Rebel and Republican: Reading Mary Wollstonecraft for a ‘Green’ Ethics.
Paper for the PSA Conference April 2014, Environmental Politics Specialist
Group.
Early draft, please do not cite
Ros Hague
Division of Politics and International Relations
School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University
Chaucer Building, Goldsmith Street, Nottingham NG1 5JT
[email protected]
Abstract
Following John Barry’s work on ‘greening’ the Republican tradition, this paper highlights the
republican values in Mary Wollstonecraft’s work which have great potential for green
thinking. In particular her emphasis on active citizenship and her arguments for nondomination speak directly to green concerns ranging from citizen participation in
sustainability schemes to the protection of the natural word. The so-called ‘rebel writer’
demonstrated a strong sense of justice and equality which was intended to make for a strong
republican community but it was also intended to inculcate a respect for nature. Cruelty to
others (human or otherwise) had to be overcome for it was an exercise of arbitrary power
which caused great harm not only to those subject to such power but also which corrupted
the holder of power. The development of republican values which can be found across
Wollstonecraft’s work and her emphasis on education to achieve this can, it will be argued,
provide an important addition to the literature on republicanism and green politics coming as
it does from an important feminist writer. Wollstonecraft’s feminism was directed not only
against patriarchy but also against the aristocracy, two dangerous and corrupting forms of
power. The strong civic community she envisioned depended on these two forms of power
being subverted by the development of a body politic which thrived through active citizenship
and an end to the moral corruption wrought by the domination of the poor by the rich and of
women by men. Wollstonecraft’s arguments were developed in a context of intellectual and
political radicalism. She was part of a movement which aimed to change the way citizens
saw themselves, enabling them to take control of their lives and to be empowered, rejecting
the automatic authority of the ruling class and combating the fear of change. Her republican
arguments appear both radical and sensible in the context of our apparent current impasse
when it comes to taking action on developing a sustainable society.
1
Rebel and Republican: Reading Mary Wollstonecraft for a ‘Green’ Ethics.
In thinking about key green issues such as vulnerability and resilience and indeed for
the justification of the regulation of a green economy John Barry argues for the value
of republicanism (Barry 2013: 215-6). In doing so, Barry highlights key features of
republicanism which understand non-domination as central and justify state
intervention (when conceived as non-domination) into the life of the citizen for
environmental purposes. The aim of this paper is to shine a light on the value of the
work of Mary Wollstonecraft for thinking about similar contemporary environmental
issues. In doing this I should be clear that I am reading Wollstonecraft as a
republican and feminist writer rather than a liberal and feminist writer.i Although it is
not the aim of this paper to argue for Wollstonecraft's republican credentials against
liberal interpretations of her work, my reasons for asserting Wollstonecraft's
republicanism will be evident from this paper as I highlight areas of her work which
speak to issues of non-domination and active citizenship. The work of Barry has led
me to understand the value of the republican tradition for contemporary
environmental thought, in particular his recent book The Politics of Actually Existing
Unsustainability. It is my contention that Wollstonecraft has something of value to
offer a ‘green’ reading of republicanism, in particular her work can provide a valuable
deepening of our understanding of the problem of domination and the politics of nondomination. I also argue that the Republican views on citizenship are particularly
valuable for green politics, I contend that Wollstonecraft herself provides a much
needed example of how to challenge a society which resists change for she had the
courage to live her life differently and she was very much the ‘rebel writer’(GuntherCanada 2001: 29), undeniably, her private life had public significance. Republican
2
citizenship stresses the connection between our private and public lives which is
something Wollstonecraft developed in her work. Finally, I highlight the significance
of education in Wollstonecraft’s writing for bringing about change. I am arguing here
for the value of Wollstonecraft's thought for contemporary green thought, I am not
arguing that Wollstonecraft was an early environmental activist for she was not but I
do share Barry's assertion that it is possible to read classic texts in a way which
allows us to explore their ideas and debates with a view to adding to contemporary
environmental positions (Barry 2013: 216).
Domination
Fundamental to a lot of environmental theory is the issue of how we think about our
relationship to non-human animals and to the wider environment. For many green
thinkers though the heart of this issue lies in the human attitude of domination.
Domination and non-domination is an important focus of republicanism for thinking
about green political thought for it addresses the nature of the human relationship to
that which it perceives as other, it questions the Lockean notion that ‘man’ has
dominion over the earth. It speaks to the heart of what is a troubling understanding
of the human place in the wider ecosystem. As Barry argues, the ‘avoidance and
protection from arbitrary coercion and domination are key defining features of the
republican political vision’ (Barry 2013 : 222). Barry juxtaposes the republican
conception of liberty as non-domination with the liberal version of liberty as noninterference (2013: 216), the first is a conception of liberty which can be found in the
work of Wollstonecraft. Further, in her prescriptions for change we see not solely a
liberal emphasis on rights but also on the more republican notion of civic duty. Her
3
understanding of domination is detailed and subtle both in terms of the varied ways
in which women are dominated and in her understanding of why this is so damaging.
The notion that domination occurs in different forms and from different sources has
been taken up by feminist theorists since Wollstonecraftii but it is worth returning to
Wollstonecraft in order to appreciate the detail she can offer on how domination
takes place.
Wollstonecraft argues that women are enslaved, in a number of different ways.
Patriarchy, Wollstonecraft observed, operated on a number of levels, from social
norms and cultural reflections of these norms to the power of husband over wife to
women actively engaging in their own subordination. Culturally women are
encouraged to be ‘slaves to their bodies’ (Wollstonecraft [1792] 1995b: 49), they
‘plume themselves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch’ (Wollstonecraft
[1792]1995b: 63), social norms dictated that women would be occupied with their
appearance rather than engaged in rational discussion. This made women
dependent on men for much: ‘slaves to their persons, and must render them alluring
that man may lend them his reason to guide their tottering steps aright’
(Wollstonecraft [1792] 1995b: 165). Although this is a cultural and normative
problem, Wollstonecraft sees some women (mainly aristocratic women - a target for
her scorn) as bearing responsibility for their oppression. They choose to live like this,
to while away their time on trivialities whilst their husbands, brothers, sons and
fathers get on with the important business. Such women never think for themselves
nor immerse themselves in the world beyond their small and trifling obsessions this,
in Wollstonecraft’s words, made women ‘hug their chains, and fawn like the spaniel’
(Wollstonecraft [1792] 1995b: 38). There is however a wider point here, cultural
4
norms made women act thus, as Mora Ferguson notes, ‘sexuality for Wollstonecraft
(dictated at large by men) imperils any chances of female autonomy’ (Ferguson
1992: 95).
Wendy Gunther-Canada highlights Wollstonecraft’s criticism of Rousseau’s novels,
arguing ‘he used the novel to romance female readers into embracing the marriage
plot and accepting their inferior status within the social contract’ (Gunther-Canada
2001: 29). The romantic vision of Rousseau’s novels was the vision of a destiny
fulfilled; therefore he needed ‘women to buy into the ideological illusion that marriage
will make them whole’ (Gunther-Canada 2001: 30). Barbara Taylor picks up on this
as well, she notes that Wollstonecraft saw Rousseau’s two main female characters
Julie in La Nouvelle Heloise and Sophie in Emile, as symbolic of the contemporary
cultural subordination of women through fiction – “A chimera of womanhood, rooted
in erotic imaginings, had been created that entrances both sexes – women in
narcissistic self-admiration; men in objectifying passion – to the point where real
women disappear into its seductions’ (Taylor 2003: 76). Rousseau was perhaps an
obvious target but the subordination of women (and their willing acceptance of this)
pervaded fiction of the era, Janet Todd notes, ‘Female novelists colluded with male
desire and gave their women characters a sense of self through reflection in a man
…. Women’s fiction genuflected to male fantasy with pictures of weak women
swooning and in tears, who yet had amazing power over libertine-rakes (Todd 2000:
182). In a similar way, our 21st century culture still relies heavily on a view of human
domination of nature or of nature’s need of us. Also, the continued misrepresentation
of nature as something ‘cute’ and for our enjoyment persists, there have been a
number of criticisms for example of the normalised the dominance of nature.iii There
5
are interesting parallels here between Wollstonecraft’s view of patriarchy as
something which can make women the object of cultural expectations, as charming
and alluring, all as part of the oppression of women. Their perceived weakness, their
obsession with the trivial were part of their ‘charms’ yet Wollstonecraft digs out the
power relationship in all of this. The object of the patriarchal gaze is disempowered
by being portrayed as ‘other’, albeit a charming other in the same way that ‘earth
others’iv are portrayed as fascinating, cute but radically different and an object of our
gaze rather than our equal.
However, patriarchy’s use of culture to dominate women was just one aspect of her
understanding of domination. Not all women, in Wollstonecraft’s view, have enslaved
themselves, that charge is reserved for aristocratic women. She also saw women as
being forced to prostitute themselves, both literally but also in the terms of the
marriage contract, in the words of Taylor for Wollstonecraft, ‘In a man’s world, all
women are prostituted’ (Taylor 2003: 242). Julia O’Connell Davidson argues
prostitutes ‘are seen as people who live outside the ‘respectable community’ of
wives, sisters, mothers, aunts etc’ (Hoffman 2001: 195). Part of Wollstonecraft’s
wide ranging understanding of domination can be seen in her recognition of how
many women lived beyond the ‘respectable community’. This can be seen in
Wollstonecraft’s novel, Maria. Taylor argues that this novel draws attention to two
characters, Jemima a prostitute and Maria (a ‘respectable’ wealthy woman
condemned to live in an asylum by her husband). Unlike many novels with prostitute
characters in them at the time, ‘Jemima is neither devil nor saint’ she is not ‘evil’
because she is a prostitute but neither is she presented as (Taylor 2003: 242)
because Wollstonecraft does not want to make this distinction. Taylor argues ‘like
6
Jemima, Maria too has been married, defiled, and bartered for money’ (Taylor 2003:
242). Both women are powerless, used and their lives controlled by men. Patriarchal
norms that Wollstonecraft draws attention to not only shunned prostitutes to the
corner of society, dwelling beyond respectability but these norms also
disempowered many women by forcing them to marry in order to survive – ‘needy
women were forced into marriage as “legal prostitution”’ (Todd 2000: 165). Again,
Wollstonecraft presents us with a remarkably subtle understanding of domination,
the power of ‘respectability’ to confer the status of acceptability on one form of
exploitation (marriage out of poverty) and not on another (prostitution). This notion of
respectable domination and pitiable exploitation appears to have interesting parallels
in how we relate to the natural world, how various cultures (in particular Western
cultures) think it acceptable to eat some animals and not others or of how appeals to
save an appealing monkey from extinction tend to go much better than those to
prevent the extinction of a reptile.v
Wollstonecraft presents us with an equality of being mistreated which cuts across
the social divide. This subtle understanding of domination which sees women as
powerless through their own choice on the case of aristocratic women, through overt
domination in prostitution or through more subtle forms in the patriarchal marriage
contract, presents us with a radical understanding of how women lacked power to
direct their own lives. This understanding of powerlessness in all of its forms is I
think a useful understanding for green theory too. It enables us to consider the range
of ways we dominate earth others it encourages us to address the human
relationship with the non-human world. Domination does take myriad forms,
benevolent domination whereby ecosystems no longer flourish according to their
7
own patterns and are deliberately managed t restore them (think of the re-wilding of
areas of Scotland for examplevi), to deliberate acts of environmental harm such as
cutting down rainforests, to damage by lack of effort such as species extinction.
Again, Wollstonecraft’s understanding of domination is useful for thinking about
the human relationship to nature and the norm of domination. For Wollstonecraft,
domination is the exercise of arbitrary power, this is at the heart of her
republicanism, and liberty (in the form of non-interference) needs to be constant in
order to prevent the arbitrary exercise of power. As Barry argues Republican liberty
is ‘resilient’, in the sense that it is assured – not contingent and guaranteed by the
institutional structure (Barry 2013: 221). The fear that a being’s liberty is contingent
on the will/caprice of another is at the heart of Wollstonecraft’s criticism of
domination.
This is developed in Wollstonecraft’s first vindication, A Vindication of the Rights of
Men, in which she takes Burke to task. For Wollstonecraft, we should not depend on
authority (Wollstonecraft [1790]1995a: 64). Dependence on authority is not good for
the individual – it weakens our senses: “What is truth?” Wollstonecraft asks (truth
that is spoken by those in authority)
A few fundamental truths meet the first enquiry of
reason, and appear as clear to an unwarped mind, as
that air and bread are necessary to enable the body to
fulfil its vital functions; but the opinions which men
discuss with so much heat must be simplified and
brought back to first principles; or who can discriminate
the vagaries of the imagination, or scrupulosity of
weakness, from the verdict of reason? Let all these
points be demonstrated, and not determined by
arbitrary authority and dark traditions, lest a dangerous
8
supineness should take place; for probably, in ceasing
to enquire, our reason would remain dormant, and
delivered up, without a curb, to every impulse of
passion, we might soon lose sight of the clear light
which the exercise of our understanding no longer kept
alive. To argue from experience, it should seem as if
the human mind, averse to thought, could only be
opened by necessity; for, when it can take opinions on
trust, it gladly lets the spirit lie quiet in its gross
tenement” (Wollstonecraft [1790]1995a: 18-9).
The act of domination prevents the thing that is dominated from fulfilling its potential
but it is also a question of trust – of allowing others to develop as they will, without
interference for no interference can be justified. Human projects to manage ‘wildlife’
are often aimed at compensating for human activity in the first place, dominating in
order to overcome past domination. It also makes the thing dominated dependent on
the dominator – in the case of the natural world, being dependent is a risky business
for the object of domination, what happens when the dominator loses interest? For
example, consider Zoos and the domination of animals – humans decide where they
live, what they eat and now whether or not they live (as with the recent case at
Copenhagen zoo that killed a healthy giraffe and four lions)vii. Also, Wollstonecraft is
clear that the exercise of arbitrary power in the family denies the possibility of free
and rational development‘. Those in the family who are subject to arbitrary power
‘form personalities unaccustomed to the possibility of free, rational and equal
exchange among individuals’ (Abbey 1999: 86).Whilst rational development is not an
issue for earth others, free and unfettered development is. The exercise (sometimes
deliberate) of power over nature renders nature dependent.
9
Another problem Wollstonecraft highlights is the way in which submission to
authority means that we fail to question things which we should but worse, we fear
change and innovation: “The rich and weak, a numerous train, will certainly applaud
your system, and loudly celebrate your pious reverence for authority and
establishments–they find it pleasanter to enjoy than to think; to justify oppression
than correct abuses.–The rights of men are grating sounds that set their teeth on
edge; the impertinent enquiry of philosophic meddling innovation” (Wollstonecraft
[1790]1995a: 55). There is a tendency for the electorate, especially in the UK, to
accept what they are told, especially when it comes to the economy. So, when the
government says that green taxation in energy bills is not economically viable, this is
not challenged from beyond the usual sources (such as environmental groups).viii Or,
when funding for alternative technology is not made available there is a general
acceptance on the part of the public that in economically strained times, the money
is simply not available. Against this, there are groups that challenge the received
wisdom and engage in innovation, the Forum for the Future is one such example. ix
The exercise of authority rids humans of a vital aspect of their character –
compassion:
It is not by squandering alms that the poor can be
relieved, or improved–it is the fostering sun of
kindness, the wisdom that finds them employments
calculated to give them habits of virtue, that
meliorates their condition. Love is only the fruit of
love, condescension and authority may produce the
obedience you applaud; but he has lost his heart of
flesh who can see a fellow-creature humbled before
him, and trembling at the frown of a being, whose
heart is supplied by the same vital current, and
whose pride ought to be checked by a consciousness
of having the same infirmities (Wollstonecraft
10
[1790]1995a: 60 – she is referring to the kind of love
a clergyman should show his flock).
A wider issue of human domination of earth others is of what this does to us. There
is fertile ground to be shared by green republicanism and green virtue ethics in that
the type of moral character we wish to develop for a green ethics is significant.
Wollstonecraft shows how a person who dominates another, exercises inauthentic
power and in so doing, cannot be considered virtuous.
The aristocratic women who enslaved themselves through obsession with image and
style were also corrupted, they wasted their time and failed to meet their rational
potential and living an independent life in which they worked for their own income
(Taylor 2003: 16).
The force of their corruption leads them to also exercise a brief tyranny, morally
corrupting.
It appears to me necessary to dwell on these obvious
truths, because females have been insulated, as it
were; and, while they have been stripped of the virtues
that should clothe humanity, they have been decked
with artificial graces that enable them to exercise a
short-lived tyranny. Love, in their bosoms, taking place
of every nobler passion, their sole ambition is to be
fair, to raise emotion instead of inspiring respect; and
this ignoble desire, like the servility in absolute
monarchies, destroys all strength of character
(Wollstonecraft [1792] 1995b: 41-2)
These women develop a false sense of self and a morally corrupted character; their
minds are focused on trivialities and their attention taken up with mere trifles whilst
11
the serious business of the world passes them by. Such women regularly exercise
arbitrary power. Laura Brace notes how Wollstonecraft saw women trained in
obedience as living out ‘the classic sexual contract, trading obedience in return for
protection’ yet, Wollstonecraft’s twist on this relationship is that she saw not only
passive obedience but the exercise of power – ‘she complicates the power
relationships involved by arguing that women develop a winning softness ‘that
governs by obeying’ (Brace 2000: 438). The man who ‘obeys’ such as woman is
acquiescing to a false power, his weakness is that he stands ‘in need of dependents’
and such behaviour eats ‘away the sincerity and humanity natural to man’
(Wollstonecraft [1792] 1995b: 149). Such an attitude of dependence and indeed
need of dependents is degrading to men and women and it makes the Woman for
Wollstonecraft a ‘meretricious slave’ (Brace 2000: 438).
There are interesting parallels with our relationship to our environment here. We are
degraded by our treatment of nature, whilst we think we stand above and apart from
it we fail to see ourselves as part of it. . The corruption Wollstonecraft presents us
with is twofold, it diverts us from the serious issues of the day and it gives us a false
sense of self – with the case of earth others, it gives us the view that they are our
property and that we have (in the Lockean sense) dominion over the earth. It also
gives us a sense of what Val Plumwood refers to as ‘hyperseparation’ (Plumwood
1993: 117. Rather than attempting to connect with nature we ‘get a false sense of
our character and location that includes an illusory sense of autonomy’ (Plumwood
2002: 9). There are interesting parallels here between the notion of a false sense of
our autonomy and the exercise of arbitrary power – neither are based in reality,
freedom is an illusion in the first case and power in the second. In both cases there
12
is evident misunderstanding of our relationship to others (other people and ‘earth
others’), autonomy and power are thought of as being won against others rather
than in a more relational sense. This is part of the richer understanding of
domination that Wollstonecraft provides us with – our lack of rationality causes us to
be corrupt and to seek power over others rather than with them. The woman who
‘governs by obeying’ raises interesting questions in regard to our attitudes to
environmental action. Does our reluctance to take action perhaps come from as
belief that we cannot make any difference? A belief which leads us to take no action
and thus to continue to emit the carbon we know will cause irreparable damage?
When we say that we would work to cut our own carbon emissions or like our
government to take action but we don’t think it will make any difference are we
buying into our sense of powerlessness in the way that Wollstonecraft describes,
accepting rather than challenging it?
Wollstonecraft’s solution to this problem was, as we shall see, education, ‘Educated
women would not need to resort to the deceptive practices that subservient females
had historically used to sway tyrannical husbands and despotic fathers’ (GuntherCanada 2001: 119-120). Women could be educated out of exercising arbitrary
power and society would then change. However, education is part of
Wollstonecraft’s system of individual development, designed to more the passive
citizen towards active engagement.
Active citizenship.
13
A key Republican means of avoiding domination is through active engagement
‘conscious, collective political activity on the part of citizens is viewed and valued
instrumentally as a means to the establishment and maintenance of liberty, and the
status of citizens as free from arbitrary rule or power’ (Barry 2013: 220). This view
can be enhanced by reflecting on key features of Wollstonecraft’s ideas which
surrounded active citizenship
Wollstonecraft promoted the idea of active citizenship both in her work and in her
own life. In A Vindication of the rights of Woman she argues “one reason why men
have superiour judgment, and more fortitude than women, is undoubtedly this, that
they give a freer scope to the grand passions, and by more frequently going astray
enlarge their minds.” (Wollstonecraft [1792] 1995b: 123–4). Wollstonecraft’s
experiments with her own life are important in finding new green solutions to our
environmental issues; greens can be pioneers if they are open to experimentation. In
this sense she could be counted as a dissident in Barry’s term and this shows
another way in which being a dissident is important – ‘ Dissidents seek to direct a
self-transforming present in a more radical direction, whereas revolutionaries
typically seek the complete destruction of the existing order and then the
construction of a new one’ (2013, 284). For Wollstonecraft the project of dissent was
one of pursuing active citizenship, working for change in the present state of her
society. Her emphasis on active citizenship also demonstrates the connection
between the public and the private in Wollstonecraft’s work – public change and
private experience have to be linked. Her own life was one of experimentation, it did
go wrong but the spirit of living differently is a green idea. It enables the challenging
of norms and aids the quest for new, more carbon-light ways of living. She intended
14
to travel to Paris to support the French revolution with Henry Fuseli and Joseph
Johnson but on arriving at Dover they received news that things had become very
unsettled, they turned back (Todd 2000: 196) but Wollstonecraft later decided to go
alone travelling alone and also escaping Fuseli (a lover who now spurned her in
favour of his wife) (Todd 2000: 199). Her own character was that of an innovator,
countering cultural norms by living outside those norms and therefore challenging
them. Wollstonecraft freed herself from the shackles of social norms which would
have looked down on a single woman travelling alone like this but in liberating
herself from social expectations not only did she defy those expectations but she
enabled herself to thin innovatively about the social issues of her time, especially the
patriarchal oppression of women..
Wollstonecraft goes against the traditional liberal division of our lives into public and
private and is rather at pains to point out how the two are interconnected – this made
the family vital to the development of citizens. The family was ‘a constitutive element
of citizenship’ (Vogel 1986: 32), the development of Republican character is not
merely a private endeavour (It is difficult to see how it could be) but one which cuts
across this divide. The virtues needed to sustain a solid republic ‘must be rooted in
domestic bonds’ (Richardson 2002: 34). Much feminist attention, and indeed
derision, has been focused on Wollstonecraft’s prescriptive account of women’s
place in the family but this is not an issue for this paperx, here I focus on the
significance of the connection between private and public Wollstonecraft draws.
Citizens are formed in both the public and private spheres. This means that we need
to recognise the significance of so called ‘private’ acts but also to pay heed to the
15
potential of transformation through public (especially state) engagement with the
private sphere. Andrew Dobson argues that ‘all green actions in the home have a
public impact, in the specific sense of the creation of an ecological footprint’ (Dobson
2003: 136). For Dobson, citizenship is not only a public matter ‘because it is a site of
citizenship activity, and because the kinds of obligations it generates, and the virtues
necessary to meeting those obligations, are analogously and actually present in the
types of relationship we normally designate as “private”’ (Dobson 2003: 138).
Sherlyn MacGregor also sees the household as a site of environmental action and
those engaged with the question of ecological citizenship recast ‘the ethico-political
boundaries between public and private’ (MacGregor 2006: 222). Wollstonecraft’s
arguments for the significance of home and family for political citizenship provide
valuable insight into how the private informs the public and this is useful for thinking
about how ‘private’ behaviour impacts on the environment but also of how we might
legitimately and with respect to liberty (in the republican notion of respecting noninterference) alter private behaviour.
According to Barry, non-arbitrary interference can be accepted ‘under some
circumstances, intervention into the life of another can be justified if the aim is the
“larger motivation” of preventing domination. Hence republicans are more likely to
support the type of state regulation and planning of the economy of the type
consistent with achieving a low-carbon, high well-being economy’ (Barry 2013: 221).
One such type of state involvement could be in promoting green, civic values
through education. Wollstonecraft was clear that education in her time was in
desperate need of reform but her vision was far reaching for she saw the potential of
education to revolutionize social attitudes. Such a change would involve the state in
16
thinking about the development of education, designed with the purpose of creating
republican citizens.
Republicanism enables the state to play a role ‘in promoting and encouraging modes
and practices of citizenship in the name of liberty (and sustainability), in ways that
are legitimate and in keeping with the wishes and interests of citizens – especially
their interests in liberty and the maintenance of a free society made up of citizens
practicing self-government’ (Barry 2013: 258). Barry’s idea of compulsory
sustainability service fits with this (2013: 260-267). Wollstonecraft supports the
notion that it is perfectly legitimate for the state to be involved in the ‘private’ sphere
if it leads to an increase in freedom (as non-domination).
Wollstonecraft is seeking a change in social attitudes and social expectations but
when Wollstonecraft calls for revolution she means a social revolution which ‘would
arise peacefully out of universal education and what she twice calls a “revolution in
female manners”’ (Furniss 2002: 63-4). Wollstonecraft knew well the cost of her
independence and how it felt to live a life in close proximity to the very real
experience of poverty; she knew human suffering and its bitter consequences. This
gave her a nuanced understanding of the gap between making a call for radical
change and the willingness of individuals to take part, a call for revolution, bloody
and destructive was not what she had in mind. On the question of how best to bring
about such social change, Wollstonecraft was clear that education was the route to
an equal society, one based on non-domination.
17
Cruelty-free relationship to animals for example were to be encouraged – ‘Humanity
to animals should be inculcated as part of our national education’ from VRW
(Wollstonecraft [1792] 1995b: 197). Wollstonecraft connects the tyranny and
dominion that children show over animals to the future domination they seek in
adulthood, specifically she cautions that boys who are allowed to engage in such
behaviour will become men who seek to exercise domination over others:
This habitual cruelty is first caught at school, where it is
one of the rare sports of the boys to torment the miserable
brutes that fall in their way. The transition, as they grow
up, from barbarity to brutes to domestic tyranny over
wives, children, and servants, is very easy. Justice, or
even benevolence, will not be a powerful spring of action
unless it be extended to the whole creation; nay, I believe
that it may be delivered as an axiom, that those who can
see pain, unmoved, will soon learn to inflict it
(Wollstonecraft [1792] 1995b: 197).
Wollstonecraft saw that the most effective way to tackle an attitude of domination
and tyranny towards others was to intervene at an early age. This is why an
education in equality is so important. All education should be for citizenship and it
should be an education in how to have relations of equality (Frazer: 2011, 613).
Education is also about promoting active citizens who are willing to engage with key
issues, these are the future citizens who will not simply accept what they are told by
those who h9ld power, ‘education is the only way to morality and to effective
citizenship, because morality requires discernment, of truth and of virtue, and the
rejection of what passes for truth in a world of unequal power, and corruption’
(Frazer: 2011, 614). This is a radical notion of education indeed for it offers the
possibility of empowering citizens to challenge governments on key issues such as
failure to cut carbon emissions or disengagement with alternative green
18
technologies. Such education is vital in order to produce the active citizens who
might engage more in environmental matters. Education had the potential to
empower women as it does to empower al citizens to day, Wollstonecraft recognised
that education was key because the ‘relationship of the citizen to the state is
mediated by education’ (Gunther-Canada 2001: 113).The republican argument that
the citizen should feel bound to the state helps green thinking, a direct connection,
sense of involvement and again active citizenship, it was a direct connection to the
state that was missing for women, Wollstonecraft observed that their relation to the
state was always mediated by men (Gunther-Canada 2001: 129). The hope
Wollstonecraft had was that women would be spurred to active participation through
experiencing a direct connection to the state they were a part of, such a connection
between the individual life and civic life would enable all to feel part of their society
and engaged with contemporary issues such as the environment.
Conclusion
Wollstonecraft’s republicanism adds to the project of ‘greening’ republicanism in
search of theoretical underpinnings of green politics which go beyond the mainstay
of liberalism. Some of her arguments which pertain to the development of virtue and
the need for the development of the strength of moral character also overlap with
points of interest for environmental virtue ethics.xi
Her detailed understanding of her own society’s problems allowed her to develop a
wide-ranging critique of domination and this rich range of the ways in which
19
domination takes place, I have argued, allows for the possibility of a deeper
understanding of our current, human domination of earth others. Her call for active
citizenship is one which can be found in a range of environmental literature but
again, her careful analysis of citizenship, of the connections between public and
private in general but in her own life in particular add to a coherent account of why
active citizenship is so important for green politics. Finally, her arguments for the
significance of education show one way in which active citizen engagement with
green politics could be encouraged.
Bibliography
Abbey, R. (1999), ‘Back to the Future: Marriage as Friendship in the Thought of Mary
Wollstonecraft’, Hypatia, 14: 3: 77–95.
Barry, J. (1999), Rethinking Green Politics, London: Sage
Barry, J. (2013), The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing
in a Carbon-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
BBC News, (April 2013) , http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21335872, accessed
11.4.14.
Dell'Amore, C. National Geographic Daily News
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131216-conservationenvironment-animals-science-endangered-species/ accessed 11.4.14.
Dobson, A. (2003), Citizenship and the Environment Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Ferguson, M. (1992), ‘Mary Wollstonecraft and the Problematic of
Slavery’ Feminist Review, Autumn (42), pp. 82–102.
Forum for the Future https://www.forumforthefuture.org/about
Furniss, T. (2002), ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’s French Revolution’, in C.L. Johnson (ed.)
The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gatens, M. (1991), ‘‘The Oppressed State of My Sex’: Wollstonecraft on reason,
feeling and equality’, in M.L. Shanley and C. Pateman (eds) Feminist Interpretations
and Political Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press.
20
Grimshaw. J. (1989) ‘Mary Wollstonecraft and the Tensions in Feminist Philosophy’,
Radical Philosophy 52: Summer.
Gunther-Canada, W. (2001), Rebel Writer. Mary Wollstonecraft and Enlightenment
Politics, Illinois: Northern University Press.
Hague R. Autonomy and Identity: The Politics of Who We Are. London Routledge.
Hoffman, J. (2001), Gender and Sovereignty. Feminism, the State and International
Relations, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
hooks, b. (1982), Ain’t I A Woman. Black Women and Feminism, London: Pluto
Press.
hooks, b. (1989), Talking Back, Thinking Feminist Thinking Black, Boston MA: South
End Press.
Jamieson, D. (2010), ‘Ethics, Public Policy and Global Warming’, in S.M. Gardiner,
S. Caney. D Jamieson and H. Shue (eds) Climate Ethics:Essential Readings, New
York: Oxford University Press.
Jamieson, D. (2010), ‘When Utilitarians Should be Virtue Theorists’, in S.M.
Gardiner, S. Caney. D Jamieson and H. Shue (eds) Climate Ethics:Essential
Readings, New York: Oxford University Press.
Lauritzen, P. (2011), ‘Thinking Like a Mountain: Nature, Wilderness and the Virtue of
Humility’, in The Ideal of Nature, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.
MacGregor, S. (2006), Beyond Mothering Earth: Ecological Citizenship and The
Politics of Care, Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press
Mason, R. (2013), ‘David Cameron at centre of 'get rid of all the green crap' storm’,
The Guardian, Thursday 21 November 2013,
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/21/david-cameron-greencrap-comments-storm,
McCall, L. (2005). ‘The Complexity of Intersectionality’. Signs. 30 (3) pp.17711800.
Morton, T (2007) Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics.
Cambridge Mass Harvard University Press.
Morton, T. (2012), The Ecological Thought, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University
Press.
Pateman, C. ( 1995), ‘Equality, difference, subordination: the politics of motherhood
and women’s citizenship’, Beyond Equality and Difference, ed G. Bock and S. James
(London: Routledge).
Plumwood, V. (1993), Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, London: Routledge,
1993) p117.
Plumwood, V. (2002), Environmental Culture, London and New York: Routledge.
21
Richardson, A. (2002), ‘Mary Wollstonecraft on Education’ in C.L. Johnson (ed.) The
Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Sandler, R. and Cafaro. P. (eds), (2005), Environmental Virtue Ethics, Lanham,
Boulder , New York and London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers inc.
Spelman, E. (1990), Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought,
London: The Women’s Press Ltd.
Taylor, B. (2003), Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Todd, J. ( 2000), Mary Wollstonecraft: a Revolutionary Life, London: Weidenfeld and
Nicholson.
Trees for Life http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/forest/scientific/georgina_tomlinson.html,
accessed 9.4.14.
Vogel, U. (1986), ‘Rationalism and Romanticism: Two strategies for Women’s
Liberation’, in J. Evans (ed.) Feminism and Political Theory. London: Sage.
Wollstonecraft, M. ([1798] 1989), ‘The Wrongs of Woman: or Maria’, in J. Todd and
M. Butler (eds) The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: Pickering and Chatto Ltd.
Wollstonecraft, M ([1790] 1995a), A Vindication of the Rights of Men; with A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and Hints, S. Tomaselli (ed.) Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wollstonecraft, M. ([1792] 1995b), A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, London:
J.M. Dent Everyman.
i
Jean Grimshaw provides a useful account of the interpretations and difficulties of classification of
Wollstonecraft’s work (1989).
22
ii
bel hooks in particular has developed a theory of ‘interlocking oppression’ hooks, b. (1982), Ain’t I A Woman.
Black Women and Feminism, London: Pluto Press. hooks, b. (1989), Talking Back, Thinking Feminist Thinking
Black, Boston MA: South End Press. Elizabeth Spelman has also worked in this area Spelman, E. (1990),
Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought, London: The Women’s Press Ltd. An interesting
discussion can also be found in McCall, L. (2005). ‘The Complexity of Intersectionality’. Signs. 30 (3) pp.17711800.
iii
Timothy Morton for example engages in such a critique of Romanticism (see Morton 2007 and 2012). I am
grateful to Kevin Love for this reference.
iv
A phrase used by Val Plumwood (Plumwood 2002).
v
The recent horse meet scandal is a good example of the first point, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk21335872 and there is an interesting article in National Geographic on the second
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131216-conservation-environment-animals-scienceendangered-species/
vi
The Charity Trees for Life has a lot of information on this http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/forest/scientific/georgina_tomlinson.html
vii
See http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/25/danish-copenhagen-zoo-kills-four-lions-mariusgiraffe for more detail.
viii
Allegedly, David Cameron referred to such taxation as ‘green crap’
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/21/david-cameron-green-crap-comments-storm,
accessed 10.4.14
ix
The Forum for the Future began in 1996. https://www.forumforthefuture.org/about
x
It is an issue I have written about previously (Hague 2011), see also Gatens 1991 and Pateman 1995.
xi
There is a large amount of literature on environmental virtue ethics including Barry Rethinking Green Politics,
Paul Lauritzen the Ideal of Nature, Dale Jameison in Climate Ethics and Sandler and Cafaro Environmental
Virtue Ethics.
23