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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Penguin Great Ideas)
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Item Description...
The perfect books for the true book lover, PenguinA's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of historyA's most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmakerA's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world.
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Item Specifications...
Pages 133
Dimensions: Length: 0.75" Width: 4.5" Height: 6.75"
Weight: 0.25 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date May 1, 2006
Publisher Penguin Group USA
ISBN 0143037501
EAN 9780143037507
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Availability 13 units.
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 | The Irony is that MW Did Not See Herself as a Feminist Feb 26, 2010 |
In both the Preface and the Introduction, Wollstonecraft emphasizes what she sees as the root cause of the failure of men to treat women as equals. Men discourage women from achieving the same education that men routinely are given, and as long as women are denied this education, then they can never hope to achieve social and economic parity with men. In her opening remarks to Talleyrand, she is gently optimistic that her powers of persuasion will be sufficient such that he "will not throw my work aside." Her other comments are couched in similar conciliatory terms: "I call upon you, therefore, now to weigh what I have advanced respecting the rights of women."
It is not only the lack of educational opportunity for women that rouses Wollstonecraft's ire. She connects this lack with a general lack of respect to a morality that has become "an empty name." Men cannot acknowledge morality in women unless they can first acquire it in their own persons. The only way, she notes, for men to do both is for them to permit women to have sufficient access to education that will lead women to acquire virtue. Wollstonecraft suggests that virtue in women cannot occur until men respect them enough for women to feel virtuous. As long as men see women as trophy wives, alluring mistresses, and idolized objects of unneeded Renaissance gallantry, then the oppression of women will continue under a paternalistic hand. Wollstonecraft's annoyance clearly is evident when she considers that men have appointed themselves the gender guardian of what is best for women: "Who made man the exclusive judge if women partake with him the gift of reason?" Throughout history, she continues, tyrants of all stripes have been "eager to crush reason; yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be useful." Men of Wollstonecraft's day are very much like the tyrants of former eras, and the female victims of the present are no less oppressed than all the victims of the past.
Wollstonecraft roundly condemns men for their own dearth of virtue in that when men see no need to expect virtue in women, then they feel no necessity to show it themselves. The result of this failure to expect or exhibit virtue is their seeking extra-marital affairs, a state she terms a "box of mischief." When men stray in this manner, their wives may follow suit or even neglect their children. All that remains for such women is to seek to obtain by cunning and guile what their men ought to dispense freely.
In the Introduction, Wollstonecraft builds upon the same idea that women are deprived of equality by being denied a proper education. Surprisingly enough, she does not lay the blame squarely on men. Wollstonecraft writes of various faults that women commit that enable men to get away with such heavy-handed actions. She writes as if women are little more than clay figurines to be molded exclusively by men: "The minds of women are enfeebled by false refinement." This "enfeeblement" has its origins in a myriad of sources, all of which women are seemingly unable to resist. She writes of "books of instruction" (written by men of genius) which purport to be models of delicate feminine behavior. It is unclear from context whether "genius" is meant ironically. Even more startlingly, Wollstonecraft admits flat out that in some respects at least, men are biologically superior to women: "In the government of the physical world, it is observable that the female, in general, is inferior to the male. The male pursues, the female yields--this is the law of nature." She adds that "this physical superiority cannot be denied." She does grant that men take unfair advantage of this immutable law of nature by widening what should be merely a biological gap into a sociological chasm: "But not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavor to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for the moment." Women, it follows, cannot help but be "intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them."
The strength and persuasiveness of Wollstonecraft's arguments are diluted by her being unable to detach herself from her thoroughly middle-class status. Those who reside above her on the economic ladder seemingly reside in a universe untouched by matters that relate to those lower on the scale. She, as one of the middle class, is in a "natural state," and thus amenable to the laws of nature and the power of rhetoric. Those who are of the upper class are "weak, artificial beings raised above the common wants and affections of their race, and in a premature unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!" Such women are to be pitied since their education "tends to render them vain and helpless." What Wollstonecraft does not acknowledge is that such female vanity and helplessness are not limited to the empty-headed women of the rich. In fact, it is these very traits that she so lamentably bemoans that are so entrenched in the females of her own middle class. Life, for these rich women, is limited to a useless search for amusement in a world bereft of it.
Wollstonecraft further suggests that women are at least partially to blame for their unchivalrous treatment by men. She assumes that given the least amount of gallantry by men that women will immediately assume the fawning traits of docility that so enrage her: "My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone." The favored male tactic to suppress and dominate women is to show untoward gallantry and excessive politeness at all times. Wollstonecraft terms all such patriarchal barbarities as "the soft phrase, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste," all of which inevitably lead to such actions as "almost synonymous with epithets of weakness," From these actions by men, she concludes that "those pretty feminine phrases" do no more than to engender a "weak elegance of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners" in women. Thus, in comparing the elegance of gallantry to the endurance of virtue, women may seek the latter but settle for the former.
The language and style of her book have caused future critics to discern a disparity between the clearly stated message and the less clearly phrased rhetoric. On one hand, Wollstonecraft promises that her writing will be the very epitome of simplicity and conciseness, yet on the other the content belies the asserted intent. She writes of her intended simplicity: "I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style--I aim at being useful; and sincerity will render me unaffected; for wishing rather than to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which coming from the head, never reach the heart." This sounds very much as if she places considerable urgency in keeping matters expressed as clear and unaffected as possible. Flowery diction, then, ought to have no place in her book. However, at the start of her Introduction, she uses a series of botanical metaphors whose elegance is intrusive:
"The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove, that their minds are not in a healthy state; for like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived in maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education."
The issues of apparent inferiority raised in both the Preface and Introduction are revisited in later chapters of Wollstonecraft's book. Each time that she considers why men are permitted to so thoroughly dominate women, she more often than not implies that there is some defect lurking within women that men are quick to expand upon to justify a series of patriarchal actions that are no less than tyrannous despite the ostensible gallantry with which they are couched.
| | | | The first feminist Nov 11, 2008 |
This was required reading for a graduate course in the Humanities. Wollstonecraft is not easy to read however, she makes a compelling argument. Mary Wollstonecraft viewed the institution of marriage simply as legal prostitution. She believed this to be the case for several reasons. First, the marriage laws in Britain at the time gave men legal rights over their wives including their property. The law also gave men custody of their children in event of divorce, and a woman could not even obtain a divorce without their husband's consent. For women divorce meant having to leave everything of importance in their lives behind. Thus, Wollstonecraft observed that Britain's laws left women in the unenviable position of being treated as mere chattel by their husbands. Second, Wollstonecraft argued that women's downtrodden position in society was not the cause of religious or moral teachings. She was emphatic in her assessment that it was women's denial of the same educational opportunities that men received that made them seem weak and inferior to men. Finally, she believed marriage only chained women to a life of drudgery in the home.
Armed with this information, Wollstonecraft set out to propose in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Women the idea, that equal education for women was the only remedy for this grave injustice perpetrated against them, and education for women would actually strengthen the institution of marriage. She made several prescient arguments to support this idea. First, Wollstonecraft believed schoolchildren needed the contact and interaction with other schoolchildren to develop properly. So, she argued against Britain's system of elitist education, especially its private schools and boarding schools. She advocated for the creation of national public schools, funded by the state, and attended by children from the entire socio-economic strata. Second, she thought it was imperative that both boys and girls must be educated together. The reason Wollstonecraft believed in coeducation, was that when both boys and girls get to know one another from an early age they would in turn, build friendships, and learn to respect one another. Therefore, when women get married, they will be able to serve as companions to their husbands and not just as trophy wives or sexual objects. "Nay, marriage will never be held sacred till women, by being brought up with men, are prepared to be their companions rather than their mistresses." Third, Wollstonecraft asked the question, how society could expect mothers to rear healthy boys capable of functioning as confident and productive men in society if their mothers, who raised them, were uneducated. She was horrified to think of the damage already done to children by uneducated, weak-minded mothers. Wollstonecraft articulates in beautiful fashion her argument for the need to educate women in the following quote. "If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship, nor will women ever fulfill the peculiar duties of their sex." This argument only enhances women's roles as wives and mothers. Finally, Wollstonecraft argued that the implementation of her educational reforms would prove to be a key element leading to the improvement of the institution of marriage in particular, and for family life in general. "Contending for the rights of women, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue."
Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, and feminism, social science, history and, psychology.
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