Mary Wollstonecraft: Rights of woman
The Debutante (1807) by Henry
Fuseli; "Woman, the victim of male social conventions, is tied to the
wall, made to sew and
guarded by
governesses. The picture reflects Mary Wollstonecraft's views in The Rights
of Women [sic]".[26]
It is debatable to what extent the Rights of Woman
is a feminist
text; because the definitions of feminist vary, different scholars
have come to different conclusions. Wollstonecraft
herself would never have referred to her text as feminist because the words
feminist
and feminism were not coined until the 1890s.[27]
Moreover, there
was no feminist movement to speak of during Wollstonecraft's
lifetime. In the introduction to her seminal
work on
Wollstonecraft's thought, Barbara Taylor writes:
Describing [Wollstonecraft's philosophy] as feminist is
problematic, and I do it only after much consideration. The label is of
course anachronistic . . . Treating
Wollstonecraft’s thought as an anticipation of nineteenth and twentieth-century
feminist
argument has meant sacrificing or distorting some of its
key elements.
Leading examples of this . . . have been
the widespread neglect of her religious beliefs, and the misrepresentation of
her as a
bourgeois liberal, which together have resulted in the
displacement of a religiously inspired utopian radicalism by a secular,
class-partisan reformism as alien to Wollstonecraft’s
political project as her dream of a divinely promised age of universal
happiness
is to our own. Even more important however has been the
imposition on Wollstonecraft of a heroic-individualist brand of politics
utterly at odds
with her own ethically driven case for women’s emancipation. Wollstonecraft’s
leading ambition for women
was that they should attain virtue, and it was to this
end that she sought their liberation.[28]
In the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft does not
make the claim for gender equality using the same arguments or the same
language that late nineteenth- and twentieth-century
feminists later would. For instance, rather than unequivocally stating
that men and women are equal, Wollstonecraft contends
that men and women are equal in the eyes of God, which means that
they are both subject to the same moral law.[29] For Wollstonecraft, men and women are equal in the most
important areas of life.
While such an idea may not seem revolutionary to
twenty-first-century readers, its implications were revolutionary during the
eighteenth
century. For example, it implied that both men and women—not just women—should
be modest[30] and respect the
sanctity of
marriage.[31] Wollstonecraft's argument exposed the sexual double
standard of the late eighteenth century and
demanded that men adhere to the same virtues demanded of
women.
However, Wollstonecraft's arguments for equality stand in
contrast to her statements respecting the superiority of masculine
strength and
valour.[32] Wollstonecraft famously and ambiguously states:
Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the order
of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies,
men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater
degree of virtue. I speak collectively of the whole sex; but I see not
the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues
should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has
only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason
consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple
direction, as that
there is a God.[33]
Moreover, Wollstonecraft calls on men, rather than women,
to initiate the social and political changes she outlines in the
Rights of Woman. Because women are uneducated, they cannot alter their own situation—men
must come to their aid.[34]
Wollstonecraft writes at the end of her chapter "Of
the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions
Established in
Society":
I then would fain convince reasonable men of the importance of some of
my remarks; and prevail on them to weigh dispassionately
the whole tenor of my observations. – I appeal to their
understandings; and, as a fellow-creature, claim, in the name of my sex,
some interest in their hearts. I entreat them to assist
to emancipate their companion, to make her a help meet for them!
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.[35]
It is Wollstonecraft's last novel, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
(1798), the fictionalized sequel to the Rights of Woman, that is
usually considered her most radical feminist work.[36]
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Vindication_of_the_Rights_of_Woman
The information has been taken on 1st of
November 2008
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last modified on 30 October 2008, at 10:46.
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