her day--that women did not share the same rights as men. Sadly, in 2017--over 200 years later--we are still making this argument.
Where was this book when I was in college? I don’t even remember it being on a reading list--not in history or psychology or educational theory or women’s literature. This is a text to study. Not that the text itself is difficult to understand. She takes some controversial approaches (to female sexuality, religion, and class distinctions), and I have problems with some of her opinions, but the core of the text is as simple as:
woman = human
education should be the same for everyone
when you oppress women, these bad things happen
if you treat people equally, these good things will happen
Of course this applies to all human rights. The argument in favor is simple: equality, inclusion, acceptance, appreciation. What is complex, and what needs to be studied, is the engine of oppression: who starts it, what makes it run, and most importantly, how can we speed up the unbearably slow process of stopping it.
“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!”
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft had the guts and awareness to write a common sense response to the prevailing mentality of her day--that women did not share the same rights as men. Sadly, in 2017--over 200 years later--we are still making this argument.
Where was this book when I was in college? I don’t even remember it being on a reading list--not in history or psychology or educational theory or women’s literature. This is a text to study. Not that the text itself is difficult to understand. She takes some controversial approaches (to female sexuality, religion, and class distinctions), and I have problems with some of her opinions, but the core of the text is as simple as:
woman = human
education should be the same for everyone
when you oppress women, these bad things happen
if you treat people equally, these good things will happen
Of course this applies to all human rights. The argument in favor is simple: equality, inclusion, acceptance, appreciation. What is complex, and what needs to be studied, is the engine of oppression: who starts it, what makes it run, and most importantly, how can we speed up the unbearably slow process of stopping it.
“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!”
February 2, 2020
Gracias Mary, por alzar la voz por todas nosotras. Gracias por hacernos avanzar.
Este libro debería leerlo todo el mundo.
A esta mujer se la debería estudiar en las clases de Historia en todos los niveles, y no quedar relegada como lo ha sido hasta ahora.
Un alegato muy inteligente, que todavía nos enseña muchas cosas sobre la potencialidad de las personas y la necesidad de recibir una educación adecuada para llegar a esa potencialidad, independientemente del sexo o de la posición económica.
De nuevo, mis eternas gracias a esta pionera y valiente mujer.
Este libro debería leerlo todo el mundo.
A esta mujer se la debería estudiar en las clases de Historia en todos los niveles, y no quedar relegada como lo ha sido hasta ahora.
Un alegato muy inteligente, que todavía nos enseña muchas cosas sobre la potencialidad de las personas y la necesidad de recibir una educación adecuada para llegar a esa potencialidad, independientemente del sexo o de la posición económica.
De nuevo, mis eternas gracias a esta pionera y valiente mujer.
March 14, 2016
I've had to give up on this one, the language isn't doing my dyslexic brain any good.
I understand her intentions but by chapter 2 I was struggling to understand what she was saying with all the old way of speaking.
I understand her intentions but by chapter 2 I was struggling to understand what she was saying with all the old way of speaking.
October 19, 2012
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A brief introduction to a feminist classic.
What is the Vindication?
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (hence the Vindication) is the classic feminist text. It was written in 1792, and it has its roots in the Enlightenment. Broadly, its aim is to apply the ideas of rights and equality to women and not just to men. This article will briefly explore the origins of the work of Wollstonecraft by looking at John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and then look at some of the themes which are present in the text.
The Roots of The Vindication
John Locke
John Locke (1632 – 1704) was a philosopher and political thinker (he was also a political economist, though he is not remembered for this). The most relevant aspect of his philosophy for the work of Wollstonecraft is his theory of empiricism, which was outlined in his work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This work argued that people are a blank slate (tabula rasa) at birth, and later develop as people, based upon their experiences.(1)
Locke's political philosophy was based around the notion of the social contract. Locke was a firm critic of the nation of patriarchalism, an idea that had been put forward by thinkers such as Robert Filmer. Patriarchalism claimed that the ruler of a state was directly descended from Adam (and thus had the right to rule), that the people should not choose their rulers, and that rulers should act towards the people the way a father behaves towards his wife and children in a traditional marriage.(2) Locke, although God plays an important role in his argument, rejected the claim that kings have a divine right to rule based upon descent from Adam. (3) Locke instead used the device of the state of nature. Locke's state of nature was relatively peaceful, and people were able to own property. He argued that the state of nature has “inconveniences” due to each individual having the right to punish others who offend against the natural laws of God. Thus is makes sense for rational individuals to allow for a political power to arbitrate disputes. (4) Thus, power is not arbitrary, but built upon the will and consent of the people.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was an important 18th century political thinker. Rousseau's state of nature saw man as being amoral and animalesque rather than rational. Rousseau argued that when people come together in groups the rich can abuse the poor, and the poor can be tricked into a false “social contract” for security reasons. (5) Instead of this, in his work The Social Contract, Rousseau argued for a rational state based upon the idea of the “general will”, using direct democracy rather than representative government. (6)
However, Rousseau's nation of the citizen (citoyen) in such a state explicitly excluded women. Rousseau believed that women's role should be confined to the private sphere. In his work Emile, he laid out what he believed the ideal woman to be like: essentially a woman who conformed to traditional feminine roles. (7)
The Vindication
Reason and Virtue: Enlightenment Values
Wollstonecraft believed that human beings' value was based upon Reason and the cultivation of Virtue.
“Consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness, must be estimated by the degree of reason, virtue, and knowledge, that distinguish the individual, and direct the laws which bind society: and that from the exercise of reason, knowledge and virtue naturally flow, is equally undeniable, if mankind be viewed collectively.” (8)
Thus Wollstonecraft goes back to first principles, the principles of the Enlightenment, right at the beginning of her case. Reason and virtue are capacities that have to be developed by the individual.
The Role of God
Wollstonecraft is also explicit in appealing to God in her theory. She argues that women are equal to men based upon their equality in the eyes of God and the fact that both men and women have souls. They are thus able to both develop their reason and virtue. (9)
Class and Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft specifically says that she is aiming her theory at the middle-class (i.e. bourgeois) women of her era. Inheriting the Enlightenment dislike for the aristocracy (and by extension, arbitrary power), she uses them as an analogy to develop her point that women's education has a corroding effect. Because the aristocracy have inherited their wealth and have not had to work for it, they are like the badly educated women Wollstonecraft describes, obsessed with pleasure over virtue. Bourgeois women on the other hand, Wollstonecraft believes, have a genuine opportunity to be able to improve themselves. (10)
The Role of Education
Mary Wollstonecraft explicitly agrees with the theory laid out by John Locke that human beings are shaped by their environment and education. Rather that claiming, unlike Rousseau, that the fripperies of woman were natural, she blamed them on the society. She is a fierce critic of the education that is given to girls in her era.
Girls were, rather than being taught to develop their reason, were simply taught how to gain a man. They were taught “a smattering of accomplishments” in order to entertain, rather than to develop the capacities of reason and virtue. They were kept inside rather than allowed to play outside, leading to women's physical weakness compared to men to be exaggerated.
“Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives.” (11)
The results of this education were clear to Wollstonecraft. Women were physically weak, obsessed with beauty and how to entertain and gain flattery from a man. If they read at all, it was facetious novels* rather than serious texts. Women's only power becomes based on manipulation, cunning and flattery, which undermines rather than promoting virtue. (12)
Wollstonecraft had some rather radical ideas on education for the time period. She believed that day-schools should be provided to educate all children together. She believed both that boarding schools lead to vice, but also that home education meant that children could not develop properly as they lacked peers. Wollstonecraft even cuts across class divides a little, as she says that even working-class children could be educated up to the age of 9. (13)
However, Wollstonecraft claims that education is not a cure-all for the oppression of women. Society in general also plays an important role.
*Wollstonecraft was actually a writer of novels herself, as an aside.
Modesty, Love and Friendship
Wollstonecraft had very specific views on the ideas of love and friendship as well as modesty and chastity. She disliked an excessive focus on the surface appearance of things, and this can be shown by her views both on modesty and chastity, and her views on love and friendship.
As regards chastity, Wollstonecraft argues that women have an overriding imperative to maintain the reputation of being chaste. If a woman is marked out as unchaste, then it is basically impossible for her to marry. However, the focus is upon maintaining the outside appearance of chastity, rather than actually cultivating modesty itself, which is a virtue. The focus on the idea of chastity means that women are likely to use whatever underhanded tricks they can to maintain their reputation, which is corrupting of the actual character and virtues of the individual. (14)
Wollstonecraft believes that love is a fleeting thing. She believes that women who cultivate only their beauty, and men who focus only on beauty when determining a wife, are both going to lose out in the long run. As beauty fades, as the marriage progresses it is likely to become unhappy. Whereas, a marriage based upon a deeper bond of friendship is more likely to be able to be maintained over the long term, because both partners have a deeper respect for one another. Wollstonecraft also believed that women should not be reliant on marriage. (15)
Equality Versus Difference: The Dilemma
There is an important tension in the work of Wollstonecraft that has been present in feminism since: are women to be valued because they are the same as men, or because they are different from men, having the capacity for childbirth and motherhood?
Wollstonecraft displays both of these tendencies in her work. As already mentioned, she believes that women are equal to men, and that women, rather than being dependent on a man, could make their own living. She considers that (bourgeois) women who fritter away their time rather than developing their capacities through a work role are wasted.
“How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility...” (16)
However, she also stressed the importance of the role of motherhood for women. She believes that, to be an effective mother, women need a strong education and capacity to reason. She explicitly says that, weak, badly educated women make poor wives and mothers in comparison to an educated woman.
“Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers—in a word, better citizens.” (ch 9)
Thus there is an ambiguity in the text here that has had an important role throughout the history of the feminist movement.
[b]Notes[/b]
(1) J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, http://marxists.org/reference/subject...
(2) R. Filmer, Patriarcha, http://www.constitution.org/eng/patri...
(3) J. Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Chapter 1, http://marxists.org/reference/subject...
(4) Ibid, Chapter 3, http://marxists.org/reference/subject...
(5) “Rousseau”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rou...
(6) J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon...
(7) http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/#H5
(8) M. Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter 1, http://www.bartleby.com/144/1.html
(9) Ibid, Chapter 2, http://www.bartleby.com/144/2.html
(10) Ibid, Introduction, http://www.bartleby.com/144/103.html
(11) Ibid, Chapter 2.
(12) Ibid, Chapter 12, http://www.bartleby.com/144/12.html
(13) Ibid.
(14) Ibid, Chapters 7 & 8.
(15) “Mary Wollstonecraft”, Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wol...
(16) Ibid, chapter 9, http://www.bartleby.com/144/9.html
(17) Ibid.
A brief introduction to a feminist classic.
What is the Vindication?
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (hence the Vindication) is the classic feminist text. It was written in 1792, and it has its roots in the Enlightenment. Broadly, its aim is to apply the ideas of rights and equality to women and not just to men. This article will briefly explore the origins of the work of Wollstonecraft by looking at John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and then look at some of the themes which are present in the text.
The Roots of The Vindication
John Locke
John Locke (1632 – 1704) was a philosopher and political thinker (he was also a political economist, though he is not remembered for this). The most relevant aspect of his philosophy for the work of Wollstonecraft is his theory of empiricism, which was outlined in his work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This work argued that people are a blank slate (tabula rasa) at birth, and later develop as people, based upon their experiences.(1)
Locke's political philosophy was based around the notion of the social contract. Locke was a firm critic of the nation of patriarchalism, an idea that had been put forward by thinkers such as Robert Filmer. Patriarchalism claimed that the ruler of a state was directly descended from Adam (and thus had the right to rule), that the people should not choose their rulers, and that rulers should act towards the people the way a father behaves towards his wife and children in a traditional marriage.(2) Locke, although God plays an important role in his argument, rejected the claim that kings have a divine right to rule based upon descent from Adam. (3) Locke instead used the device of the state of nature. Locke's state of nature was relatively peaceful, and people were able to own property. He argued that the state of nature has “inconveniences” due to each individual having the right to punish others who offend against the natural laws of God. Thus is makes sense for rational individuals to allow for a political power to arbitrate disputes. (4) Thus, power is not arbitrary, but built upon the will and consent of the people.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was an important 18th century political thinker. Rousseau's state of nature saw man as being amoral and animalesque rather than rational. Rousseau argued that when people come together in groups the rich can abuse the poor, and the poor can be tricked into a false “social contract” for security reasons. (5) Instead of this, in his work The Social Contract, Rousseau argued for a rational state based upon the idea of the “general will”, using direct democracy rather than representative government. (6)
However, Rousseau's nation of the citizen (citoyen) in such a state explicitly excluded women. Rousseau believed that women's role should be confined to the private sphere. In his work Emile, he laid out what he believed the ideal woman to be like: essentially a woman who conformed to traditional feminine roles. (7)
The Vindication
Reason and Virtue: Enlightenment Values
Wollstonecraft believed that human beings' value was based upon Reason and the cultivation of Virtue.
“Consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness, must be estimated by the degree of reason, virtue, and knowledge, that distinguish the individual, and direct the laws which bind society: and that from the exercise of reason, knowledge and virtue naturally flow, is equally undeniable, if mankind be viewed collectively.” (8)
Thus Wollstonecraft goes back to first principles, the principles of the Enlightenment, right at the beginning of her case. Reason and virtue are capacities that have to be developed by the individual.
The Role of God
Wollstonecraft is also explicit in appealing to God in her theory. She argues that women are equal to men based upon their equality in the eyes of God and the fact that both men and women have souls. They are thus able to both develop their reason and virtue. (9)
Class and Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft specifically says that she is aiming her theory at the middle-class (i.e. bourgeois) women of her era. Inheriting the Enlightenment dislike for the aristocracy (and by extension, arbitrary power), she uses them as an analogy to develop her point that women's education has a corroding effect. Because the aristocracy have inherited their wealth and have not had to work for it, they are like the badly educated women Wollstonecraft describes, obsessed with pleasure over virtue. Bourgeois women on the other hand, Wollstonecraft believes, have a genuine opportunity to be able to improve themselves. (10)
The Role of Education
Mary Wollstonecraft explicitly agrees with the theory laid out by John Locke that human beings are shaped by their environment and education. Rather that claiming, unlike Rousseau, that the fripperies of woman were natural, she blamed them on the society. She is a fierce critic of the education that is given to girls in her era.
Girls were, rather than being taught to develop their reason, were simply taught how to gain a man. They were taught “a smattering of accomplishments” in order to entertain, rather than to develop the capacities of reason and virtue. They were kept inside rather than allowed to play outside, leading to women's physical weakness compared to men to be exaggerated.
“Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives.” (11)
The results of this education were clear to Wollstonecraft. Women were physically weak, obsessed with beauty and how to entertain and gain flattery from a man. If they read at all, it was facetious novels* rather than serious texts. Women's only power becomes based on manipulation, cunning and flattery, which undermines rather than promoting virtue. (12)
Wollstonecraft had some rather radical ideas on education for the time period. She believed that day-schools should be provided to educate all children together. She believed both that boarding schools lead to vice, but also that home education meant that children could not develop properly as they lacked peers. Wollstonecraft even cuts across class divides a little, as she says that even working-class children could be educated up to the age of 9. (13)
However, Wollstonecraft claims that education is not a cure-all for the oppression of women. Society in general also plays an important role.
*Wollstonecraft was actually a writer of novels herself, as an aside.
Modesty, Love and Friendship
Wollstonecraft had very specific views on the ideas of love and friendship as well as modesty and chastity. She disliked an excessive focus on the surface appearance of things, and this can be shown by her views both on modesty and chastity, and her views on love and friendship.
As regards chastity, Wollstonecraft argues that women have an overriding imperative to maintain the reputation of being chaste. If a woman is marked out as unchaste, then it is basically impossible for her to marry. However, the focus is upon maintaining the outside appearance of chastity, rather than actually cultivating modesty itself, which is a virtue. The focus on the idea of chastity means that women are likely to use whatever underhanded tricks they can to maintain their reputation, which is corrupting of the actual character and virtues of the individual. (14)
Wollstonecraft believes that love is a fleeting thing. She believes that women who cultivate only their beauty, and men who focus only on beauty when determining a wife, are both going to lose out in the long run. As beauty fades, as the marriage progresses it is likely to become unhappy. Whereas, a marriage based upon a deeper bond of friendship is more likely to be able to be maintained over the long term, because both partners have a deeper respect for one another. Wollstonecraft also believed that women should not be reliant on marriage. (15)
Equality Versus Difference: The Dilemma
There is an important tension in the work of Wollstonecraft that has been present in feminism since: are women to be valued because they are the same as men, or because they are different from men, having the capacity for childbirth and motherhood?
Wollstonecraft displays both of these tendencies in her work. As already mentioned, she believes that women are equal to men, and that women, rather than being dependent on a man, could make their own living. She considers that (bourgeois) women who fritter away their time rather than developing their capacities through a work role are wasted.
“How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility...” (16)
However, she also stressed the importance of the role of motherhood for women. She believes that, to be an effective mother, women need a strong education and capacity to reason. She explicitly says that, weak, badly educated women make poor wives and mothers in comparison to an educated woman.
“Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers—in a word, better citizens.” (ch 9)
Thus there is an ambiguity in the text here that has had an important role throughout the history of the feminist movement.
[b]Notes[/b]
(1) J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, http://marxists.org/reference/subject...
(2) R. Filmer, Patriarcha, http://www.constitution.org/eng/patri...
(3) J. Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Chapter 1, http://marxists.org/reference/subject...
(4) Ibid, Chapter 3, http://marxists.org/reference/subject...
(5) “Rousseau”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rou...
(6) J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon...
(7) http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/#H5
(8) M. Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter 1, http://www.bartleby.com/144/1.html
(9) Ibid, Chapter 2, http://www.bartleby.com/144/2.html
(10) Ibid, Introduction, http://www.bartleby.com/144/103.html
(11) Ibid, Chapter 2.
(12) Ibid, Chapter 12, http://www.bartleby.com/144/12.html
(13) Ibid.
(14) Ibid, Chapters 7 & 8.
(15) “Mary Wollstonecraft”, Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wol...
(16) Ibid, chapter 9, http://www.bartleby.com/144/9.html
(17) Ibid.
March 29, 2021
Kitap bugün elimize alıp feminizmi anlayabileceğimiz bir kitap değil zaten 1700lerde yazılmış bir kitap, bugünden bakınca fazla ahlakçı gelebilir. Ama o dönem için, bir yol açtığı için kesinlikle önemli bir kitap.
March 7, 2020
Dal libro:
Dio ha creato tutto secondo giustizia; ma l'uomo ha fatto il possibile per guastare l'opera.
Read
January 17, 2020I mean, how do you properly review this? Very interesting radical new ideas, a tendency to ramble and lean towards being too unstructured, and yknow ... one of the most important feminists of all time
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,306 reviews