Thoughts on the education of daughters: with reflections on female
conduct, in the more important duties of life
This book is the first published work of the British feminist Mary
Wollstonecraft. Published in 1787 by her friend Joseph Johnson, Thoughts is a conduct book that offers advice on female
education to the emerging British middle class. Although dominated by considerations of morality and etiquette, the
text also contains basic child-rearing instructions, such as how to care for an
infant.
An early version of the modern self-help
book, the 18th-century British
conduct book drew on many literary traditions, such as advice manuals and
religious narratives. There was an explosion in the number of conduct books
published during the second half of the eighteenth century, and Wollstonecraft
took advantage of this burgeoning market when she published Thoughts.
However, the book was only moderately successful: it was favourably
reviewed, but only by one journal and it was reprinted only once. Although it was
excerpted in popular contemporary magazines, it was not republished until the
rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s.
Like other conduct books of the time, Thoughts adapts older
genres to the new middle-class ethos. The book encourages mothers to teach
their daughters analytical thinking, self-discipline, honesty, contentment in their
social position, and marketable skills (in case they should ever need to
support themselves). These goals reveal Wollstonecraft's intellectual debt to John Locke; however, the prominence she affords religious faith and innate feeling
distinguishes her work from his. Her aim is to educate women to be useful wives
and mothers, because, she argues, it is through these roles that they can most
effectively contribute to society. The predominantly domestic role
Wollstonecraft outlines for women—a role that she viewed as meaningful—was
interpreted by 20th-century feminist literary critics as paradoxically
confining them to the private sphere.
Although much of Thoughts is devoted to platitudes and advice
common to all conduct books for women, a few passages anticipate
Wollstonecraft's feminist arguments in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), such as her poignant description of the suffering single woman.
However, several critics suggested that such passages only seem to have radical
undertones in light of Wollstonecraft's later works.
URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_the_Education_of_Daughters