A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Summary
Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a treatise on overcoming the
ways in which women in her time are oppressed and denied their potential in society, with
concomitant problems for their households and society as a whole. The dedication is to
Charles M. Talleyrand-Périgord, the late bishop of Autun whose views on female education
were distasteful to Wollstonecraft. The introduction sets out her view that neglect of girls‘
education is largely to blame for the condition of adult women. They are treated as
subordinate beings who care only about being attractive, elegant, and meek, they buy into this
oppression, and they do not have the tools to vindicate their fundamental rights or the
awareness that they are in such a condition.
In the first chapter Wollstonecraft promotes reason and rationality and discusses the
deleterious effects of absolute, arbitrary political power and the vices associated with riches
and hereditary honors. Chapters two and three detail the various ways in which women are
rendered subordinate. They are taught that their looks are of paramount concern, and they
tend to cultivate weakness and artificiality to appear pleasing to others. They are seldom
independent and tend not to exercise reason. Writers like Rousseau and Dr. Gregory desire
that women remain virtual slaves, enshrined in the home and concerned only with their
"natural" proclivities of being modest, chaste, and beautiful. Women are taught to indulge
their emotions and thus have unhappy marriages because passion cannot be sustained. Virtue
should not be relative to gender; as both men and women were created by God and have
souls, they have the same kind of propensity to exercise reason and develop virtue. Female
dependence as seen in her day is not natural. Women's confinement in the home and inability
to participate in the public sphere results in their insipidness and pettiness. Wollstonecraft
wants to inspire a "revolution in female manners."
In chapter four she excoriates the premise that pleasure is the ultimate goal of a woman's life.
Reason and common sense are usually ignored in favor of emotion and sentiment, and young
girls are taught every early to concern themselves only with their persons. Such trends are
problematic for mothers, who either spoil their children or ignore them. In addition, marriage
should resemble friendship because husband and wife should be companions. In chapter five
Wollstonecraft lambastes many of the writers who have perpetuated these ideas. In chapter
six she explains the importance of early associations for the development of character; for
women, false notions and early impressions are not tempered by knowledge or nuance. Girls
begin to prefer rakes to decent men.
In chapters seven and eight Wollstonecraft addresses the subject of modesty and explains that
modesty is not the same as humility. The women who exercise the most reason are the most
modest. Women's modesty can only improve when their bodies are strengthened and their
minds enlarged by active exertions. Women's morality is undermined, however, when
reputation is upheld as the most significant thing they should keep intact. Men place the
burden of upholding chastity on a woman's shoulders, yet men also must be chaste.
In chapter nine Wollstonecraft calls for more financial independence for women, expresses
the need for duty and activity in the public sphere, argues for the need to be a good citizen as
well as a good mother, and describes the various pursuits women might take on in society.
Chapters ten and eleven concern parenting duties, repeating that there must be reforms in
education for women to be good mothers who neither tyrannize over their children nor spoil
them. Chapter twelve concerns Wollstonecraft's ideas for education reform. These include a
conflation of public and private education, co-education, and a more democratic,
participatory educational structure.
Chapter thirteen sums up her arguments. She details the various ways in which women
indulge their silliness. These include visiting mediums, fortune tellers, and healers; reading
stupid novels; engaging in rivalries with other women; immoderately caring about dress and
manners; and indulging their children and treating them like idols. Women and men must
have things in common to have successful marriages. Overall, women's faults do not result of
a natural deficiency but stem from their low status in society and insufficient education.
Marriage as friendship
Wollstonecraft envisioned an ideal marriage as one that was underpinned by the traits of a
good friendship: mutual esteem, respect, generosity, and compromise. A husband and wife
should be companions and partners and have things in common. The passion of their
courtship will soon give way to the deep harmony of friendship, and they must learn to
embrace that change. Women should want to marry a man who is more than a gallant
protector or a charming rake; men should want to marry a woman who has more to offer than
her evanescent beauty. Were marriage more like a partnership, both man and woman would
be better parents to their children. Women would not manifest their repression in tyrannizing
over their husband and children. There would be no petty jealousies and no desire to look for
love affairs. This state of affairs would also result in a more virtuous citizenry at the national
level. In terms of sexuality, a husband and wife should not be immoderately swayed by
sexual passions but should endeavor to form those deeper ties away from sex. Overall,
marriage-as-friendship embodies many of the preeminent ideas inherent in classical
liberalism: equality, freedom, choice, respect, and virtue.
The need for a "revolution in female manners"
This phrase is used several times in the Vindication. In chapter three, Wollstonecraft writes,
"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" (45). In chapter
thirteen she uses the phrase again, writing, "That women at present are by ignorance rendered
foolish or vicious, is, I think, not to be disputed; and, that the most salutary effects tending to
improve mankind, might be expected from a REVOLUTION in female manners, appears at
least, with a face of probability, to rise out of the observation" (192). She desires that women
throw off the bonds men place upon them in terms of rendering them only beautiful, foolish,
and useless; she wants them to attain a rational education, develop their reason, perfect their
virtue, and embody true modesty that arises from purity of mind and rationality. They should
not be a second-class species or mere playthings of men. They should endeavor to attain
education, financial independence, some political participation, and autonomy. In contrast,
the gendered social system of her day is dangerous and ultimately unfulfilling for women,
men, and society as a whole.
The problems of sensibility
Wollstonecraft is quite vociferous in her criticism of sensibility. She was disgusted with the
silliness of women. This silliness included cultivating a weakness and delicacy of body;
delighting in transient pleasures; reading stupid novels and poetry; visiting fortunetellers and
mediums; caring only about one's person and attracting a man; trying to gratify one's vanity;
indulging one's emotions and sentiments; preferring rakes and lotharios to men of character;
and gossiping. Through such choices, women's minds are rendered pliant and weak, and they
become nearly incapable of exercising reason. Women in her time are socialized to be
enslaved to their bodies and sexuality. Yet, women's bodies are not primarily for men to act
upon, and a woman's mind should not become a soft, underdeveloped mass.
Reason and rationality
Reason is of utmost importance in Wollstonecraft's writing. Like John Locke before her, who
wrote of reason being fundamental to governance for a man emerging from a state of nature,
Wollstonecraft argues that women should stop focusing on their emotions and try to use their
rational faculties. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, "Wollstonecraft wanted
women to aspire to full citizenship, to be worthy of it,and this necessitated the development
of reason. Rational women would perceive their real duties. They would forgo the world of
mere appearances, the world of insatiable needs on which eighteenth-century society was
based, as Adam Smith had explained more lucidly than anyone, and of which France was the
embodiment, in Wollstonecraft's conception." God created men and women and endowed
them both with immortal souls; thus, both sexes are capable of reason. It is not "natural" for
women not to exercise reason. Women must develop reason so as to be effective and fair
parents and to develop virtue, which will suppress tyrannical impulses and free women from
their shackles.
Liberalism
Although some scholars have identified socialist or radical elements within Wollstonecraft's
work, she was clearly working in the tradition of liberalism. Liberalism rests on a distinction
between the public and private spheres, maintaining that the state guarantees rights and leaves
families to make their own choices. In her time, this meant that liberalism tended to prop up
male household heads, who were the usual property owners. Since the family and the
household economy are private and self-regulating, the classical liberal's path to social
change is persuasion, not the imposition of new morals and social structures by the state.
Wollstonecraft did not challenge the idea that women were primarily supposed to be in the
home, although she did advocate for more financial independence. She also excoriated the
rich, but she did not go so far as to say that property was undesirable.
Education reform
Wollstonecraft was a passionate advocate for education reform, and this was one of her bestreceived ideas. Indeed, many critics focused on the Vindication as primarily significant for its
writing on education. Wollstonecraft saw the need for co-education; boys and girls would be
improved by attending school together. She believed they needed to attend school together
from the earliest age, despite gender or class, and have time to develop their bodily and
mental strengths. She did advocate a later stratification based upon social class, however.
Education reform was particularly important for women since their lack of continuous and
substantive education was the most salient reason for what Wollstonecraft identified as their
ignorance, indolence, and subordination. Instead, women should be able to study serious
subjects and even enter into some professions. Education would allow women to learn how to
exercise reason and perfect their virtue. It would result in their becoming better wives and
mothers, which would redound to the benefit of society.
Enriching middle-class women's lives
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is perceived primarily as a text addressed to middleclass women. Lower-class women do not have as much leisure time to try to attract a man;
they are not as concerned with their looks and manners; they have barely any education, work
from a young age, and do not have the time to engage in frivolity, ephemeral trivialities, and
irrelevant rivalries. Wollstonecraft's ideas for education reform include separating youth by
social class at a certain point so they can pursue occupations appropriate for their station.
Similarly, this is not a work for rich women. Wollstonecraft vilifies the rich, referring to them
as useless and full of artifice. The problems and solutions that Wollstonecraft identifies are
for middle-class women, who can attain more education and benefit from it, utilizing the
precepts they learn in their households. Financial independence and a degree of political
participation are also somewhat possible for these women. Thus, although Wollstonecraft
does identify some problems common for all women, her work mainly addresses the middle
class.
Mary Wollstonecraft‘s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, is often
referred to as the founding text or manifesto of Western feminism. Nineteenth-century
American feminists revered its author as their founding mother and read and spoke about her
works ubiquitously.
Wollstonecraft‘s first major work, The Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790), was a
response to Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) by Edmund Burke. Burke was
one of many British writers and polemicists who entered the impassioned dialogue on the
French Revolution, but his work was particularly galvanizing to people like Wollstonecraft
and Thomas Paine for its espousal of the view that citizens should not rebel against their
government in order to revolutionize its traditions. Wollstonecraft averred that rights cannot
be based on tradition, only reason and rationality.
Her Vindication of the Rights of Woman continued these themes and applied them to women.
She dedicated the volume to Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Périgord, whose recently delivered
speech on education to the National Assembly in France had suggested that women must only
concern themselves with domestic affairs and stay out of the political arena.
As she rushed while writing the text, she worried that she did not do the subject justice when
she presented the work to her publisher, and indeed, planned on writing a second volume but
never did so; she wrote to her friend William Roscoe, ―I am dissatisfied with myself for not
having done justice to the subject. – Do not suspect me of false modesty – I mean to say that
had I allowed myself more time I could have written a better book, in every sense of the word
... I intend to finish the next volume before I begin to print, for it is not pleasant to have the
Devil coming for the conclusion of a sheet fore it is written.‖
In terms of the reception of the work, most students and scholars commonly assume—
derroneously—that it received mostly hostile reviews. That perspective has recently been
debunked by multiple scholarly articles and biographies. R.M. Janes‘s insightful article on
the subject tells a more complex story: ―The progressive intellectual circles represented by
the leading reviews reacted positively to demands for intellectual equality, improved
education, and reformed manners. Demands for political participation by women or for
changes in women‘s social behavior were regarded as unessential and absurd. Those elements
of the works in question that corresponded to changes that had been in train for half a century
were approved; those that marked out the direction of more drastic social transformations
were rightly though disapprovingly remarked as revolutionary and visionary, if they were
seen at all.‖ Except for one review by a conservative publication, all early views were largely
positive. Many reviewers focused on Vindication as an educational tract and remarked upon it
approvingly. Political concerns were ignored by liberals and conservatives alike.
Conservative publication The Critical Review showed the most awareness of the political
implications of Wollstonecraft‘s writing.
The later hostility that the work garnered was related to the demise of Wollstonecraft‘s
reputation in the unflattering light of her husband‘s memoirs published about her life and her
frequent disregard for traditional 18th-century morality. Her reputation was still problematic
throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries but has since been demonstrably less necessary
to the analysis of her theories and ideas. Indeed, Vindication of the Rights of Woman stands
on its own as a mainstay in university courses on women‘s history and feminism, political
science, and the history of the 18th century and the Age of Reason. This text has become one
of the most influential points of departure in the Western canon.
Character List
Jean-Jacques RousseauA widely respected and read 18th-century Genevan philosopher,
writer, and composer. His political philosophy was influential for the French Revolution and
the Enlightenment. His novel Émile: or, On Education was a treatise on the education of the
whole person for citizenship. Wollstonecraft painstakingly critiques many of Rousseau's
ideas regarding women and their "nature" in Vindication.Edmund BurkeAn Irish politician,
author, orator, political theorist and philosopher. He served in the House of Commons as a
member of the Whig Party for many years, supported the American Revolution, and opposed
the French Revolution. His conservative (classical liberal) Reflections on the Revolution in
France, concerned about the tyranny of new democracies that try to remake longstanding
social traditions, garnered a response from Thomas Paine (The Rights of Man) and
Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman.John MiltonAn English poet and civil
servant for the Commonwealth of England, best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. He
was a man of letters and worked under Oliver Cromwell. He is touted as a man of genius by
Wollstonecraft, although she gives some criticism of his apparent views on women.Dr.
GregoryA Scottish physician, medical writer, and moralist whose book A Father's Legacy to
His Daughters (1774) was widely read in the 18th century. Wollstonecraft attacked his
promulgations of women's cultivation of beauty and eschewing of learning.Dr. PriestleyAn
18th-century English theologian, clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and
political theorist. He published over 150 works and is usually credited with the discovery of
oxygen by isolating it in its gaseous state.Louis XVIThe King of France from 1643 to his
death in 1715. His long reign was characterized by extravagance and absolute rule.Adam
SmithAn 18th-century Scottish social philosopher and economist. His main works included
The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations, the latter being one of the most influential works on economics ever published and a
classic explanation of capitalism.Francis BaconA 17th-century English philosopher,
statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author. He was active in politics and was on the
forefront of science, pioneering the scientific method. He is sometimes referred to as the
father of empiricism.Samuel RichardsonAn extremely popular 18th-century writer. He is
best known for his epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the
History of a Young Lady (1748), and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753).Dr. James
FordyceAn 18th-century Scottish Presbyterian minister and poet best known for his
collection of sermons Sermons for Young Women (1766), or Fordyce's Sermons.James
HerveyAn 18th-century English clergyman and writer.Madame de StaelA Swiss, Frenchspeaking author who lived in Paris and other European cities at the turn of the 19th century.
She was influential on literary tastes at the time.Madame GenlisA French harpist, writer, and
educator. In Britain she was best known for her children's books. She wrote over 80 works,
including novels and educational tracts.
Quotes and Analysis
"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."Wollstonecraft, 19
This, in essence, is the major reason Wollstonecraft identifies regarding why women are
subordinate to men: every facet of their upbringing from the moment they enter the world is
oriented toward rendering them weak, docile, and dependent upon men. Women are
socialized to only want to be beautiful so they can attract men. They delight in their own
meekness and diminished bodily strength. They engage in rivalries with other women. They
are focused on no other concerns or duties because they are confined to the private sphere.
They cannot exercise reason or truly perfect their souls since they linger in this dependent
state. Mothers shape and mold their daughters' characters, which are even further ossified into
silliness when they attend boarding schools. In their youth they are attracted to men of ill
repute because they desire gallant men and seek to indulge their fantasies and
sentimentalities. All of this is due to their upbringing; they rarely have any way of breaking
out of this structure of teachings.
"The great misfortune is this, that they both acquire manners before morals, and a
knowledge of life before they have from reflection, any acquaintance with the grand ideal
outline of human nature. The consequence is natural; satisfied with common nature, they
become a prey to prejudices, and taking all their opinions on credit, they blindly submit to
authority."Wollstonecraft, 24
Generally confined to the private sphere of their homes, where they spend their time
conforming to social manners, women become acclimated to staying there rather than
entering the public sphere. They tend not to hold substantial jobs, participate in politics, attain
advanced education, discuss and debate the major ideas of the day, or take on noble, heroic
duties. Their education is fragmentary and lacking, so coupled with their confinement, they
become ignorant and caught in the social prejudices of their age. The males in their lives
make their decisions for them because they have become too delicate. This power is arbitrary
except that social structures have enforced and reinforced women's need to submit to the
authority of others. Since both men and women were endowed with souls by their Creator,
men do not have a "natural" hegemony over women on the level of individual rights, but their
differences in physical strength are carried over in society to falsely justify male hegemony in
many other areas of life.
"If women are by nature inferior to men, their virtues must be the same in quality, if not in
degree, or virtue is a relative idea; consequently, their conduct should be founded on the
same principles, and have the same aim."Wollstonecraft, 26
One of the major arguments Wollstonecraft challenges in her work is that women are
naturally inferior to men from a moral perspective. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others
believed this (indeed, most men and women in the 18th century did), and Rousseau in
particular asserted that women's virtues were different than men's. Wollstonecraft strongly
disagreed, explaining that while men were physically superior to women, both sexes were
endowed with souls by their Creator and are able to develop their reason and endeavor to
perfect their virtue. Virtue is not relative to sex but to individual differences, which means
that everyone's conduct should arise from the same moral principles and have the same kind
of human goals. Even if men could demonstrate a better ability to be virtuous than women
could, everyone has the same virtues to strive for.
"But I still insist, that not only the virtue, but the knowledge of the two sexes should be the
same in nature, if not in degree, and that women, considered not only as moral, but
rational creatures, ought to endeavour to acquire human virtues (or perfections) by the
same means as men, instead of being educated like a fanciful kind of half being, one of
Rousseau's wild chimeras."Wollstonecraft, 39
Education is one of the major themes of the Vindication. The inferior education women
receive is directly responsible for their subordinate status and their paramount concern of
cultivating their physical beauty and charm instead. Their education is fitful and sometimes
irrelevant. They do not learn anything of seriousness or substance, and even if they do it is
not considered necessary for their lives. At boarding schools, where they are confined with
other girls their age, they learn cunning, immodesty, sentimentality, and irrationality. Their
bodies are not allowed to grow strong because they are forced to stay indoors. Overall,
female education is so different from male education that it results in women who are
ignorant and indolent. Reform therefore is necessary; they should attend school with boys,
have physical exercise, learn the same subjects as boys, and live with their families instead of
boarding schools. They should be allowed to enter some professions that they train for. This
will result in the development of their reason, virtue, and modesty and will free them from
their physical and mental shackles.
"Women, it is true, obtaining power by unjust means, by practising or fostering vice,
evidently lose the rank which reason would assign them, and they become either abject
slaves or capricious tyrants. They lose all simplicity, all dignity of mind, in acquiring
power, and act as men are observed to act when they have been exalted by the same
means."Wollstonecraft, 45
One of the major problems that results from denying women significant power is that they
will manifest this oppression either in becoming an abject slave, or perhaps worse,
tyrannizing over their own household by trying to control their husband and children and
domestic servants. It is observed that rich women are even cruel to their pets. Their behavior
is not dissimilar from that of men, who also relish their absolute, arbitrary power when they
can get it. This is quite understandable given human nature, but it is still quite lamentable. If
women were able to attain rational education and enlarge their minds, at least they would not
take out their frustrations on their family. They would be companions to their husbands and
dutiful, loving mothers to their children, asserting the reasonable power that they deserve.
"All their thoughts turn on things calculated to excite emotion; and, feeling, when they
should reason, their conduct is unstable, and their opinions are wavering, not the wavering
produced
by
deliberation
or
progressive
views,
but
by
contradictory
emotions."Wollstonecraft, 61
Women in Wollstonecraft's time generally do not govern their views by reason and
rationality; they prefer to be governed by their emotions and sentiments. As she elaborates:
They love reading novels and exult in the sensational scenes and verbose and florid language;
history or other genres are considered boring. They are interested in men who indulge their
fancies, not men of substance and character. They prefer romance, drama, and excitement to
soberness and modesty. They live for the moment only. They delight in visiting
fortunetellers, mediums, and healers even though their Christian faith would seemingly
preclude giving countenance to these people. All of their attention is centered upon their
persons, not understanding that their youthful good looks are ephemeral. Since they are so
swayed by their emotions, they also are ineffectual mothers because they only want to secure
their children's love and cannot provide proper discipline. Wollstonecraft's conclusion from
such lines of argument is that women's fickleness comes from living on the basis of their
changing emotions rather than their reason, which does not mean having eternally fixed
views but means making decisions rationally.
"Were women more rationally educated, could they take a more comprehensive view of
things, they would be contented to love but once in their lives; and after marriage calmly
let passion subside into friendship—into that tender intimacy, which is the best refuge
from care; yet is built on such pure, still affections, that idle jealousies would not be
allowed to disturb the discharge of the sober duties of life, nor to engross the thoughts that
ought to be otherwise employed."Wollstonecraft, 119
Wollstonecraft offers many strong opinions about marriage. First, she decries the fact that
women do not want to marry the men that they should; they prefer gallant men who excite
their emotions but may be frivolous or immoral. When women marry, they expect the passion
of their courtship to be sustained throughout the whole marriage. This is unreasonable and
can lead to problems when the feelings wane and the husband turns out to have little
substance. Sometimes a woman will enter into love affairs to try and stoke her emotions, or
she may ignore her husband or tyrannize over him. It is better that women understand that the
best type of marriage resembles a friendship. Both partners are equal and have things in
common; they should conceive of the other as a companion, not merely a lover. The deep
bond of friendship is a better way to have a relationship than to be enmeshed in tumultuous
passion. Husband and wife should also not be too concerned with the sexual part of their
relationship, as it diverts attention from more important duties. Overall, a happy marriage is
one where both man and woman are content with the substance and equanimity of their
relationship and conceive of each other as a partner.
"The two sexes mutually corrupt and improve each other. This I believe to be an
indisputable truth, extending it to every virtue. Chastity, modesty, public spirit, and all the
noble train of virtues, on which social virtue and happiness are built, should be understood
and cultivated by all mankind, or they will be cultivated to little effect."Wollstonecraft, 140
In the 18th century it was commonly assumed that man and woman were two halves of a
whole. While Wollstonecraft concedes there is some possibility that some women will not
marry and be content in their singleness, the assumption is that each one will marry a man
and bear his children and tend his home. Men and women can bring out the worst in each
other but can also improve each other, if only women were considered men's equals, not
men's inferiors. Coeducation is a crucial component, for if boys and girls went to school
together from a very young age women would not be rendered so ignorant and indolent and
men would not have the desire to subjugate and feel contemptuous of women. Marriages
would be more fulfilling and meaningful, and the household as a whole would run more
smoothly. Virtue, which Wollstonecraft has established as not relative to gender, would
develop in both sexes. Women and men would be more modest and chaste since they would
not operate in such separate, heterogeneous spheres. Thus, the sexes would benefit each
other.
"The whole system of British politics, if system it may courteously be called, consisting in
multiplying dependents and contriving taxes which grind the poor to pamper the rich
..."Wollstonecraft, 143
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is not only a feminist work but also one deeply
engaged in politics. Wollstonecraft writes on the foundation of Locke and Hobbes, two
political theorists who articulated the theory of the social contract. The idea that arbitrary,
absolute power is dangerous, so that the governed must consent while illegitimate power be
overthrown, is implicit in Vindication. Wollstonecraft's debt to Enlightenment thinkers is
visible in her discussions of parents and children and husbands and wives. This quotation
encapsulates her frustration with the British government at the time she was writing, which
was creating a welfare state both by "multiplying dependents" and by overtaxing the poor to
serve the projects favored by the rich. As one of the more significant thinkers in the Age of
Reason, she fearlessly takes on British society and politics as well as Europe's leading
political philosophers.
"... obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and
prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason."Wollstonecraft, 153
Wollstonecraft says a great deal about parenting. Socializing children to believe that they
should obey their parents simply as a matter of power is a dangerous lesson because they will
learn to blindly obey even when they become adults. Instead, parents should show that their
power is based upon their virtue and superior exercise of reason. Their children should obey
them because they observe that their superiors are rational and capable human beings. As
Wollstonecraft elaborates, parenting is a God-given duty to men and to women, but women,
as they are responsible for reproduction, are even more beholden to the rearing of their
children. Since society demands they behave like children themselves, they are often poor
parents. Their own silliness, ignorance, and capriciousness leads them to raise unruly, spoiled
children. If they have daughters, they instill the same unfortunate values in them. Some
mothers, repressed by the nature of their sex, tyrannize over their children and thus violate
the laws of nature. Wollstonecraft advocates for education reform for women so that, among
other things, they will be better mothers.
Front Matter and Introduction
Wollstonecraft addresses M. Talleyrand-Périgord, a French diplomat and former bishop. She
read his pamphlet on education in France and now dedicates her own volume to him. Her
regard for the human race has induced her to write about women's rights and duties and how
their station should advance, not retard, the progress of the principles that give morality its
substance.
In France the presence of salons made social intercourse between the sexes more frequent and
knowledge more diffused. However, the French character has perpetrated a "hunting of
sincerity out of society" and has heavily insulted modesty and decency. Instead, women
should seek to improve the morals of their fellow citizens by teaching men that modesty is
valuable, demonstrating it through their own appropriate conduct.
Wollstonecraft avers that her main argument is based on the simple principle that if woman is
not educated to be the equal of man, the progress of knowledge and truth will be thwarted.
Women must know why they are to be virtuous, and they must know the value of patriotism
in order to instill such values in their children. Chastity ought to prevail, and women must
move beyond merely being the objects of idolatry and desire.
Furthermore, if women possess reason just as men do, why are men the exclusive judges of
freedom and happiness? Just as tyrants characteristically attempt to crush reason, men who
would keep women ignorant are acting tyrannically. Tyranny will "undermine morality."
Wollstonecraft's idea is to "let there be no coercion established in society, and the common
law of gravity prevailing, the sexes will fall into their proper places." Fathers will not visit
brothels, and mothers will not neglect their children. Yet, when such legitimate rights are
prohibited to women, will they grasp, perhaps illicitly, at any small power they might
discover.
In the Advertisement, Wollstonecraft explains that she had initially divided the volume into
three parts but now presents the first part to the public and hopes the second will be published
later.
In the Introduction, Wollstonecraft muses that she is pessimistic about the effects of a
neglected education upon women, her fellow creatures, seeing how that neglect is responsible
for woman's great misery because women are made "weak and wretched" by it. Most of the
women she observes do not have healthy minds, for they are falsely taught to cultivate and
rely upon their beauty alone and above all "inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler
ambition and by their abilities and virtues exact respect."
Instructional books written by men have propagated this false refinement and treat women as
a subordinate species, not part of the human species. Wollstonecraft concedes that she knows
men are physically more powerful and superior according to the law of nature, but men are
not content with this; they "endeavor to sink us lower, merely to render us alluring objects for
a moment," a situation to which women fall prey and believe is their life's ambition. Society
inveighs against "masculine women," but what does that mean? If it only entails "the
attainment of those talents and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human character,"
and not silly things like hunting and gambling, then all should endeavor to attain such
masculinity.
Wollstonecraft asserts that she wants to avoid addressing her work to ladies in particular but
instead desires to appeal to the middle class because they are the most educable. Rich
women, for example, are too weak, enfeebled, and artificial as a result of the strictures of
their upbringing.
She hopes that her own sex will forgive her for addressing them as rational beings, not
flattering their beauty and charm. Her goal is to "persuade women to endeavor to acquire
strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of
heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of
weakness." Her perspective is that "elegance is inferior to virtue" and that regardless of one's
sex, he or she should above all seek to increase in character as a human being. Wollstonecraft
warns that she will not use flowery language; she will adhere to the truth.
It seems to her that women's education is fitful and oriented toward perfecting their beauty
and trying to get married, which produces silly women unfit for their family. She again
admits that women, due to their smaller bodily stature, will never fully lose their dependence
on men. Yet, some women who are viewed as infantile actually turn to cunning and tyranny
in their households, so perhaps men ought to grow more chaste and modest. Overall, whether
it comes from men or women, "intellect will always govern."
Analysis
It is both intriguing and significant that Mary Wollstonecraft chose to dedicate her work on
the rights of women to Charles Maurice Talleyrand-Périgord, a rather infamous man who
worked successfully as a diplomat through the French Revolution, the Napoleonic years, and
the restoration of the monarchy. Once the bishop of Autun, Talleyrand (as he is most
commonly referred) gave up the post because of his political activities and was officially
excommunicated by the Catholic Church in 1791. Some historians view him as a traitor to all
of the regimes/personages he worked for, although his enterprising, adaptable, and intuitive
nature can easily be lauded.
The work to which Wollstonecraft refers to was the Rapport surL'instructionPublique, fait au
nom du Comité de Constitution (1791), a report to the French National Assembly.
Wollstonecraft had met Talleyrand when he journeyed to London in February of 1792 as part
of the Constituent Assembly attempting to stave off war between Britain and France; she
dedicated the second edition of Vindication to him. As her letter explains, she read his treatise
on education that suggested women should only receive a domestic education and stay out of
political affairs, and had choice words to say on the subject of French women and the flaws in
the French constitution regarding the inequality between men and women. In response,
Wollstonecraft has much to say.
In the Advertisement Wollstonecraft explains that she initially expected to write three parts,
but as she was writing the first part she was frequently inspired to write more on the
principles expressed there and eventually just published it alone. Although she states that a
second volume will be forthcoming, her papers suggest that she never started a second part.
Wollstonecraft's introduction is a succinct summary of her goals and intent in writing this
Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She excoriates the current state of education which, for
women, is concerned primarily with finding primary value in their beauty and marriageable
characteristics. This does favors for neither men nor women, as ill-educated women may seek
illicit outlets for their repression or, perhaps more importantly, become badly equipped to
raise their children to be moral, patriotic, and virtuous. Thus, both men and women would
profit from female education. There is no benefit to convincing women that their meekness,
delicacy of sentiment, softness, and reliance upon physical beauty are anything other than
forms of subjugation.
Wollstonecraft addresses a few points that readers might bring against her, demonstrating her
keen intellect and awareness of the progressive contents of her treatise. First, she explains
that there is no reason to believe that "masculine women" are threatening when the term
"masculine" only suggests the highest talents and virtues of mankind. She acknowledges that
men are larger and stronger by nature, giving them certain natural advantages, yet the virtues
of the mind do not seem to rely on physical prowess or other concerns with the body. Indeed,
there is no reason to fear that women will attain so much courage and fortitude that they will
not need to depend on men at all; "their apparent inferiority with respect to bodily strength,
must render them, in some degree, dependent on men in the various relations of life" (11).
Finally, she makes it clear that her text will not be cluttered with superficialities or given an
artificial gloss of style. She does not plan to "waste [her] time in rounding periods, or in
fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings" (10). The argumentative reason in this
treatise will showcase the intellectual heights she believes women can reach without having
to rely on their beauty and charms. In this way, the style of the book mirrors its substance.
In general, Wollstonecraft seeks to prove to her readers that women, like she has done, can
become thoughtful and educated. Readers should start tracking the quality of her arguments
and should recognize how Wollstonecraft demonstrates knowledge of current events and
close familiarity with the arguments of the great writers of her time and of earlier ages. Is
Wollstonecraft an unusual example of what a woman might achieve, or is she pointing the
way for most women to achieve a similar level of educational achievement? Her arguments
suggest the latter.
Chapter I: The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered
Wollstonecraft begins by explaining that she is going to start with some basic principles and
ask several simple questions. These questions may lead to truths, but these results are often
contradicted by people's words and conduct. Reason is what gives man preeminence over
brute creatures, and passions were instilled in us so that men might grapple with them and
attain experience and knowledge. She writes that "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..."
Reason has been mixed with error through the course of mankind, so it is necessary to look at
how deeply rooted prejudices have clouded reason and how reason is used to justify such
prejudices. Wollstonecraft wonders if the bulk of the people of Europe have received
anything in exchange for their innocence. The desire for wealth and power has overwhelmed
mankind. There is such wretchedness that flows from "hereditary honours, riches, and
monarchy, that men of lively sensibility have almost uttered blasphemy in order to justify the
dispensation of providence."
The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that man was by nature a solitary animal and
that society was conducive to wickedness. Wollstonecraft disagrees with the view that
Roussau's state of nature, characterized by solitude, is preferable to civilization. God placed
humans on earth and intended for them, after the Fall, to live in a community of other
humans. God's plan for humans entailed their discovery of and use of reason to reach for
godlike happiness. The presence of free will, however, means that evil and error exist.
In terms of regal power, subsequent generations produce more idiocy and "render thousands
idle and vicious." Men attain their regal status by innumerable and unmentionable crimes and
intrigues, and their subjects sit and idly allow "the nerveless limbs of the posterity of such
rapacious prowlers to rest quietly on their ensanguined thrones." Society will never be
healthy if such rulers are allowed to retain their power.
Those who achieve the status of king naturally desire flattery and are barred from the
achievement of wisdom and virtue by the very nature of their ascent to power. It is absurd
that the fate of thousands rests in the hands of such men. All "power inebriates weak men,"
and the more there is equality in society, the more virtue and happiness will reign.
Not simply kinghood but any profession that constitutes power by great subordination of rank
is problematic for morality. A standing army "is incompatible with freedom" because
subordination, rigor, and despotism are necessary for the maintenance of an army. The
presence of such an army, with its idle and gallant young men, is dangerous for the town in
which they reside. Sailors are also indolent and mischievous and serve no purpose during
peacetime. The clergy system also is maintained in a grievous fashion, for much is made of
the subordination and obsequiousness of novitiates to their bishops.
Overall, "it is of great importance to observe that the character of every man is, in some
degree, formed by his profession." Thus, his opinions are formed by the structure within
which he moves every day, and the character he possesses is related to his profession. In
order for society to attain more enlightenment, it must not sustain groups of men who are
made foolish or cruel by the nature of their professions.
Even though an aristocracy may be the most natural type of government as the earliest
society emerges from barbarism, this form of government became untenable as the years
progressed and the people begin agitating for some share of the power. It is the "pestiferous
purple" of royalty that thwarts the progress of civilizations and "warps the understanding."
Analysis
In this first chapter Wollstonecraft tackles some of the major reasons why women are
subjugated: prejudice, lack of education, lack of ability to take on a profession, their own
silliness and eschewing of reason, and a governmental structure that does not yield enough
power to the people. Through society's mandate that they render themselves attractive before
all else, women become ridiculous, immoral, and worthy of disapprobation. Women have a
soul just as men do, and if the soul is unsexed, as she argues, then both sexes have a capacity
for reason and should endeavor to exercise it.
Wollstonecraft mentions Jean-Jacques Rousseau, her intellectual contemporary (more or less;
he died in 1778 when she was 19) and one of the major philosophical voices from the Age of
Reason. Rousseau expostulated several views on women that were very distasteful to
Wollstonecraft, and multiple times throughout the Vindication she lambastes him. As the
scholar CatrionaMacKenzie writes, "Her targets are, first, Rousseau's claim that women are
by nature inferior to men with respect to those capacities that ground equality—namely
reason, independence, and virtue—and second, his claim that women's equality would
subvert the social order." She may agree with Rousseau to some extent that women are sillier
and more rational than men, but she argues that this is because society has molded them in
such a fashion and has denied them the capacity to reason like men.
Similarly, Wollstonecraft critiques Rousseau's conception of female virtue, which he believes
is founded on modesty, not reason, and grants some of his assumptions but critiques the
inferences he draws from them. Public virtue must be founded on private virtue, but the way
women are raised will subvert that goal, she argues. In contrast, his advice, as MacKenzie
writes, "is more likely to produce infidelity or at least sham infidelity, than genuine fidelity
because it focuses women's whole attention on 'corporeal embellishments' rather than on
attaining genuine virtue." Wollstonecraft writes that Rousseau's "ridiculous stories, which
tend to prove that girls are naturally attentive to their persons, without laying any stress on
daily example, are below contempt" (43). She scoffs, "I have, probably, had an opportunity of
observing more girls in their infancy than J. J. Rousseau" (43), adding that she understands
what usually becomes of young girls inculcated with these repressive ideas of modesty and
virtue.
Wollstonecraft's frequent critique of Rousseau is that he simply wants women to grow up
learning that their attractiveness is what matters, since to him they are incapable of reason
and truly equal education is inappropriate. In chapter five she will go into depth regarding the
writers whose work is problematic, but the fact that Rousseau is mentioned in this first
chapter and in nearly every other one demonstrates the central role he plays in her social and
philosophical critique. He is a figure to challenge, subvert, and even negate. In taking on the
premises of one of the famous philosophers of her time, Wollstonecraft is entering the debate
at the highest level and establishing herself as a figure to be reckoned with.
Finally, one more point of discussion for this first chapter includes the discussion of
kinghood, power, and freedom. Wollstonecraft is writing nearly one hundred years after John
Locke and Thomas Hobbes, political philosophers whose theories of social contract had
recently come to the fore quite conspicuously in the American Revolution and the French
Revolution. There is an implicit, and at times explicit, utilization of the tenets of democracy
and the social contract in the Vindication. Wollstonecraft criticizes absolute power derived
from some arbitrary fount; for Locke and others, this was royal lineage, whereas for
Wollstonecraft this is gender. Men have no right to tyrannize over women, she argues, based
on their gender, whatever natural physical superiorities men may enjoy. Their claim that they
are reasonable and rational while women are incapable of being rational is specious because
the soul is not gendered and virtue is relative rather than qualitatively different by gender.
The governmental danger of tyranny via aristocracy or monarchy has a social parallel in
men‘s tyrannical use of power over women.
Chapter II: The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed
Many arguments have been put forth to justify man's tyranny over woman and explain how
women are unable to attain virtue due to their insufficient strength. However, Wollstonecraft
repeats, if women have souls then there should be no fundamental difference between men
and women in pursuing and attaining virtue. Men complain about the silliness and folly of
women but do not comprehend that people themselves are responsible for the ubiquity of
women's servility; from childhood women are taught to be weak, soft, cunning, and proud
only of their beauty. Women are kept in a state of childhood and innocence, and when the
term "innocence" is applied to women it designates them as weak rather than blameless.
Wollstonecraft turns to the subject of manners and education. Individual education is
extremely significant not just to manners but to fundamental human development as it "will
slowly sharpen the senses, form the temper, regulate the passions as they begin to ferment,
and set the understanding to work before the body arrives at maturity; so that the man may
only have to proceed, not to begin, the important task of learning to think and reason." Of
course, individual education must be supplemented by the society within which men and
women live. The most perfect type of education is one that encourages the individual to attain
habits of virtue that will render him or her independent. Virtuous beings must derive their
virtue from the exercise of reason. Rousseau focused on applying that argument to men, and
Wollstonecraft here applies it to women.
Many of the writers on female education, such as Rousseau and Dr. Gregory, tend to paint
women as more artificial and weak than they would be under better conditions. Their work
can be said to degrade one half of the human species, which is objectionable. Taking
Rousseau's argument to its end, if men achieved perfection of mind when they arrived at
maturity it would be acceptable to have man and woman become one and let the woman lean
on the man's perfect understanding, but in reality, men are just as debauched and childlike as
women are assumed to be!
There are many causes that enslave women, one of them being the disregard of order.
Women's education is disorganized, fragmented, and random. The knowledge strong women
attain is usually received from the desultory observation of everyday life. In her time,
learning comes in snatches and is always subordinate to the goal of perfecting one's beauty.
This situation is similar to that of military men, who are "sent into the world before their
minds have been stored with knowledge or fortified by principles." Standing armies are
occupied with the same sorts of things women are: dancing, crowds, ridicule. (Even so,
military men benefit from their sex.) Similarly, both military men and women "acquire
manners before morals, and a knowledge of life before they have, from reflection, any
acquaintance with the grand ideal outline of human nature." They thus are driven by social
norms that they hold like prejudices, without understanding.
For their part, sensualists prefer to keep women in the dark in their quest for power.
Rousseau's character Sophia from his novel Émile is a case in point. Wollstonecraft avers that
she admires Rousseau and does not to intend to criticize Sophia as a whole but the foundation
upon which she was built: her faulty education. Women are to "be considered either as moral
beings, or so weak that they must be entirely subjected to the superior faculties of men," and
Rousseau's answer to that claim is to have women never feel independent, to learn the grand
lesson of obedience. This is absurd, she argues, since women's conduct "should be founded
on the same principles and have the same aim" as men's. The end of women's exertions
should be to "unfold their own faculties and acquire the dignity of conscious virtue."
Wollstonecraft's aim is not to invert the order of things. Men's physical size makes them
naturally superior because it, as well as their worldly pursuits, leads to greater opportunities
to make moral choices and attain virtue. All she is saying is that there should be no double
standard when it comes to virtue; moral and intellectual virtue should not differ in kind for
men and women.
Further, women will not lose their "peculiar graces" if they pursue knowledge. Wollstonecraft
is not trying to speak against love, but rather to demonstrate how tumultuous passions should
not usurp the place of the superior powers. Women's charms and beauty fade away during her
marriage; "will she then have sufficient native energy to look into herself for comfort, and
cultivate her dormant faculties?" She may simply try to please other men, having stored little
other virtue to rely on.
Also, Dr. Gregory's Legacy to his Daughters is problematic because he encourages them not
only to cultivate a love for dress (something he claims is "natural," although that term is
specious because women's souls seem not to have an inherent love of clothing) but to learn to
dissemble and lie about their feelings.
Instead, women should seek to purify their hearts, but they cannot do so when they are
entirely dependent on their emotions and senses and care only for trivial things. Women
should not be content with a role that gives them nothing else to do but secure men's
affections. Besides, a woman who strengthens her mind and body will become a friend to her
husband, not merely a servile dependent. More importantly, the women in history who
distinguished themselves were not the most attractive or gentle.
Love is in fact dangerous in a marriage, for it is assumed that passion is commonplace, but
when it dies out the marriage becomes problematic. Those with intelligence understand that
passion should be replaced by friendship and understanding. Passions can spur actions but
soon sink into mere appetites and become only a momentary gratification when the object is
obtained. Wollstonecraft even ventures to claim that "an unhappy marriage is often very
advantageous to a family, and ... a neglected wife is, in general, the best mother" because
happiness and pleasure detract from experience and understanding. Reason must teach
passion to submit to necessity.
Dr. Gregory also advises his daughters not to bother cultivating their minds by reading or
educating themselves if they intend to marry. Women should not stop their pursuit of
knowledge, Wollstonecraft rebuts, when they decide they want to marry. Some women do go
too far into cultivating their delicacy of sentiment (such as novelists), but that is not what she
advocates. Dr. Gregory's ideas amount to nothing more than a system of slavery.
Moreover, there is nothing wrong with gentleness as it is observed in the scriptures, but when
"gentleness" is applied to women it brings with it weakness, dependence, prostration, and
quiet submission. It is absurd that women are told to only plan for the present in their
marriage, and only recommended to cultivate the virtues of gentleness and docility. Women
are thus made the toys of their husbands, meant to amuse them instead of help them. It seems
ridiculous that "passive indolence" could really make the best wives. Men have made women
sink almost below the standard for rational creatures.
The minds of women should be cultivated, and they should be able to exercise their Godgiven reason. Also, if "experience should prove that they cannot attain the same strength of
mind, perseverance, and fortitude, let their virtues be the same in kind, though they may
vainly struggle for the same degree; and the superiority of man will be equally clear, if not
clearer."
Wollstonecraft states that she loves man as her fellow but does not love the scepter he uses to
wield power over women; any submission she has to a man is due to reason, not the mere fact
of his sex. Liberty is the mother of virtue, but when women are slaves they cannot attain
virtue.
Analysis
Wollstonecraft discusses a woman's role as a wife many times throughout her work. She
espouses the idea that if women are continually oppressed by society and denied education
and its concomitant development of reason, they cannot be good wives. Some, in their
silliness instilled in them from girlhood, will be discontented with the routine of married life
and look for illicit love affairs elsewhere in order to continue to stimulate their sensibility.
Others will tyrannize over their husbands in their unconscious desire for power. Husbands
and wives can never be true friends or companions if women want only to be pleasing and
alluring.
Wollstonecraft's ideal marriage is one that resembles friendship in its emphasis on freedom,
reason, mutual esteem, respect, and concern for moral character. This in turn mirrors
traditional political liberalism in its promulgation of liberty and equality. Several scholars
have noted the fact that Wollstonecraft thinks about marriage in a political manner, as well as
the fact that her ideal marriage is like a friendship. One of the questions that stems from such
discussions is where sexuality can fit in, as it seems that, in Vindication, Wollstonecraft
counsels against letting sex and passion take on a central role in a relationship.
Ruth Abbey's scholarly article on this subject is quite illuminating. She first places the author
in the context of other writers, particularly John Stuart Mill, who firmly argued that marriage
should be like friendship. Unlike Mill, however, Wollstonecraft's ideas were more complex
and did not fully espouse the idea that marriage could embody the hegemonic social contract
and "rights discourse" whereby women should voluntarily give up their liberty by getting
married. Abbey also points out Wollstonecraft's antipathy to the notion that marriage was the
only way for a woman to rise in life; this notion is especially frustrating because of the ways
in which women are taught from childhood to render themselves appealing to the male sex.
Female education is sporadic and misleading and tends to result in girls who want to be
alluring. This is also dangerous for men because women only want the "rakes" and "gallants"
who can flatter and tease, not the men of substance. Similarly, Wollstonecraft argues,
education in its limited and sexist capacity leads to bad mothers and a cycle of bad education
over the following generations.
Thus, as Abbey writes, "if men and women marry by choice and for companionship, the
husband is more likely to be at home and be a better father to his children." The husband and
wife would not be subject to "petty jealousies" and would channel their energies into being
effective parents. Neither would seek romantic solace outside of the home or exercise undue
power within it. Each would value the partner's character, not physical attractiveness alone.
Of course, as Abbey points out, Wollstonecraft also entertained the notion that a woman did
not have to marry at all; she could a meaningful, fulfilled life. Of course, this would be not be
considered a very common possibility in an age when marriage was expected, but the
possibility existed.
Wollstonecraft prioritizes reason over power. For reason to abound in households, arbitrary
power must be eradicated. Since both men and women are capable of reason, there is no
substantive explanation for why men ought to rule absolutely over their wives. Furthermore,
since women are ruled by their husbands, they act out tyrannically with their inferiors; they
seek out in a clandestine and calculating fashion how to exercise power over children,
servants, and animals. Abbey notes that the author's "idea of marriage as friendship would
bring this situation to an end" and make an environment "more conducive to the development
of the virtues citizens need."
Finally, regarding to sex within marriage, it may seem like Wollstonecraft does not see the
two as compatible. However, it was obvious that she did not deny the "sexual dimension of
personality; on the contrary, her discussions of modesty and its role in directing and
controlling sexual desire testify to its presence. Nor does she underestimate the role sexual
desire might play in a love relationship: rather, she admires the Danish practice of giving
engaged couples considerable liberty in their courtship," Abbey explains. Sexual desire can,
however, become all-consuming and thus problematic. However, Wollstonecraft is also
realistic concerning how such desire usually fades away in marriage as people age.
Friendship can survive after such passion wanes, since reason long outlasts external beauty.
Chapter III: The Same Subject Continued
People of genius, Wollstonecraft writes, tend to ignore and disregard their health as they
pursue their calling. People assume such people are weak and naturally have a delicate
constitution, but strength of mind is usually accompanied by strength of body because there is
a "natural soundness of constitution." Shakespeare and Milton did not write with shaky
hands, did they?
Even if it can be acknowledged that men have more physical strength than women, their
virtue and knowledge should be the same in nature and degree, and women should endeavor
to attain those virtues in the same fashion as men. It is absurd that women tout their weakness
and exalt in their own delicacy of health. What power women do have comes from preying
on the weakness of men, but in obtaining this power they degrade their own character and, to
make matters worse, "licentiousness spreads through the whole society." If women were only
educated as men, the progress of human knowledge would proceed without its frequent
checks.
Similarly, even though women are physically weaker than men, why must they be made even
weaker than nature intended? A mother who wants to instill character in her daughter must
avoid the teachings of Rousseau and instead allow her a measure of independence instead of
the dependence that is assumed natural for young girls. The pursuit of beauty and poise is
restricting and repressive, and the idea that being a coquette is natural is absurd; even
Rousseau would admit this if he were not inclined to propagate such an idea to serve his own
ends. Wollstonecraft has had many more opportunities to observe young women than
Rousseau has, and she notes that when girls and boys are allowed to play together in
ignorance of sex distinctions, girls are likely to avoid coming to the conclusion that they must
pursue physical beauty and eschew rationality.
As the attainment of beauty is the only pursuit women are taught to have, they do not have
the various employments and pursuits that men do, those which lead to experience and
knowledge and the opening of their minds. Women tend to limit themselves to the triumph of
the hour.
The things that men have that seem to exalt them above other men—birth, riches, and other
extrinsic advantages—in fact degrade them. A man who exercises absolute power loses his
humanity, but men still follow such a creature. It would be absurd to allow men in the pride
of power over women to invoke the same excuses that tyrannical rulers do, that women are
inferior to men because they always have been. Whatever small amount of power women
have usually fades away, and they become slaves or fickle tyrants over their miniature
kingdoms. They act as poorly as their male counterparts do.
It is thus time to "effect a revolution in female manners—time to restore them to their lost
dignity—and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to
reform the world." The true foundation for morality is the Supreme Being, who "must be just,
because he is wise, he must be good, because he is omnipotent." God is the fountain of
wisdom and goodness and power and is thus the only one whom humans must look to when
they desire to acquire virtue or knowledge.
Returning from her digression, Wollstonecraft moves to discuss why men seem to expect
impossibilities, that is, why they expect "virtue from a slave" who has been rendered weak
and vicious by society. Should women be shut up or allowed to think for themselves?
Wollstonecraft concedes that it will be a long time before deeply held prejudices are routed
out of society and women understand that they do not need to affect weakness and delicacy
and betray their real interests.
Women who are uneducated delight in wielding what small amount of power they have and
may use it improperly toward their children or husband. It is only natural that one so
repressed will take pleasure in resting their yoke on even weaker shoulders. If an uneducated
woman who was nothing other than an object of pleasure to her husband and never learned
anything other than obedience and servility is widowed, then she is lost. She does not have
the ability to act for herself and for her children and will no doubt fall prey to a seducer or
become the victim of "discontent or blind indulgence." This situation is not uncommon or
outlandish given the way women are taught to behave.
In terms of religion, women believe that wiser heads than theirs understand the mysteries of
the scriptures and it is not their place to seek enlightenment. They cannot judge for
themselves and content themselves with mere offerings.
Returning to the common situation of a man dying and leaving his wife a widow, if the
woman in this case was actually the friend and helpmate of her husband and had earned his
respect then she will not have as difficult a time as the previous woman would. She could
turn to her children and anxiously endeavor to provide for them, is "raised to heroism by
misfortunes," and avoids the pitfalls most common to her sex. Her children grow up with
virtues instilled, and her life's task is fulfilled. She can die calm and content.
To sum up, Wollstonecraft decries the idea of different sexual virtues and says that man and
woman must be the same; the writers who espouse the idea that virtue is relative, "having no
foundation other than utility," are grossly incorrect. Women may have different duties to
fulfill in a particular social milieu, but they are still human duties. Human character is formed
by the experiences and endeavors an individual pursues, and if these experiences and
endeavors are limited or nonexistent, then character and virtue are stilted and unformed.
Women are rendered insipid because they are not allowed these pursuits, and "vanity takes
the place of every social affection, and the characteristics of humanity can scarcely be
discerned."
Analysis
Readers might note Wollstonecraft‘s propensity for repeating and belaboring a point. The
title of this chapter, "The Same Subject Continued," suggests as much. Let us take the
opportunity to put Wollstonecraft‘s ideas in a broader context.
Wollstonecraft calls for a "revolution in female manners" several times throughout this text.
These calls to revolution prefigure the American women's movement of the 19th century.
Scholars have tried to demonstrate the continuities of style and idea between Wollstonecraft,
commonly referred to as the first feminist, and her 19th-century counterparts. The common
assumption is that the women of the 19th century shied away from her because of the depths
to which her reputation had plummeted. This problem was due to the publication of William
Godwin's memoir about life with Wollstonecraft, which revealed her putative immorality in
posing as Gilbert Imlay's wife and bearing his child out of wedlock. However, while she may
have remained controversial in terms of the potentiality of women's sexual liberation, her
philosophy was clearly influential on 19th-century feminist thought, rhetoric, and even
strategy.
Scholars Eileen Hunt Botting's and Christine Carey's influential and painstakingly-researched
article delves into the work and lives of Hannah Mather Crocker, Lucretia Mott, Sarah
Grimké, Margaret Fuller, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, all of whom
"critically engaged the Rights of Women, entering into a philosophical dialogue with its
author on the questions which she so controversially brought to the forefront of the
Enlightenment: is the soul sexed or unsexed? Do men and women share the same moral laws,
and practice the same moral virtues? Should boys and girls be educated in the same way?"
From this perspective, it can hardly be denied that Wollstonecraft addressed fundamental
questions with lasting significance, in a way that later writers and activists found worthy of
grappling with.
For the purposes of this analysis, we will look at three of the figures Botting and Carey
analyzed: Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mott's writings
explicitly state she read Wollstonecraft; in her own speeches she spread her interpretation of
her predecessor's ideas, especially on "the corrupt state of feminine culture and female
education and the need for their reform." She railed against decadent, luxurious culture that
subordinated women to men and heavily criticized novels, just like her predecessor did. Both
believed female education would help women fulfill their roles as wives and mothers, and
that they should be independent in marriage, trained for some professions, and capable of
fulfilling their intellectual promise.
Susan B. Anthony read Wollstonecraft and donated her copy of the book to the Library of
Congress, identifying Wollstonecraft as the founding mother and philosopher of the feminist
movement in her dedication on the inside cover. Both believed equal souls had the equal right
to education. Anthony argued that the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution also
referred to women, not just African Americans, because it referred to "servitude," a situation
most women found themselves in. One difference was that while Wollstonecraft did believe
women should have access to property in a limited fashion, she mostly believed it was
deleterious to strive for property. Anthony, in contrast, felt that property was essential for
women because it represented liberty and autonomy.
Finally, Elizabeth Cady Stanton also delves into the ways in which societies have oppressed
women, and argues "that male control over customs and education—what Wollstonecraft
calls 'the male Aristocracy'—produces a false education that indoctrinates male superiority
and stunts the physical, moral, and intellectual abilities of women." Both agree that equal
education makes better marriages because husband and wife are partners. One point of
divergence is on the theological question of whether or not the human soul is sexed;
"Wollstonecraft argues that the soul has no sex, and uses this theological notion as the
metaphysical basis of her view of human equality, Stanton contends that there is 'no doubt
there is sex in the mortal and spiritual world.'"
It is clear that the 19th-century feminists were challenged and influenced by the writings of
Wollstonecraft and considered her their most worthy predecessor. It may well be impossible
to mount a serious discussion of the origins of feminism and the feminist movement without
including Wollstonecraft.
Chapter IV: Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman Is Reduced by
Various Causes
Women are rendered weak by men and by circumstances, Wollstonecraft repeats. They are
like slaves in that they only live for the present moment and finally despise that freedom
which they never try to attain. Since women are denied genius and rationality, there is little
other way to characterize intellect. Man was not created perfect, or else he would cease to
exist upon death since existence after life would not be necessary. Man must strive for
reason, which is how he is improved. Reason must be the same in men and women since it
originates from a divine source, the Creator. Men fall into error when they view education as
merely preparation for life and do not consider it the first step toward gradually progressing
toward enlightenment and perfection.
Wollstonecraft explains that she will now endeavor to point out the various ways in which
her sex is degraded. The "grand source of folly and vice has ever appeared to me to arise
from narrowness of mind." A mind cannot be expected to expand when it is not threatened by
adversity or the pursuit of knowledge "goaded on by necessity." The business of a woman's
life is pleasure, but she will not gain wisdom from it. These women exalt their own
inferiority, and the men they want to impress actually disdain their weaknesses.
The female sex is not much different than the rich because they are born with a set of
privileges. Women are used to company and are rarely alone; this leads to the predominance
of sentiments, not passions. They are not able to think and ruminate alone and come to their
own decisions based on reason. This is also similar to the rich, for "they do not sufficiently
deal in general ideas, collected by impassioned thinking, or calm investigation."
Wollstonecraft quotes Adam Smith on the same subject; he argues that the rich cultivate the
arts by which they submit the rest of mankind to their power and govern their inclinations.
However, the rich man does not have actual talents and virtues; his skills are specious and
frivolous.
In the middle rank of society men have occupations and professions to focus their minds and
develop their reason, while women "have no other scheme to sharpen their faculties."
Women, like the rich, "have acquired all the follies and vices of civilization, and missed the
useful fruit." Civilized women have even less morality than the primitive ones, since civilized
women are so weakened. Their opinions waver because they have contradictory emotions
instead of progressive views. Novels, music, poetry, and gallantry serve to make women
"creatures of sensation," their characters molded by folly. Should one half of the human race
really continue in such a fashion and "remain with listless inactivity and stupid
acquiescence?"
Women earn men's contempt even though they are so soft and fair. If girls were only treated
as boys in terms of their fear and displays of weakness, they would grow up to be more
respectable. Wollstonecraft asserts, "I do not wish them to have power over men; but over
themselves." There is no charm in ignorance. Reason is necessary for a woman to perform
any duty properly, but sensibility is not reason.
Education in her time tends to make women either fine ladies or "mere notable women,"
meaning industrious and energetic housewives. With regard to the former, they look down
upon vulgar accomplishments while their own offer little to brag about. These women are
more amiable but are weak and frail and silly. The housewives are respected by their
husbands for being trusty servants, but they are unfit to manage a family. As the rearing of
children is a duty given to mothers, women of sensibility do badly because they are carried
away by their feelings and spoil their children.
Often the female sex is considered to arrive at maturity before the male sex does. This is not
helpful for the cause of women because, according to Wollstonecraft, it offers false
information. Polygamy is also degrading because it reinforces the idea of women's inferiority
and violates nature.
Wollstonecraft explains that "much of the evils of life arise from a desire of present
enjoyment that outruns itself." This is clear with love, for it is an animal appetite that cannot
feed long on itself without extinguishing. Love is transitory. Contrasted with friendship,
which is "founded on principle, and cemented by time," love is problematic. Wollstonecraft
goes so far as to argue that friendship and love cannot exist together in the same bosom
because they are diametrically opposed. Wollstonecraft is not against strong and perseverant
passions but the "romantic wavering feelings" of females.
The result of this analysis is Wollstonecraft‘s conclusion that the poorer women in society
actually have the most virtue among women due to their toil and heroic actions, devoid of the
frippery of fashion and sentimentality. All of the degradations of the female sex "spring from
want of understanding," but at least poor women learn how to work hard in order to survive.
Analysis
In this chapter Wollstonecraft expatiates on several of the reasons why women are rendered
inferior. In brief, men in her time and the society they control render women feeble, inferior,
and irrational. Women are not able to develop reason, which is the only way they would
become able to exercise self-governance. They are supposed to be pleasing to men in their
appearance and manners, which is problematic since beauty is evanescent. Their education is
fragmentary and geared towards their attainment of a husband. Wollstonecraft has treated
these issues in earlier chapters.
Wollstonecraft again rails against the idea of separate virtues for men and women. The
prevailing view of the day espoused separate spheres of activity. As summed up by the
scholar Carolyn W. Korsmeyer, "female nature and feminine virtues were often touted as the
complement of male nature and masculine virtues, the two together making a perfect whole
of human behavior." The idea of natural spheres was particularly absurd to Wollstonecraft,
since men do not actually have one in her society: their sphere spans the whole world and
their numerous activities within it. Women are confined and relegated to the home only. The
imbalance seemed implausible on its face.
In this chapter Wollstonecraft explores the many deleterious effects which result from this
stratification of men and women. Since women have no real power of their own, they
exercise what little they can over their children, husbands, and servants. They are callous,
cruel, insipid, silly, and capricious. Men actually learn to despise the women they have
created even as they prop up their absurdities. Women are led to only want romance and
sentiment and seek to indulge their emotions. Thus, they prefer rakes and libertines over men
of substance and character. They only care for the present moment and transitory pleasure. In
their marriages they are often unhappy because they want that passion of courtship to
continue and cannot adjust to the friendship and equanimity that are needed once passion and
beauty wane. Again, see earlier chapters for Wollstonecraft‘s similar points earlier.
Wollstonecraft identifies novels as a major source of the propagation of these injurious ideals
for women. She writes that "novels, music, poetry, and gallantry all tend to make women the
creatures of sensation, and their character is thus formed in the mould of folly during the time
they are acquiring accomplishments" (61). In chapter 13 she develops her viewpoint further,
explaining that "stupid novelists, who knowing little of human nature, work up stale tales,
and describe meretricious senses, all retailed in a sentimental jargon, which equally tend to
corrupt the taste, and draw the heart aside from its daily duties" (183). For these women,
"sentiments become events" (183), and they do not want to read anything else of substance.
The reading of novels "makes women, and particularly ladies of fashion, very fond of using
strong expressions and superlatives in conversation" (186). Wollstonecraft herself resists this
writing style, adopting instead one designed to appeal to reason while still expressing
justified emotion regarding the poor state of women in her society.
One final, minor note: readers might notice that while Wollstonecraft is very critical of the
way in which men repress and subordinate women, she is also quite harsh and stinging in her
criticism of women themselves. She seems disdainful, disgusted, and embarrassed by their
behavior, whether it is ultimately their fault or not. Feminist scholar Barbara Taylor notices
that "against her sex she spoke also, sometimes with a misogynist intensity which appalls the
modern reader." It seems apparent that Wollstonecraft's ideas and perspectives on gender
relations came not just from a pragmatic, theoretical place but from deep within her, rooted in
her own experiences and psychology. Her occasional vitriol towards her own sex is likely to
be not just an expression of frustration with the women she meets in society, who seem to
revel in their subjugation and know or seek no alternative, but also a manifestation of her
frustration with the limitations placed upon herself as a smart, middle-class woman in the late
18th century.
Chapter V: Animadversions on Some Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of
Pity, Bordering on Contempt
Wollstonecraft discusses several authors whose work she deplores for its depiction of women
as weak and pitiful. She begins with Rousseau, whose character of Sophia in his novel Émile
exemplifies the most deleterious traits a woman could possess. Rousseau‘s views on women
are, as Wollstonecraft sees them: women should be weaker and more passive than men due to
their physical inferiority, a woman ought to sacrifice every bodily comfort to render herself
agreeable to a man, and she should be completely inferior mentally.
As Wollstonecraft explains, quoting Rousseau, he writes that the education of women should
be relative to men‘s and that ―to please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them,
to educate us when young, and take care of us when grown up, to advise, to console us to
render our lives easy and agreeable: these are the duties of women all times, and what they
should be taught in their infancy.‖ Girls are quite incapable of understanding what is told to
them, and they care only about their behavior. They must be taught their roles early. To be
thought beautiful, they are under constant and severe restraint in their persons and their
minds. Rousseau argues that they ought to have as little liberty as possible because they will
indulge what is given to them. Daughters should be totally submissive.
Wollstonecraft completely disagrees with Rousseau; she writes that men have ―superior
strength of body; but were it not for mistaken notions of beauty, women would acquire
sufficient to enable them to earn their subsistence, the true definition of independence; and to
bear those bodily inconveniences and exertions that are requisite to strengthen the mind.‖
Rousseau even advocates taking religion away from women in the sense that they do not need
to engage in it on their own, but a man should explain it to them. Wollstonecraft does not
understand why, even though a woman should be beautiful and innocent, her understanding
should be sacrificed as well. She does not see a beneficial marriage state for an insipid,
frivolous woman and a shallow man.
In the second section of this long chapter, Wollstonecraft turns to other writers. Dr. Fordyce‘s
sermons are popular, but he is nearly as dangerous as Rousseau in his ―most sentimental rant‖
on how women ought to behave. Hervey‘s Meditations are objectionable for their ―lover-like
phrases of pumped up passion.‖ His women are depicted in terms of conquest only. His
invocation of desire and flattery creates women of little substance.
In section three Dr. Gregory‘s ―Legacy to His Daughters‖ is addressed once more.
Wollstonecraft explains that his daughters will grow up completely dependent and deceptive.
Another point in his discourse is ―the sentiment, that a woman may allow all innocent
freedoms, provided her virtue is secure, is both grossly indelicate and dangerous,‖ and
Wollstonecraft agrees with his point.
In section four, she explains that she does not want to deal with every writer who has
presented his views on the need to subjugate and oppress women, for that would take far too
long; she does want to attack the ―boasted prerogative of man‖ that comes from the ―iron
scepter of tyranny.‖
It is not only the male authors who have erroneous and prejudicial perspectives on women;
female authors are sometimes complicit in their own inferiority. Women tend to ―adopt the
sentiments that brutalize them.‖ Mrs. Piozzi and the Baroness de Stael are both responsible
for putting into print these problematic views. Madame Genlis‘s books for children feature
―prejudices as unreasonable as strong.‖
Of course, there are some exceptions. Mrs. Chapone‘s letters are worthy of approbation, and
Mrs. Macauley was perhaps ―the woman of the greatest abilities, undoubtedly, that this
country has ever produced,‖ even though many do not know of her.
In section five, Wollstonecraft excoriates Lord Chesterfield‘s letters, with their ―unmanly,
immoral system,‖ and she tries to imagine a world ―stripped of its false delusive charms.‖ As
she nears the end of the chapter, she brings God into her discussion and calls upon her readers
to remember, ―most prospects in life are marred by the shuffling worldly wisdom of men,
who, forgetting that they cannot serve God and mammon, endeavor to blend contradictory
things.‖
Analysis
One of the most compelling elements of Wollstonecraft‘s work is the care with which she
restates and then dismantles other writers‘ viewpoints about the way men and women ought
to be raised taught and to behave. She argues that these writers‘ views are specious and
dangerous. Rousseau bears the brunt of her ire, as in her view his completely irrational and
self-interested portrayal of the ideal woman, Sophia, in his famous work is one of the most
telling examples of the sort of deeply entrenched views on gender that prevailed in the 18th
century. Wollstonecraft quotes large blocks of his text in order to demonstrate to her readers
just how misogynistic she finds Rousseau. As she does so, it is important to remember that
she is also persuading her readers that she can compete against a leading philosopher and win
the argument.
So, who is Wollstonecraft‘s intended audience? Some scholars have claimed her primary
audience is middle-class women because much of her argument regarding the need for reform
seems to center upon that class, while others claim the primary audience is the men who need
to adjust the system of gender stratification that is so damaging to society. Amy Elizabeth
Smith‘s influential article delves into this question and concludes, as one might expect, that
Wollstonecraft‘s audience is both men and women, and that ―what has often been seen as a
lack of focus [in her writing] can be more accurately seen as a double focus.‖ Beyond that,
Wollstonecraft may have been trying to engage the leading philosophers of her time to make
broader inroads against the fundamental points on which she and people such as Rousseau
disagree.
Wollstonecraft herself makes several references to readers. The first reference is to middleclass women, but there are several more that show she anticipated male readers. Her preface
reveals that she is writing to both men and women. It is important to note that there are two
types of men who ought to hear her message: libertines and men of reason. In this chapter Dr.
Gregory is mentioned; he is a man of substance but he still has several prejudices that must
be ameliorated by women.
As for women, Smith points out that ―when Wollstonecraft addresses the weakness that
leaves women ‗forlorn and disconsolate‘ she adopts a more distant stance and does not
directly associate herself with her sex.‖ She knows she is also a victim of the gendered
societal system but does not believe herself privy to the same excesses of silliness and
ignorance her female peers are.
Both men and women are to learn lessons from Wollstonecraft's discourse. For men, ―frail
and foolish women, however languid and appealing they appear, do not make good mothers;
there are no real rewards for the encouragement of such behavior in females. Instead, sensible
women will make a pleasing home and provide healthy, happy heirs.‖ Women should note
that their husbands will tire of them if they have nothing else to offer but their transitory
beauty.
One stylistic tool Wollstonecraft uses that Smith notes is the ―semi-imperative,‖ which
includes the use of pleas and requests to her readers. She continually warns them of the
effects of their bad behavior, particularly her male readers. She issues plenty of challenges to
men to address the reasons and foundations for their erroneous claims of women's inferiority
and their own legitimacy of authority. Overall, the Revolution in Female Manners that
Wollstonecraft advocates is viewed as possible and necessary, but ―despite the encouraging
tone of this passage a pessimism about women pervades the work.‖ Men of understanding
and reason must help, because without them women simply cannot overcome their
weaknesses inculcated and reinforced in so many ways by society.
Chapters VI and VII: The Effect Which an Early Association of Ideas Has upon the
Character; Modesty--Comprehensively Considered, and Not as a Sexual Virtue
The insufficient education women receive, coupled with their subordinate status in society,
render them defected. Early associations and ideas tend to have a determinate effect upon
their character. Acquiring knowledge, on the positive side, offers a great advantage. The
association of ideas is either habitual or instantaneous, with the latter mode "seeming to
depend on the original temperature of the mind than on the will." Ideas are taken in until a
circumstance makes them dart into the mind with force. We have little power over these
quick associations, and reason can obtain little sway over them. Humans tend to prefer these
poetic feelings and flights of fancy, fleeing from sensible objects until an author shows them
the truth and they benefit from his eyes.
Thus, education "only supplies the man of genius with knowledge to give variety and contrast
to his associations; but there is an habitual association of ideas, that grows 'with our growth,'
which has a great effect on the moral character of mankind; and by which a turn is given to
the mind that commonly remains throughout life." Females tend to be more habitually
enslaved to first impressions than males because they do not move about in larger society and
occupy themselves with significant concerns as males do. Everything they see or hear fixes
their associations and calls forth emotions, but these are of a sexual character and they are
weakened and rendered delicate and sickly. Women are usually ridiculed for their rote
learning, but how can they be held responsible, she asks, when they are not allowed to let
reason govern their conduct and can only learn in a rote fashion?
Rakes thus find it easy to appeal to women, who shun reasonable and sensible men because
their feelings are not as affected and they have "few sentiments in common." It is a bit absurd
to expect women to be more reasonable than men in matters of love when men themselves
turn from the mind to beauty when they are looking for a female companion. Love and
arbitrary passion reign by their own authority and are not privy to reason; "common passions
are excited by common qualities."
These superficial accomplishments give the rake the edge with women, for they are "rendered
gay and giddy by the whole tenor of their lives" and shy away from wisdom. Women do not
understand that true beauty arises from the mind, but it is not wholly their fault because they
are conditioned to think in this manner. The rake will always have the advantage until
conditions change.
If the revolution Wollstonecraft desires were to occur, reason would take the place of
emotion and people would "quickly learn to despise the sensibility that had been excited and
hackneyed in the ways of women, whose trade was vice; and allurements, wanton airs."
When choosing a husband they would not be led astray by the qualities of a lover. Passion
could subside into friendship, and they would be happy.
Overall, it is impossible to blame a woman for desiring a rake, for "can they deserve blame
for acting according to principles so constantly inculcated? They want a lover, and protector;
and behold him kneeling before them—bravery prostrate to beauty!" Only misery can truly
ensue from this state of affairs, and only reason can bring independence and freedom.
In the next chapter, Wollstonecraft turns to a discussion of modesty, which is "the sacred
offspring of sensibility and reason!" It is necessary to distinguish between the purity of mind
that is the effect of chastity and the simplicity of character that leads an individual to form a
just opinion of themselves distant from vanity and presumption. Modesty is the soberness of
mind that teaches a man not to think more highly of himself than he ought to, and can be
distinguished from humility, which is a kind of self-abasement.
Modest men are steady where humble men are timid and vain men are presumptuous.
Modesty is a virtue and a mean, not a quality. The purity of mind that supports chastity is
nearest to the refinement of humanity that cannot happen in any but the most cultivated
minds. Through her ruminations on the subject, Wollstonecraft has concluded that women
who have most improved their minds are also the most modest.
In order to bring modesty forth from chastity, it is necessary for women to avoid
employments that only exercise sensibility. Women who pursue intellectual activities have a
greater purity of mind than those who are occupied with gay pleasures.
Even though women are more often chaste than men, it is doubtful that chastity actually
produces modesty (although it can produce propriety of conduct). Women do have the
advantage in propriety of conduct, as men often display impudence, gross gallantry, and
forwardness. It does not make sense that women can grow more virtuous if both men and
women do not strive toward more modest conduct. It is unfortunate that when it is necessary
to check a passion or defend honor, the burden is thrown upon the woman's shoulders; this is
contrary to reason or true modesty because women are weaker and bravery is supposed to be
a manly virtue. Men boast of their triumphs over women, but this is unfair because men are to
be the directors of a woman's reason and her protectors. The favorite men pretend to respect
women but inwardly despise "the weak creatures they consort with."
Turning back to women's upbringing once again, Wollstonecraft points out the falsities
women are told from their childhood onward. Their passions take the place of the senses and
begin to form their character. In nurseries and boarding schools women are in close confines
with each other; this is deleterious because they are too familiar with each other, which can
make their later marriage states unhappy. Girls should be washing and dressing alone
regardless of their rank. The nasty customs they are used to should be overturned, and "that
decent personal reserve which is the foundation of dignity of character, must be kept up
between woman and woman, or their minds will never gain strength or modesty." In terms of
dressing, women tend to dress only for the men of gallantry.
Similarly, Wollstonecraft objects to the shutting up of women in convents and schools. Their
silly tricks and jokes are improper. If she were to name the graces that adorn beauty, she
would choose "cleanliness, neatness, and personal reserve."
Women are also habitually indolent. Until they can strengthen their bodies and understanding
by active exertions, modesty will never take the place of bashfulness. Modesty mixes kindly
with all other virtues and is to be desired.
In terms of marriage, it is improper to prolong the passion and ardor of early courtship;
rather, common appetites and passion should be kept in check by reason for both men and
women. This obligation to check is the duty of mankind, not a sexual duty. Overall, "nature,
in these respects, may safely be left to herself; let women only acquire knowledge and
humanity, and love will teach them modesty."
Analysis
Wollstonecraft takes an Aristotelian rationalistic view of the virtue of modesty. The rational
man or woman finds the mean between self-debasing humility and brash presumption.
Recognizing this kind of argument, one can revisit some of Wollstonecraft‘s other
distinctions and find a similar pattern. For example, a mother should find the mean between
the extremes of coddling her children and tyrannizing over them.
Much of the rest of these chapters is similar to earlier material, so we again take the
opportunity to reflect on the broader context. The word "sublime" is used by Wollstonecraft
21 times in Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In chapter six she writes, "In order to admire
or esteem any thing for a continuance, we must, at least, have our curiosity excited by
knowing, in some degree, what we admire; for we are unable to estimate the value of
qualities and virtues above our comprehension. Such a respect, when it is felt, may be very
sublime" (118). In chapter seven she writes, "Yet, that affection does not deserve the epithet
of chaste which does not receive a sublime gloom of tender melancholy, that allows the mind
for a moment to stand still and enjoy the present satisfaction, when a consciousness of the
Divine presence is felt—for this must ever be the food of joy!" (124) Wollstonecraft's use of
the word is not merely a stylistic device; she also took on the idea of the sublime, especially
as promulgated by Edmund Burke, and dealt with its use not only as a stylistic mode but also
as an important associative in gender relations.
The literary scholar Christina M. Skolnik discusses Wollstonecraft's use of the sublime in a
2003 article. She begins by noting the debt to male writers such as Shakespeare, Milton,
Rousseau, Burke, and Paine. Her work is consistent with the rhetorical conventions of the
time, but since she cites those conventions in a different context, she actually constitutes a
challenge to that discourse community. She accomplishes this by adopting a masculine voice
(perhaps the only respectable one for philosophers at this time) and critiquing Burke's
arguments and style in accordance with the established critical tenets of the sublime that her
contemporaries were also using.
According to Skolnik, Wollstonecraft uses the sublime in five discernible ways. The first is
that she uses "references to the divine as a supreme power and arbiter." She writes that
people's rights are due to the divine will, transcending gender. The second "is reference to
great civilizations and the passage of time" that transcends and ultimately levels them. The
third is in her prose, which "uses classical tropes and figures and is elevated by such usage,"
taking more of a rationalistic than an emotional flight of spirit. One example, as Skolnik
points out, is personification of principles and qualities: "reason, truth, virtue, and religion are
personified throughout her text and often gendered female. At other points in the text,
however, reason, virtue, and justice are described as masculine characteristics. This mixing of
gendered associations is typical of Wollstonecraft's rhetoric throughout both Vindications and
parallels the shifting qualities of her prose style as well as her rhetorical critiques."
The fourth way is the use of apostrophe. In this work Wollstonecraft addresses her work not
just to Burke but to a larger audience and often women in particular. Finally, Skolnik sees the
sublime in Wollstonecraft's valorization of social justice and equity "through association with
both the transcendent and the terrifying characteristics of the sublime." Morality and reason
are described through the lens of the sublime, providing a kind of heavenly utopia, whereas
social injustice is likened to a hell on earth, in the low reality of present circumstances.
Overall, the sublime is both an aesthetic category and an expression of the gendertranscendent value of social equity.
Thus Wollstonecraft has mixed the Classical and the Romantic. Skolnik ends her article with
a discussion of the gender construction of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Wollstonecraft has challenged the traditionally masculine and feminine virtues by criticizing
their tendency to render women corrupt, useless, or stunted. To the degree that gender is a
social construct, it has resulted in problems by separating gender from nature and reason. Her
visionary idea that sexual character is shaped by society offers the possibility of a future in
which society offers ways for all people to maximize their virtue.
Chapters VIII and IX: Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of a
Good Reputation; Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural
Distinctions Established in Society
Wollstonecraft addresses behavior and reputation and how such things can undermine a
woman's morality. Women are taught very early to develop artificial behavior. They do not
indulge in truths but master the art of lies and platitudes. Many do not exercise their own
minds. Morality is thoroughly undermined in the female world because attention is given to
show, not substance. If only a humble mind were able to ruminate upon what God wanted, it
would "seldom form an erroneous opinion of its own virtues." These reflections can lead to a
truer understanding of reason.
While it is easy to criticize the young unmarried woman who falls into sexual immorality, a
married woman can get away with it. This is reprehensible, for she must be deceitful and
childish and vicious as well as being an unfit mother in order to pull off her affair. The
married woman has violated not only her respect for herself but also her duty to her family.
Some women who do not love their husbands do not have extramarital affairs but rather fix
their attention on themselves, exalting their unsullied reputation while at the same time
neglecting their duties.
Women only desire the respect of the world, as Rousseau himself acknowledged. He wrote,
"reputation is no less indispensable than chastity." This is a problematic perspective because
while reputation comes from exercising virtue, women can rarely ever regain their reputation
if they return to virtue, whereas men "preserve theirs during the exercise of vice."
Wollstonecraft acknowledges that those accused of vice are usually guilty of it, but some may
also earn a reputation better than they deserve.
Returning to the subject of reputation, Wollstonecraft writes that the attention is only given to
one virtue, chastity. If only a woman's honor is safe, "she may neglect every social duty; nay,
ruin her family by gaming and extravagance; yet still present a shameless front—for truly she
is an honorable woman!" Of course, while women prize this chastity, men despise it and "the
two extremes are equally destructive to society." Men are much more swayed by their
appetites (food and sex) than women. Men should respect humanity by refusing to give into
gross gluttony and other debasing forms of satiating one's natural desire for food. As for sex,
it brings men and women together and allows the species to continue, but it is also a desire
that must be properly controlled.
Women in her time have no duty to fulfill other than being attractive, so it is easy for them to
fall into casual lust. When women also themselves to be seduced by men, both are depraved
because the taste of men is indulged and women continually enslave themselves to men's
desire. Additionally, when men are afflicted with diseases attained from promiscuity, they
infect women, which can lead to aborted or deformed children. Wollstonecraft writes,
"Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them
without impunity." Men should have to support the women they ruin, or, even better, should
"turn the attention of women to the real value of chastity." Women are partially guilty here,
for all they care about is adorning their own person and being attractive to men. If virtue were
respected for its own sake, then women would not feel the need to be compensated by vanity.
Overall, men and women can corrupt or improve each other. All mankind must endeavor to
cultivate the virtues of chastity, modesty, and public spirit. There should not be a double
standard for sexual conduct, for unchaste men are dangerous in that they render women
barren, destroy their own health, and undermine morality.
In chapter nine, Wollstonecraft discusses the deleterious effects of unnatural distinctions in
rank and class. In the most polished societies lurk the most rank and noisome creatures and a
"voluptuousness pampered by the still sultry air." Property is the end, and men neglect their
duties and are treated as demigods. Religion is separated from morality, yet men wonder why
the world is filled with oppressors. There must be more equality in society or morality will
never prevail over immorality and ignorance.
Riches and inherited honors debase all of mankind, but women are injured even more
because men at least have the recourse of being a soldier or statesmen while women are
confined to their private sphere. However, there is little true heroism to be found in the
military anymore, and British politics is equally distasteful as it "consists in multiplying
dependents and contriving taxes which grind the poor to pamper the rich." Systems of rank
are preposterous and dangerous, for civilization becomes a curse. It exists of tyrants and those
who are envious of them; it also gives merit to the station of life, not the duties. Even if there
are some holes through which men can escape this situation, this is a "herculean task" for
women.
The first duty of women is to themselves as rational creatures, then as citizens, which
includes being a mother. Wollstonecraft takes up the idea of the soldier's camp as a breeding
ground for heroism, as exalted by writers like Rousseau who scoffed, "How can they leave
the nursery for the camp!" She is not in favor of war unless it is a just, defensive one. Of
course, lest her readers revolt, she is not directly advocating that women buy guns!
Women should not be so dependent for subsistence upon their husbands. It is not possible to
be generous when one has nothing, and impossible to be virtuous when one is not free.
Women ought to have representation in politics instead of "being arbitrarily governed without
having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government." They are about as
well represented as the poor mechanics, men who have manual occupations or work in a
trade; that is, the British system supports royals while these men can barely feed their
families.
Women merely want to be ladies, just as most poor people merely desire to be rich. Women
should, however, get into some professions. They could be physicians, nurses, or midwives;
study politics and read history; or get involved in some business. The only occupations
available to them are menial, though, and even being a governess (a typical occupation for an
educated woman) is often debasing and humiliating. Often "the most respected women are
the most oppressed" because they waste away their lives when they could have done
something remarkable, such as work as a doctor or run a farm. A woman who earns respect
by her hard work is much better off than a woman who is respected for her beauty.
Thus, Wollstonecraft concludes, "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."
Analysis
The historical context of this work is relevant when considering its political significance in
light of debates regarding the components, strategies, and ends of classical liberalism and
radicalism. Literary scholar Susan Ferguson claims to demonstrate that "Wollstonecraft's
critique of class and family—thought trenchant and politically explosive in her day—stops
short of challenging the centrality of those institutions to liberalism."
In brief, classical liberalism reflected its cultural situation and tended to imagine that in a free
economic system, property owners are also male heads of households. The public economy
and the private family are seen as unchanging and natural, and the state acknowledges or
guarantees rights and freedoms commensurate with property ownership and exchange.
Private and public realms are separate; after all, the family is not a competitive marketplace.
Socialist challenges to these ideas would criticize the "privatization and naturalization of the
family and the economy" and argue that the liberal state enforces repressive constraints that
effectively prop up male property owners.
Wollstonecraft does not go so far as to turn her progressive liberalism into socialism. She
does criticize property ownership in her work, but only the aristocratic forms of property that
interfere with virtue. She also implicitly accepts that the private sphere of the home is where
a woman should be; "her programme for female emancipation assumes these institutions are
necessary, good, and indeed, natural."
Nevertheless, Ferguson claims that Wollstonecraft engages in "social radicalism—a radical
politics that disrupts status quo notions of governance and authority." For example,
Vindication criticizes the system of unequal representation that keeps women out of the
public realm and reinforces the inequality of the sexes. There is no natural reason for men to
exercise superiority, since both sexes are capable of reason. She also advocates equal
education for both sexes. In terms of the relationship between the private and the public,
while she does politicize the private and does understand that it is to some degree artificial,
she does not disrupt the "structural separation" in liberalism that protects the private sphere
against government intrusion.
Overall, Wollstonecraft's radicalism was most progressive in her contemporary context. She
made demands "beyond the historic possibilities imagined by a ruling class composed of
those from bourgeois and aristocratic backgrounds," but her radicalism did not threaten the
existence of family and class structures themselves. It thus is fair to categorize Wollstonecraft
as a classical liberal who supported a free and equitable economic, social, and political
system at least in terms of gender.
Chapters X and XI: Parental Affection; Duty to Parents
When parents govern their children; they can tend to tyranny and relish power without
restraint. If reason were to become the rule of duty in life, however, such tyrants would have
cause to tremble. Some view parental affection as a "pretext to tyrannize when it can be done
without impunity, for only good and wise men are content with the respect that will bear
discussion."
Since women are often slaves to prejudice, they can rarely exhibit enlightened maternal
affection; rather, they either neglect or spoil their children. Sometimes their affection for their
children is brutish. Since the care of children is a grand duty of the female sex, it only makes
sense that there would be many arguments for "strengthening the female understanding." The
formation of character begins early in children, and it can be problematic if a mother loves
her children only out of duty or just because they are her own children. The lack of reason is
what makes mothers run into the extremes and be careless or unnatural mothers.
Meek wives are foolish mothers because they only desire their children's love and depict the
father as the "scarecrow." A woman must have independence of the mind to be a good
mother. The use of a nurse can be deleterious to the growth of parental affection, and it is
only through parental affection that "filial duty" is produced.
In the next chapter, Wollstonecraft discusses duty to parents. She deplores the fact that old
principles and ways of doing things are rigidly adhered to; blind obedience is customary and
"a mysterious sanctity is spread round the most arbitrary principle; for what other name can
be given to the blind duty of obeying vicious or weak beings merely because they obeyed a
powerful instinct?" A reciprocal duty entails that parents raise children while they are young
and helpless, and the children later assist their helpless and elderly parents. However, there is
no reason to obey a parent only because they are a parent; this shackles the mind and leads to
submission to "any power but reason." Parents who are blindly obeyed are usually obeyed out
of sheer weakness that "[degrades] the human character." A lot of the misery of the world
stems from the negligence of parents, but these people will voraciously defend their natural
right even though it is subversive of the birthright of man, which is to act according to his
own wisdom.
Indolent parents of high rank do extort a large degree of respect from their children,
especially females. Females are particularly dependent on their families and their viewpoints;
this is apparent in nearly every country. As John Locke points out in his Some Thoughts
Concerning Education, "a slavish dependence to parents cramps every faculty of the mind."
This is most commonly observed in females and may contribute to their weaknesses. The
duties required of females are more intense, are arbitrary, and come from a sense of propriety,
not reason. These women usually grow up to be tyrants in their own marriages.
In contrast, a parent who works to form the heart and enlarge the understanding of her child,
based on reason, discharges the correct type of duty to a child and will gain in return the
correct type of parental affection. The child will listen to the parent's advice because it is
reasonable and rational. Parents who set a good example for their children will commonly
receive the natural effect of filial duty. Children cannot be taught too early how to submit to
reason. Wollstonecraft believes that "it must be allowed that the affection which we inspire
always resembles that we cultivate; so that natural affections, which have been supposed
almost distinct from reason, may be found more nearly connected with judgment than is
commonly allowed."
Girls learned the lessons they will practice on their husbands from the way in which they
were brought up as children. Of course, it is difficult to remedy all of these evils, for it almost
would seem that girls must be taught to despise their parents until their parents prove their
worth. Esteem and love must be blended together in the first affection, however, and "reason
made the foundation of their first duty" so as to secure morality.
Analysis
Wollstonecraft's two chapters on parenting contain some of the same themes she has been
developing over the course of the treatise. Parents are in a position like rulers of a state; that
is, if they exercise reason and earn their children's respect and obedience on the basis of fair
treatment and embodiment of virtue rather than tend toward tyranny and absolutism, their
children will grow up to be more virtuous and rational citizens. It is dangerous for parents to
expect their children to heed them on the basis of nothing more than the fact that they are
their parents. Much of Wollstonecraft's argument is owed to the writings of John Locke in the
Second Treatise of Civil Government, which discusses the differences between a state of
nature and a state of governance, the danger of absolute power, and the necessity of the
consent of the governed.
Parenting is, of course, an extremely important duty for men and women who have children.
From Wollstonecraft‘s perspective, women in particular, owing to their deleterious education
and society's molding of them as mere playthings and insipid objects of adoration, are often
poor parents. They either desire their children's affection and thus shower them with gifts and
unwarranted praise, or are neglectful of their duties due to their own self-centeredness. Since
young girls model their behavior after their mother's, it is unsurprising that new generations
of girls grow up to be silly and narcissistic themselves. In other ways, women also tend to
tyrannize over their children and husbands due to their complete lack of power and autonomy
in any other capacity. We have seen these arguments several times in earlier chapters.
In terms of Wollstonecraft's feminist ideology, many scholars have commented that later
writers have been much more radical about the duty of mothers. That is, she not only argued
that women had a duty to perform as mothers, but also that they generally should care for
their family from home. Education and the revolution in female manners that she calls for
would make women better wives and mothers within the traditional social structure, making
them equal partners in the family without challenging traditional gender roles. Women should
be educated, they should exercise reason, they should participate in politics and be better
citizens, and they should perfect their virtue. However, for Wollstonecraft, all of that should
be done with the intent of becoming better wives and mothers, even though Wollstonecraft
also argues for expanding the range of professions available to women. CatrioniaMacKenzie
argues that "the net effect of Wollstonecraft's account of virtue is to leave intact the structures
of women's subordination."
Of course, Wollstonecraft was aware that some financial independence was necessary for
women to attain self-governance. They would continue to be emotionally dependent upon
and controlled by men if they remained financially dependent upon men. Her novel The
Wrongs of Woman dealt with the various ways women were unequal under the law and how it
rendered them feeble and dependent. Financial independence is also significant in that it
allows a woman to develop virtue and self-esteem, she recognizes. She explained that
property and marriage laws should be reformed, education should be improved, and, perhaps,
representation in government should be implemented.
Unfortunately, as MacKenzie points out, "Wollstonecraft had no clear proposals for how the
changes she advocated might be compatible with the maternal 'duties' that she seemed to
think were natural to women." Contemporary feminists thus tend to object to the Vindication
in that it presents "an ideal attainable only by middle-class women." Radical feminists go
even farther and argue that, despite her suggestions of changing marriage and property laws,
"her critique of civil society works by trying to extend the contractual relations of civil
society into the private sphere rather than by challenging the association between the
masculine/feminine distinction and the tensions within the liberal public sphere between
justice and love, contract and kinship, individuality and community." It is up to the reader to
decide how far Wollstonecraft‘s first principles actually ought to lead and whether other,
more radical principles are necessary to accomplish what MacKenzie seeks.
Chapter XII: On National Education
Wollstonecraft argues that education must become a grand national concern. Children should
be encouraged to expand their faculties and think for themselves, and this can only be done
by putting children together and educating them on the same subjects.
When youth are educated alone, they never acquire that frankness and ingenuity of thought
that come from speaking their minds; this can only be done in society, not simply with their
parents alone. Private boarding schools are "hot-beds of vice and folly" because boys who go
there become slovenly and gluttonous and cunning. Yet when they are brought up alone at
home, they can become imperious and spoiled, as well as vain and effeminate.
Thus, there must be some way to combine public and private education to avoid the
disadvantages of each. The country day school is the most excellent example of this; boys
who attended these apparently learned to respect and revere their school as well as their
home. In contrast, boys rarely ever recollect with fondness their time confined in boarding
schools. Their behavior suffers; "the relaxation of junior boys is mischief; and of the senior,
vice." There is an established tyranny amongst the boys as well as an entrenched laziness and
avoidance of duty. Boys try to evade the worship services and grow contemptuous of them.
These schools pretend they are the champions of religion but instead hamper it with "irksome
ceremonies and unreasonable restraints." Another problem lies in the teachers, whom
Wollstonecraft sees as dogmatic, tyrannical, and luxurious. It is no surprise that with leaders
like these, boys grow up to be "selfish and vicious."
Public education should be available for every denomination and aimed at forming citizens.
This cannot be done unless a degree of affection is cherished in the breasts of youth for their
parents and siblings, for "this is the only way to expand he heart; for public affections, as well
as public virtues, must ever grow out of the private character." No one can have affection for
mankind unless he has affection for his mother, father, brother, sister, and servants.
The day schools Wollstonecraft advocates must be national establishments; they must get
away from the schoolmasters who "are dependent on the caprices of parents." This leads to
bad education for the young boys, who are merely paraded in front of their parents bloated
with things that they memorized and forced to recite these facts to impress them. There is no
real understanding occurring whilst they are taught to memorize things they do not
understand. This situation cannot be remedied while teachers are dependent on parents for
their income and schools compete with other schools on the basis of pleasing the parents.
Young girls trapped in schools are privy to much more restraint than boys are. Their "animal
spirits" are diminished as they sit inside all day. Their minds also stagnate, or eventually tend
toward cunning. They are to be paragons of chastity whereas young men think very little of
that virtue. While off at school boys infallibly lose that decent "bashfulness" and begin to
joke improperly and slough off modesty.
Wollstonecraft's plan to resolve such problems is as follows: first, the school for younger
children, ages five to nine, will be attended by all children regardless of rank. Masters are
chosen from the community. Rich and poor, they should all be dressed alike and adhere to the
same rules. There should be large grounds surrounding the schoolhouse where they can
exercise their bodies for a substantial amount of the day. They should also learn botany,
mechanics, astronomy, reading, writing, arithmetic, natural history, natural philosophy,
religion, history, and politics.
After age nine the boys and girls destined for domestic or mechanical trades should attend
other schools and receive instruction in those areas of employ. They will be together in the
morning and then separate. For those young people of superior ability or fortune, they will
attend another school and be taught the dead languages, advanced politics, history, and so on.
Girls and boys will still be together. If early marriages result that is all the better, for such
marriages have the best physical and moral effects. Students should live at home, not at
boarding schools, but go away to their studies during the day.
This type of school would not create boys who are debauched and then men who are selfish,
or girls who are weak and vain and frivolous. If women were taught to respect themselves
they would properly attend their domestic duties and their active minds could embrace
everything. Attempting to attain masculine virtues, pursuing literature or science, or looking
into politics is not what leads women away from their duty—it is "indolence and vanity."
Wollstonecraft hopes to see true dignity and grace from this education for women. One other
sign of success is mercy and humanity toward animals. Cruelty to animals is present among
the poor and rich, she adds. For women, one point of this education is to make them better
mothers.
Analysis
Mary Wollstonecraft's views on education were some of her most well-received ideas. Most
British progressives and reformers from the 18th century were embracing the idea that
women's education must be improved; thus, Wollstonecraft's work was favorably regarded in
this area. She wanted a greater conflation of the public and the private, for private boarding
schools and home-schooling were equally detrimental to a child's academic and personal
upbringing. Children should live at home but spend the day in school. They should attend
with the opposite gender and learn the same things with the same expectations. As they grow
older, depending upon their social class they will begin to pursue more advanced and
specialized studies. Women are here at every step of the way; no longer should their
education be rudimentary, fragmentary, and geared towards attaining a marriage.
This idea for education focuses on middle-class women, who can afford such a scheme, and
working-class women, who are largely outside of these possibilities. Much of Vindication is
concerned with the fact that women are considered playthings and mere objects of beauty for
men, which is primarily a problem among the middle class. In a previous chapter,
Wollstonecraft discussed the problems with shutting women up together and has now done so
in a similar matter with men; therefore, her main idea is to suggest education for both sexes
together. Women can never be truly free unless they learn not to be dependent upon men;
thus, they should attend school with them. Women will learn to regard marriage as sacred
when they are brought up alongside men and grow to be their companions, not mistresses.
Both sexes would cultivate modesty "without those sexual distinctions that taint the mind."
In terms of education, its overall purpose is happiness; education allows a person to be
independent, exercise their mind and reason, and take on higher duties, even if most women
end up freely choosing to be wives and mothers. As feminist scholar Salma Maoulidi notes,
"education is thus a fundamental right, a tool for human liberation; and until knowledge is
democratized and women are rationally educated, the progress of human virtue and
knowledge must receive continual checks." Education is necessary to develop character as
well as knowledge, so if women were to receive an equal education they would no longer be
blindly obedient, wrapped up in their looks and trivialities, marry poorly, and be bad mothers.
The deleterious lessons women learn in boarding schools would no longer be widely taught.
Wollstonecraft's preferred education was "wholesome," in that both the body and mind would
be enlivened and strengthened by study and attainment of knowledge. Education should be
democratic, evinced in the participation of parents and a trial by peers for misbehaving
children. Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough, a Wollstonecraft scholar, sees a socialistic tendency
in the author's demands "that she expects equality in education not through individual effort,
but as a right granted by broad national policy" and in her criticism of "the system of
education prevalent in England at the time [with its] interference of property with
pedagogical principles." This socialistic tendency is hard to identify today, when public
schools are considered an automatic right (as suggested by Maoulidi) and an expected duty
for middle-class parents.
Overall, Wollstonecraft's ideas on education were moderate by today‘s standards, but she was
definitely marking out some new ground.
Chapter XIII: Some Instances of the Folly Which the Ignorance of Women Generates;
with Concluding Reflections on the Moral Improvement That a Revolution in Female
Manners Might Naturally Be Expected to Produce
There are plenty of follies particular to women, and Wollstonecraft explains that her goal
here is to point out those follies most harmful to women's moral character. She divides this
chapter into smaller sections on specific topics.
In the first section she calls attention to people who prey on women by predicting the future
using astrology. Women flock to them ignorantly, not seeing them as the charlatans they are.
Wollstonecraft adds that going to a soothsayer belies the Christian religion in that this activity
violates God's commands. A Christian woman cannot really believe God would allow his
prophets to lurk in cities and charge money to dabble in astrology.
Women are also swayed by magnetizers, who are mesmerists or hypnotists who claim to treat
bodily or spiritual infirmities. Actual physicians should be aware of the basics of medicine
and anatomy; they should adhere to a regimen, "another word for temperance, air, exercise,
and a few medicines, prescribed by persons who have studied the human body" as "the only
human means, yet discovered, of recovering that inestimable blessing health." The swindlers,
however, are motivated merely by money, not "superior temperance or sanctity." They are
merely "priests of quackery." It is even worse when they claim to be Christians. Rational
religion must be based on reason, not these devilish pursuits. One cannot respect God and
give credence to such manipulative liars.
In the second section, Wollstonecraft turns to women's romantic, "sentimental" twist of the
mind. They read stupid and silly novelists who know nothing of real human life and spin
sordid, tawdry tales to draw the heart and mind away from real duties. Women's attention is
focused not on important community issues but on these minute fictions. Their "sentiments
become events." They shy away from reading history, which they find boring. Of course, it is
better to read something than nothing, but novels are quite dangerous. Women should not
read such silly and irrelevant works but instead "read something superior." The way to get
women to avoid these novels is to ridicule them, but this should not be done indiscriminately,
throwing away the good with the bad, and the proper discrimination should come from
someone whom they admire.
In the third section, ignorance and cunning lead to a woman's over-fondness of dress. When a
mind is not open to reflection or rumination, extra care is given to one's outward appearance.
This can be observed in slaves and servants as well. The author adds that whereas men have
friendships, women are all rivals. Even virtuous women are concerned, nonetheless, with
trying to be agreeable above all else. The "immoderate fondness for dress, for pleasure, and
for sway" is the passion of savages as well as civilized women.
In section four, Wollstonecraft states that women are supposed to possess more humanity and
sensibility, but there is nothing noble about ignorance. They usually become selfish, no
different than children or animals. This affection is the result of their confined status and
views; even sensible, smart women can rarely rise to heroism in their circumstances.
Friendship is more commonly found in the male world than the female world, and men also
tend to have a higher sense of justice. And she points out, "how can women be just or
generous, when they are the slaves of injustice?"
In section five, the subject of childrearing is heeded. Children are unutterably affected by a
mother's ignorance. Education's job is usually to correct the abuses perpetrated by a silly
mother. Women treat their servants poorly in front of their children and set a bad example,
yet they often rely on those servants to practically raise their children. Conversely, they also
treat their children like little idols or demigods and give them whatever they desire. Nature
has made it the duty of women to raise their children, but they are not equipped to do so by
the current state of sexual relations. Women cannot be more affectionate until equality is
achieved, until "ranks are confounded and women freed."
In section six, Wollstonecraft begins her concluding remarks. Moralists agree, she writes, that
virtue needs liberty to develop. Women's minds should be cultivated to love their country;
one cannot be expected to love what one does not understand. Public virtue is only an
aggregate of private virtue. There must be a revolution in female manners. Husbands and
wives also must have more in common to strengthen their marriages because "virtue flies
from a house divided against itself—and a whole legion of devils take up their residence
there."
Most of these follies stem from the tyranny of man, and women's cunning is produced by
their oppression. Most of women's faults are a "natural consequence of their education and
station in society." If women could share with men fundamental rights and freedoms, they
would more likely become virtuous and progress toward perfection.
Analysis
One quite salient component of Vindication is its author's near-misogynistic tone when
cataloguing the various faults, flaws, and follies of women. Although Wollstonecraft asserts
several times that the predominant reason for women's oppression and low status is men's
subjugation of them, she does not shy away from heaping vitriol upon her own sex. In chapter
thirteen in particular, her scorn is manifest as she sharply criticizes women for visiting
fortunetellers and healers as well as reading stupid novels. One critic, Susan Gubar, refers to
this critique as "feminist misogyny." The critic Christine Skolnik defines this further: "The
double bind of the abject category of the feminine lies in the (ironic) principle that anyone
who likes being a woman would not need to be a feminist." Wollstonecraft might respond
that women can hardly be blamed for being stunted by an oppressive system and that being a
woman does not mean those awful things she is criticizing.
To sum up the Vindication, Wollstonecraft firmly lays the blame for the subordinate status of
women with its concomitant rendering of them as facile, self-absorbed, and useless creatures
at the feet of men. Men have long denied women education and the ability to develop their
reason and virtue. They are kept in a state of slavish dependence, both emotionally and
financially. In their girlhood they are taught that only their external beauty matters and that
the goal of life should be to attain a husband. That husband is usually a man unfit for
marriage, since rakes best attract the attention of insipid girls. Women are barred from
meaningful employment and are confined to the home. Within that home they are often poor
wives and mothers, as their oppression results in their own exercise of tyrannical power over
their household. Women become cunning and duplicitous.
Wollstonecraft‘s message is that changes in education, the law, political representation, and
general perception of the capacity of women to reason must be implemented. Boys and girls
should attend school together, and girls should be privy to the same subjects as boys. Some
professions, not just menial ones, should be open for women, who should have a degree of
financial independence so they are not rendered utterly helpless if their husband dies. They
should even have some representation in politics so they are not rendered so subordinate. All
of this follows from the fundamental premise that women too have souls and the ability to
reason, while contemptuous stereotypes regarding women's "natural" deficiencies perpetuate
the injustices she has catalogued and explained.
Wollstonecraft's Vindication would go on to be one of the most read and discussed books in
the 19th century women's movement in America. It was viewed as an important foundation of
feminism for feminists in the 1970s, even though many of them found several of
Wollstonecraft's assumptions disturbing. Non-Christian and explicitly atheist feminists do not
see a need to include Christianity and invoke a Creator in order to argue for equality based on
human reason. Other feminists have denied that women's primary duty is motherhood simply
due to their reproductive capacity. Still others have denied that gender is a fixed entity that is
defined by one‘s culture or even one‘s anatomy.
Scholar Julia Kristeva's article "Women's Time" identifies three phases of the women's
movement, the third being "the most recent grouping of avant-garde feminists who 'having
started with the idea of difference' are attempting to break free of 'the very dichotomy
man/woman as an opposition between two rival entities' which should now be understood as
'belonging to metaphysics'" (quoted in Barbara Taylor). Such differences between
Wollstonecraft and later feminists provide rich fodder for discussion about whether there
even exists something distinct that can be called the "rights of woman."
William Godwin
William Godwin is perhaps most commonly known as the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft
and the father of Mary Shelley, but he was also an extremely influential political philosopher,
novelist, journalist, and proponent of utilitarianism and anarchism. He was born to a middleclass Calvinist couple in Cambridgeshire. He was educated at Hoxton Academy and then
became the pupil of Samuel Newton, a man who strongly criticized Calvinists. Godwin
became a minister and served at Ware, Stowmarket, and Beaconsfield; he soon traveled to
London and began to develop his nascent ideas of overthrowing systems of religion, society,
and government with the intention that reasoned discussion would be the primary mode
through which revolution would occur. In 1783 he became an atheist and gave up his
ministry. He was well-versed in the philosophers Rousseau, d'Holbach, and Helvétius.
His first published work was the Life of Lord Chatham (1783), followed by six sermons on
the figures of Aaron, Hazael, and Jesus. He wrote for several periodicals and published a few
more unremarkable novels. He also joined a club called the "Revolutionists." During the
French Revolution he published his magnum opus on political science, Enquiry concerning
Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (1793), an anarchist
critique of Edmund Burke and a dissertation on how an anarchist state would realistically
work. It condemned government's organized control over citizens, including, taxation,
marriage, contractual agreements, and legal punishment of crimes. It sold thousands of copies
and was both popular and influential. Godwin became famous throughout Europe for his
views.
His next well-known publication was a novel, Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of
Caleb Williams. Some literary scholars have referred to it as the first thriller; it was also
notable for its excoriation of the justice system and its literary technique of telling the story
backward.
Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft on March 29, 1797, after they reestablished their
friendship from years earlier. Not long after their marriage, Wollstonecraft gave birth to their
daughter, Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley, wife of Percy Shelley and author of
Frankenstein). Unfortunately, due to complications in childbirth, Wollstonecraft died ten
days later. Godwin was devastated, writing his friend, "I firmly believe there does not exist
her equal in the world. I know from experience we were formed to make each other happy. I
have not the least expectation that I can now ever know happiness again."
In 1798 he published a biography about his wife that proved extremely controversial in its
revelation of her posing as a former lover's wife and bearing his child out of wedlock. For the
rest of his life, dismayed by the book's reception and depressed over the death of his wife,
Godwin lived virtually in secret.
William Godwin died on April 7, 1836, in London, England. The English writer William
Hazlitt famously described Godwin's reputation in an essay in his Spirit of the Age: "No work
gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the country as the celebrated Enquiry ... Tom
Paine was considered for a time as Tom Fool to him, Paley an old woman, Edmund Burke a
flashy sophist. Truth, moral truth, it was supposed had here taken up its abode; and these
were the oracles of thought." Indeed, he was one of the most significant intellectuals of the
Age of Reason.
1. What are Wollstonecraft's views on education?
Wollstonecraft does not favor private boarding schools or complete homeschooling but a mixed system. Children need to be around their peers to develop
social skills but should not be sheltered in a residential school because they will
grow slovenly, lazy, and cunning. The country day-school is a good model
(children live at home but attend school for most of the day). Boys and girls
should be educated together, which will improve both sexes and lead to happier
marriages and, most of all, bring women‘s socialization out of the state of learned
oppression. When children are very young, they should all be together, rich and
poor. They should be dressed alike and have plenty of time to exercise outside.
They should learn traditional subjects. When they reach about age nine, they
should be separated by social class, with the lower classes studying trades, but
boys and girls should remain together. More democratic schools would include
parental involvement and children judging their peers for misbehavior.
2. How is this work a response to the writings of Edmund Burke?
Burke and Wollstonecraft are similar insofar as they are both classical liberals.
Burke wrote one of the most famous intellectual attacks on the French
Revolution, attacking it as an illegitimate revolt against a legitimate government
(unlike in America, where the revolution was a legitimate revolt against an
illegitimate government). Burke‘s writings argued that rights are based on
traditions rather than made up out of theories. Wollstonecraft disagreed on this
point, responding with A Vindication of the Rights of Man and then A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman. She criticized what she saw as the arbitrary, traditional
foundation of male power over women and called for greater fairness based on
reason and a theory of gender equality.
3. How does Wollstonecraft subvert traditional gender norms in the style of her
writing?
Wollstonecraft adopts a masculine voice in her writing; simply taking on male
philosophers as an equal was daring. Her rhetorical style is modeled after other
writers she was familiar with, arguing that she would appeal to reason rather than
appeal directly to emotion through flowery writing. Scholar Christine M. Skolnik
writes that when she critiques female manners she distances herself from her
"feminine identity and audience and presents herself chiefly as a man speaking to
men," which makes it easier to understand how she can be so vicious in her
critiques of women's foibles and flaws.
4. How are men responsible for women's low social and moral status, according
to Wollstonecraft?
Men do not allow women access to education, thus depriving them of the ability
to acquire knowledge, exercise their reason, learn the proper form of modesty and
chastity, and perfect their virtue. Since their education is fragmentary and limited,
they do not study much of substance, and when they do, it is hardly necessary
because they will not be able to utilize it later except to pass it along to their
children. Men want women to be silly, meek, beautiful, elegant, charming, and
coquettish, and women learn to take on those characteristics. This is problematic
because once they marry, women are supposed to be wives and mothers and no
longer engage in passionate courtship. Women are not allowed to participate in
politics at all. Men expect women to be chaste but then act improperly toward
them, placing the burden of morality upon a woman's weaker shoulders. Men
force women into this subordinate position and keep them inferior, but then
exercise contempt for them.
5.
How are women are responsible for their own denigrated status in
Wollstonecraft’s time?
The entire social structure conspires to keep women subordinate, but women do
themselves no favors. They indulge in silliness, such as visiting fortunetellers,
mediums, and healers who pretend to be able to cure ailments. They read insipid,
absurd novelists and mimic their styles and sentiments. They treat their children
like demigods or ignore them and leave their care to servants, or else turn into
mini-tyrants over their households. They turn toward rakes and libertines in the
desire to inflame their emotions. They do not like when their relationships with
their husbands lack the passion they were used to in courtship; sometimes they
will enter into love affairs or ignore their husbands. They engage in rivalries with
their companions. They tyrannize over their family members and servants. They
dissimulate and lie and tend toward cunning. They are immodest with other
women and do not cultivate the modesty that is necessary. They perhaps can be
excused for believing that their weaknesses are preferred in society, but they
remain human and responsible for their own decisions.
6. What are Wollstonecraft's views on motherhood?
Wollstonecraft has been called the "first feminist," but some of her ideas
reinforced traditional motherhood of a sort that later feminists sometimes reject.
She did not challenge the assumption that a woman's most important duty was to
be a mother; there is not much room in her theories for single women or women
who refuse to marry. It is clear that the middle-class women she addresses are
supposed to be married and be responsible mothers. The subordination of women
resulted in their being poor mothers, she argued and observed, so education
reform and a disavowal of the "natural" inferiority of women were crucial for
their improvement as mothers. A bad mother will spoil her children because she
wants their love and affection, will neglect them entirely while she is devoted to
her own frivolous pursuits, or will tyrannize over them out of a desire to regain
some control over her own life. By contrast, an educated woman will be a good
mother for several reasons: she will inculcate civic virtue and duty; ably instruct
them in the areas of study that matter; encourage her daughters and sons to be
self-actualized; discipline them effectively and fairly; and demonstrate the type of
respectful and harmonious marriage they should desire to emulate.
7. What are Wollstonecraft's views on social class?
Middle-class women are the main targets of this work. Even so, Wollstonecraft
excoriates the rich for their indolence and complete lack of reason or contribution
to society. Their power is based on arbitrary foundations (parallel to men‘s power
over women), and rich women in particular are useless. Working-class women
are mentioned occasionally, but their problems occur more on the level of
subsistence. It is unlikely that working-class women have time to indulge their
silliness and sentiments when they are toiling for long hours, nor do they have the
time and resources to devote to their looks and trying to be pleasing to men.
Middle-class women who incorrectly seek pleasure or passion are the ones whom
this book can reach.
8. What are the issues regarding modesty and chastity addressed in the text?
Modesty is exalted as a chastity that springs from purity of mind, not a
heightened feeling of vanity or presumption concerning one's character. Purity of
mind is a moderate state of great refinement and honest discernment of one‘s
abilities; it is nobler than innocence and false pride. In order to be modest and
chaste a woman must get away from "sensibility," that silliness and frivolity that
women cultivate. Men should also learn modesty and not expect women to bear
the brunt of it on their weaker shoulders. Passions should be checked by reason
and rationality in order for modesty to prevail. Girls should not develop immodest
habits with other girls, such as dressing in front of others. They should be more
private so their relationships with men will be equally modest. Finally, women
should not try to be chaste only in order to preserve their reputation, for it is
unlikely that true modesty can result from an inordinate obsession with trying to
appear proper on that score alone.
9. Does Wollstonecraft identify an ideal situation for a woman?
In the ideal situation she would be happily married with children in a friendly
partnership with her husband, not completely financially dependent, thoroughly
educated, and generally virtuous. Women in their girlhood would be educated
with both sexes in a public school and learn to strengthen their minds and their
bodies. They would learn the same things boys are learning, although they would
also learn some of the feminine arts. They may decide to enter a profession and
begin to achieve a degree of financial independence. Through their continued
association, both sexes would improve each other and happier early marriages
may result. She would be an intelligent and fair mother, and her children would
model their behavior after hers. She would be involved in the public sphere to an
extent and would have representation, but would not need to become fully versed
in politics and have the vote. Thus, the ideal situation for a woman is rational
education, an equal marriage and reasonable child-rearing, and greater
participation in the public sphere. This seems most likely among middle-class
women, since life is too easy for the upper class and too difficult for the lower
class.
10. What does this book say about sexuality?
Wollstonecraft challenges the prevailing assumption that women are essentially
sexual rather than rational beings; she claims instead that it is men who are more
often ruled by their passions and appetites. She attacks Rousseau in particular for
sneering that women are ruled by "voluptuous reveries," countering with the fact
that men cover up their own immoral desires and behavior by asserting that
women are deviant sexual beings. Male desire is a large contributor to the
oppression women face. Yet, since women seek male attraction, they perpetuate
this problem. Women do, of course, have sexual appetites of their own, and they
must be properly moderated in the light of reason, modesty, and chastity. These
appetites might be even more voracious than men's; Wollstonecraft is quite
vitriolic about the immodesty of girls in boarding schools.