Wollstonecraft: What Can Woman Be?
In A Vindication on The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft centers her writing on the state of what women are, that being the duties they serve and their place in society, including both positive and negative associations. In a time of revolutionary thinking, Wollstonecraft argues that her contemporaries must apply the same rights to women as they do men. Although at times critical of Woman, Wollstonecraft argues that by gaining rights for women, it would only improve them. To Wollstonecraft, woman could be virtuous citizens who can perform their duties best for the nation, resulting in a better society of furthered equality.
To understand what makes woman, both in what they are and could be, it first needs to be understood what man is. Men as a sex were perceived in Wollstonecraft’s time as the default position of humanity, which permeated through the language used in her writing and the writing of her time. Men are citizens, lawmakers, workers, voters, officials, everyone who has a voice. Therefore, when referring to the rights of man, man refers to the collective of all people, mankind. Her political pamphlet A Vindication to the Rights of Man was written in response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, and places firm support of the French revolution, which emphasized the rights of man, those being defined in The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as “Liberty, Property, Safety and Resistance to Oppression”. She asserts in this pamphlet the belief that “there are rights that we received at birth, as men, when we were raised above brute creation...” (Wollstonecraft,1790). Men here includes Wollstonecraft; she is a person of mankind. However, the audience of this text is still those of the male sex. Women could not claim their natural rights; they could not vote, could not own property, had no means of resistance to oppression by men, and did not have equality with men neither domestically nor economically. It was expected that women were to marry and raise children, not pursue their own happiness. Woman, distinct from men, are the class of the female sex, which were heavily subjugated in Wollstonecraft’s time. Wollstonecraft’s perception of what a woman could be are founded in patriarchal standards of woman’s duty; that being a devoted wife, maintaining the household, and being a good mother, or what she calls domestic concerns. These standards of a woman’s duty were culturally upheld by the dominant religion, the Christian church, which followed the Bible’s doctrine of female subservience; “The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (New International Version Bible, 2011, Genesis 2:18). Political thinkers such as Rousseau believed that women were nonpolitical entities, as their domestic role is not driven by reason but natural inclinations and passion (Gatens, 1986, p. 9). Wollstonecraft does not look down upon the duty of the woman, instead believing it to vitally important to the prosperity of man. She opposed Rousseau’s notions that this duty exempt women from politics, arguing that because of her duty, woman is essential to politics; they take responsibility for men as their wives, and shape the children who will become citizens. “If children are to be brought up to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot” (Wollstonecraft, 1792, p.10). Women’s duty is not simply domestic, as the domestic cannot be fully distinguished from the public. Women’s rights, particularly education, are argued for by Wollstonecraft so that women may excel at the duties that are assumed by this role of Woman. Wollstonecraft argues that a woman should be educated so that they know the reasoning for their duty, that “the more understanding women acquire the more they will be attached to their duty, understanding it.” She also believed, one cannot give Woman importance and duty without the rights that coincide with duty, for Wollstonecraft believes them to be inherently interlinked “...for rights and duties are inseparable” (p. 215) The duty of a woman is one that is performed by women as they are, and therefore the rights of women belong to women as Wollstonecraft sees them.
In titling her work on the rights of women A Vindication on The Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft uses Woman as the collective, subverting her previous work’s title and drawing attention to women as a people, citizens. Wollstonecraft is often critical of Woman, describing them as narrow-minded and vain, “Rendered gay and giddy by the whole tenor of their lives” (Wollstonecraft,1792, p. 129). She also concedes that women are weaker than men, physically and mentally, having less reason. In a rhetorical analysis of Wollstonecraft, Sulkin (1990) writes that “Wollstonecraft, throughout her essay, resorts to all kinds of embellishment, embellishment that sometimes detracts from her argument, but in many more instances highlights the points being made” (p. 39). This embellishment of the flaws of woman draws on the beliefs of those she contends with, and assumes an objectivity in her view of women. Modern feminist understanding of equality assumes the inclusion of women, and so Wollstonecraft’s arguments that women are inferior to men or should be bound to the duties of the home come across conservative, lacking a nuanced critique of patriarchy (Narayan, 2016). However, Wollstonecraft argues from the perspective of a late 18th Century woman, who is undervalued and mocked, and says that she too deserves rights as much as anyone else. However, she does not wish for women to be this way, nor believe that women must be this way. She argues that because women lack rights and an education in reason, they are taught to be frivolous and childlike, according to Wollstonecraft; “Taught from their infancy that beauty is a woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adore its prison” (Wollstonecraft, 1792, p. 50). To her, the woman, through being uneducated in virtue and reason, is in a state of arrested development; aspiring only to what they are taught is important; vanity, gratification, and frivolity. If Woman is educated “...it is reasonable to suppose that they will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a physical, moral, and civil sense” (p. 215).
Rights for the emancipated women, as Wollstonecraft envisions them, would not appear to challenge the institutions that uphold women’s duty. For instance, Wollstonecraft argues that education and equality shared between men and women would lead to friendship between the sexes, which would lead to marriages founded upon that friendship, which would improve the fortitude of marriages “...marriage may become more sacred; your young men may choose wives from motives of affection, and your maidens allow love to root out vanity” (Wollstonecraft, 1792, p.12). In this, she does not argue against the institute of marriage, but rather its present form, which she compares to slavery. Wollstonecraft notes in the beginning of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman that she would further investigate the laws surrounding women and the “consideration of their peculiar duties” (p.14). Due to the second volume of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman never being published, these investigations, and thus the particulars of female emancipation as Wollstonecraft envisioned it is not fully articulated. Her arguments instead are often centered around the duties of the woman, and the role which they currently exist within, and the rights that should coincide. “Although she confines her descriptions to the traditional wife and mother roles, she also sees the powerful potential of these positions in a society where the nuclear family was to become so vital to the economic system.” (Monroe, 1987, p.147). Ultimately Wollstonecraft argues that rights for women is for the betterment of woman, which is for the betterment of man; for if half the population is more virtuous and educated, then that is better for all. “Let woman share the rights, and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated,” (Wollstonecraft, 1792, p. 215). This prioritization of men, and the assumed maintenance of oppressive structures in Wollstonecraft’s arguments has met critical reception from modern feminist scholars. Wollstonecraft’s arguments for women’s rights are written, for the most part, for man. However, as the dominant social group men whom, like Wollstonecraft, supported revolutionary thinking were capable of being sympathetic to and willing to advocate for the rights of women. “...Wollstonecraft understood then what is still true today: the battle is not men versus women but progress versus the status quo.” (Monroe, 1987, p.146). She argues against men in a manner appealing to their reason, and offers to them the rights of Woman for Man.
Wollstonecraft’s case for the rights of women is centered on the women that are; the wives and daughters that have nothing in their power but the sexual appeal that is to be lost to time. They are subjugated, by men, and they should not be. Wollstonecraft argues that they are capable of, and should be able to pursue reason and virtue, and that it is only possible for them to do so if they are given rights and education. Woman has the capacity of man, she is only limited, and only good can come from her emancipation. This leads me to conclude that Wollstonecraft argues for the rights of women for what woman could be, and for the good of the women who are.
References
Moira Gatens (1986). ROUSSEAU AND WOLLSTONECRAFT: NATURE vs. REASON, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 64:sup1, 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/00048402.1986.9755421
Monroe, J. A. (1987). “A Feminist Vindication of Mary Wollstonecraft”, Iowa Journal of Literary Studies 8(1), 143-152. Doi: https://doi.org/10.17077/0743-2747.1247
Narayan, S. (2016). "The Development of Modern Feminist Thought: A Summary." Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse, 8(02), 2, Retrieved from http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=1352
New International Version Bible. (2011). Bible Gateway. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage /?search=genesis+2%3A18&version=NIV
Sulkin, Gail E. Rogers, "A rhetorical analysis of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1990). Theses Digitization Project. 553. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/553
Wollstonecraft, M. A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, occaisioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France (2nd edition London, Printed for J. Johnson, 1790).
Wollstonecraft, M. (1955). Rights of Woman: The Subjection of Women. J.M. Dent & Sons, 1929; New York, E. P. Dutton & Co.
This Essay was written earlier this year for my Politics course. It is currently unedited from my original submission.