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A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN

Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797) - English author, often

considered the first feminist, who was an early pioneer of women's
rights. She died shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792) - Her best-known work is an attack on the chauvinistic
conventions of her time. The basic doctrine of the later women's
movement was deftly presented here, gaining both fame and scorn for Wollstonecraft.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792),
written by the 18th-century British feminist Many Wollstonecrafi, is one of the earliest works of feminist
philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th
century who did not believe women should have an education. She argues that women ought to have
an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the
nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands,
rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in
marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental
rights as men
A Vindicaltion of the Rights of Women is ina large part structured as a response to several works on
women education and female conduct written by men during the latter half of the 18 " century. Of these
the best-known and most influential was Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile or On Education. In A
Vindication of the Rights of Women, Wolstonecraft writes against a conception of women and
femininity as defined primarily by the ability to arouse male sexual desire

"deprive us of souls and insinuate that we are beings only designed by sweet attractive
grace, and docile blind obedience, to gratify the sense of man.."
Her vision of women's emancipation "from the slavery to which the pride and sensuality of man
and their short-sighted desire... has subjected them "hinges on a notion of "natural freedom" From
Wollstonecraft's perspective, women were to be "governed by reasonable laws" rather than
the "despotism" that has characterized men's treatment of them; they might accede to that state of
liberty and moral dignity which is so often denied to them-

"the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is

best calculated to strengthen the body and form of the heart..to enable the individual to
achieve such habits of virtue as will render it independent".
Thus, she is harshly critical of the intense sexualization of femininity that she sees Rousseau- among
others as undertaking, for it is this association of women with bodily dependence that prevents them,
according to Wollstonecraft, from acquiring "vigour of intellect" and rational thought.
Wollstonecraft's analysis of gender relations is based on a critique of the way in which women's roles
are culturally constructed to hinder their ability to become fuly rational and autonomous moral
individuals. A Vindication of the Rights of Women takes a historicist perspective on female education
and what might be termed a Universalist approach to social theory. Finally, Wollstonecraft demands
that men grant women the possibility to prove themselves as individuals blessed with the qualities of
reason and independent thought. As she puts it,
"It is time to effect a revolution of female manners time to restore to them their lost dignity-
make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the
 world."
A keen and vital concern
with education, especially of girls
Wollstonecraf's writing and remains a dominant and women, runs throughout Mary
of the Rights of Women begins as a plea for theme to the abrupt end of her career. A Vindication
and far-sighted proposal for a national schoolsthe equal education of women and includes an ambitious
system
Education was critically important to Wollstonecraft both as
theorist and proponent of women's rights. A a liberal reformer and as a radical
broad spectrum of reformist writers and activists
conservatives wishing to shore up the status quo to from
"Jacobins" wishing to overturn it- saw
as a, if not the, key locus for promoting social stability education
or engineering social revolution. According to
associationist psychology, influentially applied to
Concerning Education (1693) and subscribed to schooling and pedagogy in Locke's Some Thoughts
by
Wollstonecraft's time, childhood was the crucial periodnearly everyimportant writer on education in
for the formation of individuals and hence
social groups. As VWollstonecraft herself writes, upon of
course of childhood can "seldom be disentangled later character and the associations built over the
held ideals but the unconscious habits, prejudices, reason"in later life. Not simply the consciously
by
established during childhood. and character traits of men and women are

If education was
preeminent in forming individual subjects, it was equally
eventually argues, to deform the subjective lives of women. powerful, Wolstonecraft
education as a virtual conspiracy of male educators and She came to see the history of female
less rational than they would otherwise have
writers seeing to render women weaker and
become -
"women are not allowed to have sufficient strength
name of virtue"; "Men indeed appear to me to act inofa mind to acquire what really deserves the
very unphilosophical manner, when they
try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to
keep them always in a state of
childhood"
For the amelioration of women's abject social condition,
then, and for the rise of a revolutionary
generation of rational, free-thinking, independent women, educational reform
was crucial. Moreover,
Women could argue from their traditional role as nurturers
and early educators of children for a
sounder and more rational education. If women were to be wholly or largely consigned to
sphere, that is, they could make this domestic form of subjection the domestic
the very ground for educational
reform, since only a thoughtful, well-informed strong mother could
be expected to provide for her
children a truly adequate rearing and education- "How then can the great
art pleasing be said to
be a necessary study?" Such arguments, made by Wollstonecraft in companyof
with a wide range of
female reformers from conservatives like Hannah Moore to radicals like Macaulay
and Mary Hays,
were inevitable double-edged. They challenged a key aspect of patriarchal
domination the sub
-

ordination of women through an invidious education meant to confine them to the

domestic sphere-
through urging a revised conception of that very domestic role.
Wollstonecraft argues for a reasoned assent to reigning social values, urging the
development of a
sound moral understanding over mindless cultivation of "exterior" accomplishments like drawing
and
music. Unfortunately, rote accomplishments, empty "manners, and "vicious" examples are what can
be expected from most girls' boarding.
Wollstonecraft relentlessly attacks Rousseau_for limiting a 'rational' and sound education to
boys,
consigning girls to a subservient "education for the body" alone. Even in their traditional roles as
mothers and nurturers, however, women requirea much more substantial education.

Wollstonecraft's radical re-conceptualization of the maternal role overlaps with the reformist
agendas of most of the period's writers on education for women, but goes much further in
demanding a complete overhaul of the "false system" recommended by "all" writers
on "female education and manners" from Rousseau to Gregory

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 . In
place of incremental reforms, she calls for "civil" equality and
economic
an "independence of mind" scarcely to be expected from women "taught toindependence, as well as
depend entirely on their
husband." Moreover, the entire slate of "negative" virtues recommended
throughout the conduct book
manuals must be repudiated for their morally as well as physically debilitating
effects, including the
cardinal virtue of female modesty. Her uncompromising dismissal of uniquely "feminine"
which would facilitate her demonization in the reactionary period virtues-

soon to follow allowed

Wollstonecraft to revise the existing system of female socialization, from the cradle
up.
Wollstonecraft also extends her arguments to assert that women should exercise equal
rights with
men the public sphere and develops a critique of the structural inequalities of
marriage. Marriage is
based on an unequal contract, where the woman has the sole responsibility
of appeasing her husband
not with her morals or intellect, but with her "charms" only. When a women
has "only been faught to
please"marriage which is supposed to "eradicate the habitude of life" can only serve to bring about
monotony and bitterness or extra-marital affairs since the women's "pleasing" beauty

"cannot have much effect on the husband's heart, when they are seen everyday, when the
summer is past and gone".
However, although Wollstonecraft is a stem critic of "actually existing' marriages, she
does not reject
marriage as an institution altogether. Instead, she envisages a form of marriage that incorporates
the
major features of the classical notion of higher friendship such as equality, free choice, reason, mutual
esteem and pro-found concern for one another's moral character- "Fondness is a poor substitute for
friendship." The classical ideal of higher friendship provides a suitable model for her liberal
approach
to marriage be- because it represents the paradigmatic ratonal, equal, and free relationship.
Wollstonecraft uses the idea that marriage should emulate many of the features of higher friendship to
criticize the practices and values of romance and family life in eighteenth-century English society and
to suggest a way in which marriage might be reconfigured to realize central liberal values. To
recast
marriage in this way means that Wollstonecraft is applying liberal values to the world of romantic love
and family life. That she thinks about mariage in political, and specifically liberal, terms and
recommends a model of marriage that emulates many of friendship's salient features is an important
feature of her work.
Mary Wollstonecraft's essay thus needs to be situated in a society in which liberal individualism was
becomingthe dominant ideological formation of (male) personhood and social organization, what she
uncovered was the systemic inequality of women in all areas of life the family, work, cullure,
economics, the law, education as well as inconsisiency of the ideological positions that held this
inequality in place.
A Vindication of the Rights of Mamen was a response to that ineauality_She examines the
haturalness' of women's inequality and discovers that it s not in fact natural at all natural indeed was
a highly ideologically loaded word. Women's inequality, Wollstonecraft argued is socially constructed
to shore up the position of the privileged liberal-individualist male. She argues that

Momen. in.particular are renderedweak and wreiched bya variaty of concurring causes
amongst which are inadequate parenting, bad education, the lack of property rights and the exclusion
from the political sphere, as well as the negative effects of literary-cultural traditions the ideology of
romantic love which makes women mere crealures of sentiment, and bad novels which reproduce a
false picture of reality rather than an intelligent analysis of it
A small, but important example ofher analysis is from her discussion of Dr. Gregory's A Father's
Legacy to is
Daughters (1774), a conduct manual which focused on 'proper feminine behaviour. To
quote Wollstonecraft
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comprehend what either he or Rousseau meant, when
they frequently use this indefinite term".

She argues that if something is natural.then one will do it naturally, without

position advocated. lf the 'fondness of dress' is not a natural the advice to cultivate the
attribute of women, why should they be
encouraged to cultivate it? The answer the 'love of power comes
book in which Wollstonecraft suggests that while women
-
from the larger context of the
are denies other forms of power (political,
educational legal) they will make use of whatever power left to them: in
attract men because they are aught, and have learned particular their sexual power to
their lesson well, that they can only draw power
from sexual relationships rather than having any autonomous potency
of their own.
Rousseau ,Dr. Gregory and similar male conservatives of the eighteenth century
unequal to men. She critise the writers who portraits women as insist that women are
Work
weaker and follish creature in their

".all the writers who have written on the subject of

female education and manners from
rousseau to dr.gregory have contributed to render women more artificial ,weak
they would have been;and consequently more useless character,than
member of society."
She also critice for making female as only a source of pleasure for men
"But Rousseau,and most of the male writers who have followed
his steps, have
wamly inculcated that the whole tendency of female education ought to
be directed to
onepoint: to render them pleasing."
Her work suggests that society is to blame for female oppression
and for the
women. Women are not educated to do or know any better. Society has created general weakness of
women's foolishness
and has then proceeded to blame women for their weakness, deed has come to regard
natural.
weakness as

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was by far Wollstonecraft's most famous work. Although it was
not the first time an author had argued for the equality of women, A Vindication
reached an unusually
wide audience, and contained forceful arguments. Moira Ferguson and Janet Todd wrote: "In
century of innovative political ideas and fundamental historical change, [Wollstonecraft] a
flamboyantly
urged her feminist theories on the public... She attracted more opposition and mockery than any of her
predecessors, for she was not aristocratic, wealthy, well educated, pious, or ladylike" (128).
Kate Lindemann contends that Rights of Woman contains two arguments for the equality of women.
The first stems from her rational psychology: human beings are rational by nature and the
sexes are
equal in all things but physical strength. Thus, both sexes are called to the same perfection
and
unless they receive the same education they will not be able to fulfill their human destiny" (163). This
argument depends heavily on Wollstonecraft's religious opinions. She believed that all virtue can be
understood as an attribute of God, and can be discerned through reason since God is perfectly wise.
She also believed that both individual humans and human society are progressing toward complete
God-like perfection. In addition, Wollstonecraft used her notion of God to defend her ideas of human
rationality, as opposed to male rationality:

see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [the sexes] virtues should differ in respect to
I

their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? must therefore, ifI reason
I

consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they must have the same simple direction as that there
is a God (Rights of Woman, 26).

Wollstonecraft's "second framework is more pragmatic, 'Contending for the rights of woman... f she be
notprepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the pragress of knowledge
and virtue; for truth must be common to all, or it will be ineficasious with respect to its influence on
general practice" (Lindemann, 163). Wollstonecraft held that the equality of women would result in

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many benefits for society in general. She wrote,
"Would men but generously snap our
content with rational fellowship instead of chains, and be
slavish obeience, they would find us more observant
daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more
citizens" Rights of Woman calls for many social reasonable mothers-in a word, better
changes that will allow women to fully develop as
humans. The principal of these is education. Wollstonecraft
although she bitterly criticized him for not supported Rousseau's ideal of education,
extending his principles to women. She believed that
educatiorn is necessary to allow any human to fully
develop his/her
also supported woman's suffrage, which was, according to Moira capacity for reason. Wollstonecraft
Ferguson and Janet Todd, "the first
conscious, public articulation by a woman of a demand that
would receive more attention a hundred
years later, but would not legally be enacted until the twentieth
century" (126). Wollstonecraft also
held that women need to be able to support themselves
economically so that they aren't unduly
dependent on men. This clearly came out of Wollstonecraft's own
struggle to be a self-supporting
Woman.

Literary Summary: A Vindication of the Rights of Women,

by Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wllstonecraft
"A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" by Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1792, was a reaction to
the French Revolutionary Assembly's Declaration of the Rights of Man which
granted participatory
citizenship only to men. The "Rights of Man" meant a fraternity of "liberty, fraternity,
equality" only for
men, comparing marriage to slavery and tyrannical oppression. Wollstonecraft
challenges the thinking
that sustains and idealizes this subjection: it questions the view of woman's subordination
nature, history, philosophy, and divine ordination. Wollstonecraft critique of
as a fact of
such subjective
interpretation of human existence is criticized with incisive and sarcastic
examination of myths and
their literary vehicles: such as John Milton's "Paradise Lost," Alexander Pope's "of the Characters of
Women;" Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's education novel "Emile"
and his
romance "Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise" Dr. John Gregory's "A Father's Legacy to His Daughters,"
Dr. James Fordyce's "Sermons to Young Women." and

Wollstonecraft sheds light on the fact that women are subjugated into their subordinate position
through flattery-innocent, delicate, feminine, and beautiful. Women are praised for their "fair defects"
of character and revered as "angels" or "girls," rather than being capable, intelligent and mature
women equal to their countepart men. Wollstonecraft argues for gender neutrality. According to
Wollstonecraft, this arrangement is not by divinity but rather a social formation. She argues that God
would not have created women with their capacity for virtuous conduct and spiritual salvation if it were
as
not intended to be important as aspects provided by their male counterparts. As well
Wollstonecrat discusses the discourse of tyranny and revolution which has already occurred for male
coleagues, which allows her to point out the reactionary attitudes about women that may be toleraled
and supported by progressive thinkers.
Wollstonecraft's most incisive, sarcastic and sophisticated argument comes in a letter to M.Talleyrand-
Perigord, Late Bishop of Autun, dated 1792, when she asks, "Sir, you will assert, that a duty can be
binding which not founded on reason? If indeed this be their destination, arguments may be drawn
from reason: and thus augustly supported, the more understanding women acquire, the more they will
be attached to their duty-comprehending it-for unless they comprehend it, unless their morals be
fixed on the same immutable principle as those of man, no authority can make them discharge it in a
virtuous manner. They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading
the master and the abject dependent" (289)
 Wollstonecraft discusses a woman's role as a wife
many times throughout her work. She espouses
idea that if women are continually oppressed by the
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
order to contnue to stimulate their sensibility. Others will elsewhere in
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.
In chapter 2, she takes to
task many of the male authors who either create influential portraits
women (Milton, Rousseau) or set out to educate women into of
servile dependence (Gregory). Her
approach anticipates methods used by feminist literary critics who
analyze the representation of
women, probing the connection between cultural representations
and the construction of gender
Key Concepts:

women are weaker than men but ought to be educated to be morally

responsible in their degree
women's curTent inferiority stems from faulty education
middle classes are the most natural state

women's artificial weakness leads to tyranny

women trained only to get husbands will make poor wives

neglected wife makes a good mother

Current education of women makes them creatures of sensibility and not intellect.

Reflections on Chapter 2 of Mary Wollstonecraft's

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Leah Welch

LEAH WELCH graduated from Bethel University in the spring of 2005 with a degree in Biblical
and
Theological Studies. Currently, she works at a group home for people with disabilities and is an intern
at Christians for Biblical Equality.

Arguably, Mary Wollstonecraft can be as relevant today as she was in 1792 when she wroteA
Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her critique of societal norms and the education of women and
children was revolutionary when she wrote it, and it still has the capability to be infiuential today. Why
is this the case? Is her work so rich that it can be interpreted across cultures and time, or has society

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 not changed as much as it might seem? Certainly, Wollstonecraft's
writing is interpretively rich and
able to speak to many people; however, there are some elements of our
contemporary society that
might hinder the progress of the feminist movement, of which
Wollstonecraft is considered the
foremother. intend to investigate Wollstonecraft's argument for why men
I

and women are equal in

rationality and consider why her criticisms of society might still be applicable
today by reflecting on
applications to our broader society and, more specifically, the evangelical church. will I
also suggest
that it is unfortunate that a critique such as Wollstonecraft's still needs to be applied in contemporary
society, but that, if we can understand it in today's context (and by neglecting it we
would be causing
injustice and miseducation to go unchallenged), then we should indeed apply
her proposals.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is seen by many as a suggestion for the renewal of female
education; however, it should also be included in the larger picture of the quest for liberty. Many at
the
time did not want to give her ideas credibility because they believed that she must
have had ulterior
motives for trying to overturn the status quo for women. It was thought that no sensible woman would
seek to deny her place in society and defy the expectations placed on her unless she
had
questionable morals.1 This same criticism has been made of the modern feminist movement, that
women are not seeking equality with pure motives, but, rather, that they must have a hidden agenda
motvated by anger and jealousy. Since the beginnings and up through the development and
continuance of the movement, feminism has been harshly criticized and even dismissed by many for
this reason even though its ideal objedives seek to be comprehensive and indude everyone.
Feminism promotes a system based on radical love and equality instead of patriarchy and domination
and attempts to meet the best interest of women and men, adults and children of all races and
classes.
Chapter 2 The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed..

"To speak disrespectfully of love is,know, high treason against sentiment and fine feelings; but wish
I
I

to speak the simple language of truth, and rather to address the head than the heart. To endeavour to
reason love out of the world, would be to out Quixote Cervantes, and equally offend against common
sense; but an endeavour to restrain this tumultuous passion, and to prove that it should not be allowed
to dethrone superior powers, or to usurp the sceptre which the understanding should ever coolly wield,
appears less wild."

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