The author is important to study, here it is Mary Wollstonecraft. Growing up in an abusive family, Mary took over the family at a young age. She started a school, and she was well educated, and amazingly, mostly self-educated. She decided to write for a living, and met up with Unitarian man in London who believed in woman’s rights. He was a radical in his time. He supported her, as she wrote one of the first responses to a conservative piece by Edmund Burk. Burke attacked the French Revolution in the Reflections on the French Revolution in 1789 (November). Mary wrote a response in December entitled Vindication of the Rights of Men. Mary says that “manly is a synonym for virtuous and rational.”
After publishing her signed arguments, she says it’s irrational to distinguish between classes of men. She defends the creation of a republic, as opposed to a monarchy. Two years later, in 1792, she published the Vindication of the Right of Woman. Notice in this story, “men” is used as a plural whole, and “woman” is used as an individual, or is she just generalizing all women? Does “woman” point to all women in one category? Mary isolates woman in her text as a class of persons who have been treated the same. So does using the word men mean a number of classes, or all human beings? Using men means humanity, not just masculine. Is referring to humankind as “man” sexist? Or is it just a tradition? The feminist argument would say that as a subtext, it communicates that men are better, exemplary, etc.
Vindication of the Rights of Women is a very hard text on women! It speaks about sexism as systematic, or structural. Society (as a system) through education and rewards trains women not to be virtuous, not to be rational, not to be manly. In the introduction on page 27, it says that women are degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence…artificial weakness give potential to tyrannize. What is this talking about? Her understanding of democracy fits with ours. She attacks kings on page 23 in book. “Every profession involving subordination is highly injurious to morality.” Radical alert! For example, a grading system induces immorality, plagiarism, cheating, etc. Think of the army and gun rights, and how the Founding Fathers wanted us to have guns to oppose tyranny, or perhaps a president leaning towards monarchy.
In chapter two, we see the prevailing opinion. She presents an argument that men are degrading because the education and instructions they are given are given to them for the sake of making them alluring sexually. Major moment in text: brilliant! On page 41, after the small paragraph, speaking about standing armies…
“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”
This argues that soldiers are like women. They too are educated in the same way as women. If you educate men to behave in the same way as women, they will. Or if you educate men to be as stupid as women, they will be. Proof is in the soldiers. Are women naturally inferior? NO! They are nurtured to be inferior. Also, just like there are exceptional women, there are exceptional soldiers.
Excerpt: Let us examine this question. Rousseau declares that a woman should never, for a moment, feel herself independent, that she should be governed by fear to exercise her natural cunning, and made a coquetish slave in order to render her a more alluring object of desire, a sweeter companion to man, whenever he chooses to relax himself.
What nonsense! when will a great man arise with sufficient strength of mind to puff away the fumes which pride and sensuality have thus spread over the subject! 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.
Rousseau, at this time, is totally about the rights of man. This doesn’t include women in his men. He has the notion that all men were created equal really means only men. Mary is furious about this. She avoids any comparison of the two sexes collectively. She argues that women aggravate the situation! Moving now to chapter three…
On page 59, Mary speaks about women being diluted by the sentiment through which men adore women.
Women, deluded by these sentiments, sometimes boast of their weakness, cunningly obtaining power by playing on the weakness of men; and they may well glory in their illicit sway.
Using sexual power, and not legitimate power to get to the top. (Think Sex and the City). Women are not using real power. Women use fainting, crying, and other stereotypical womanly acts to win men over. By weakness, men are attracted to women, they elevate women, and more. Mary attacks this notion and attacks men for doing this and women for playing into it. Women, by this, have more power; but also less somehow.
Page 65 she speaks about trying to be beautiful:
Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adore its prison.
Let not men then in the pride of power, use the same arguments that tyrannic kings and venal ministers have used, and fallaciously assert that woman ought to be subjected because she has always been so.
^^”Woman” here is used as a class
The following is a very famous passage, instead of French Revolution:
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.—If men be demi-gods—why let us serve them! And if the dignity of the female soul be as disputable as that of animals—if their reason does not afford sufficient light to direct their conduct whilst unerring instinct is denied—they are surely of all creatures the most miserable! and, bent beneath the iron hand of destiny, must submit to be a fair defect in creation. But to justify the ways of Providence respecting them, by pointing out some irrefragable reason for thus making such a large portion of mankind accountable and not accountable, would puzzle the subtilest casuist.
Feminism is insisting that women have not been given enough, it argues that women have been given to much and have taken advantage of their situation. Mary believed in virtue, which could also be seen as oppressor, at least in the Victorian era. What Mary actually means by virtue is rationalistic. Professing love, to her, is the same as marriage, rejected traditional and lawful marriage. She tried to commit suicide because if her word equaling marriage couldn’t hold, what was the epitome of her virtue? If her word couldn’t hold in the world, what mattered? She believed in absolute transparency and chastity. She rejected most social norms and was very consistent. Virtue means honesty to Mary. Virtue, outside of Mary in society, goes under a transformation in society.
“Every individual is in this respect is a world within …?” Found on page 74. She believes in people acting according to their individuality.
