A VINDICATION

of the
RIGHTS of WOMAN

Mary Wollstonecraft

The Concept of Woman

inferior to men as they are female(s) by virtue of a certain lack of qualities

Brave Women

Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797

Mother

of
feminism

Outline of the Presentation

The life story of Mary Wollstonecraft The historical context of the 18th century The analysis of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Wollstonecrafts opinion about sexuality Women are sexual beings, but so are men! Female chastity and fidelity is necessary for stable marriage, but requires the male ones, too.

18th Century
anachronistic statement for this century in which a complete BLIND OBEDIENCE was expected from women

Historical Context of the 18th Century

the American Declaration of Independence (1776) The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) questioning of traditional authority philosophical debates on the nature of freedom and human rationality

THE AGE of REASON (THE ENLIGHTENMENT)

REASON vs. EMOTION

women were incapable of the full development of reason by their very nature creatures of emotion and passion

ANGELS IN THE HOUSES

supposed nature

dependency and biological role

mothering

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

struggled with difficulties caused by her father played a maternal role for her sisters & mother established a school with her sister, Eliza

Biographical Background

Biographical Background Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

In 1786, published her first work:

with the school. became the governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough, living most of the time in Ireland. Dismissed in 1787, returned to England and took up the traditional female jobs - needlework, governess, teaching

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters based on her experience

Biographical Background Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

became translator and literary advisor to Joseph Johnson, the publisher of radical texts. got acquainted with the intellectuals of the days such as Thomas Paine, William Blake, Henry Fuseli, and William Godwin.

Biographical Background Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

In 1790, she produced her Vindication of the Rights of Man as a response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France , which is a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England). In 1792, she published her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, an important work which, advocating equality of the sexes, and the main doctrines of the later women's movement, made her both famous and infamous in her own time.

Biographical Background Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

women, too, had a right to develop their faculties freely the laws subjecting women to the fathers and husbands could be changed their existing defects (and indeed their charms) resulted of social conditioning could be modified.

The famous comparison

fond of dress, trained in obedience, and not expected to think for themselves education and socialization account for more differences than does gender role.

Paradox: got stuck between reason and passion

She fell in love with a married man, Henry Fuseli, and horrified his wife by suggesting that the three of them might live together, she was attacked most due to this unacceptable and unorthodox lifestyle Then, she went to Paris met Gilbert Imlay, and agreed to become his common law wife (informal marriage used as a synonym for non-marital relationships

Biographical Background Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

She bore him a daughter, Fanny, but then she learnt about his infidelities and attempted suicide twice. Finally, the relationship was Imlay was over. She started to live with William Godwin .Although both of them were opposed to marriage in principle, they eventually married due to Mary's pregnancy and to make the child legitimate.

Biographical Background Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

During her marriage, she was working on a novel Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, in which Mary asserted that women had strong sexual desires ,and it was degrading and immoral to pretend otherwise. This work alone sufficed to damn Mary in the eyes of critics throughout the following century. In August, a daughter Mary (who later became Shelley's wife), was born, and on September 10 the mother died of an infection

Biographical Background Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

Godwin published his "Memoirs" of Wollstonecraft and her unfinished novel, Maria: or the Wrongs of Woman. His honesty in his memoirs of her troubled love relationships, her suicide attempts, her financial difficulties, all helped conservative critics to find a target to denigrate all women's rights. The result? Many readers steered away from Mary Wollstonecraft. Few writers quoted her or used her work in their own, at least they did not do so publicly. Godwin's work of honesty and love, ironically, nearly caused the intellectual loss of Mary Wollstonecraft's ideas.

A VINDICATION of the RIGHTS of WOMAN

attracted considerable hostility: Horace Walpole, for example, called Wollstonecraft a hyena in petticoats, and for most of the nineteenth century the book was ignored because of its scandalous reputation.

A VINDICATION of the RIGHTS of WOMAN

In the late 20th century, literary critics and philosophers began to take great interest in Wollstonecraft's treatise as one of the founding works of feminism, and discussed author's attitudes toward
sexuality, reason versus passion, slavery, the relevance of the work to contemporary struggles for rights, the unflattering portrayal of women, the status of the work as a foundational feminist text.

A VINDICATION of the RIGHTS of WOMAN

to what extent the text is feminist?

A VINDICATION of the RIGHTS of WOMAN

In 1791, two events took place prompting Wollstonecraft to write her treatise: the new French Constitution, which excluded women from all areas of public life and granted citizenship rights only to men over the age of 25. The 2nd was the report on education given by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Prigord to the French National Assembly recommending that girls' education should be directed to more subservient activities

A VINDICATION of the RIGHTS of WOMAN

.... Men are destined to
live on the stage of the world. A public education suits them [...] The paternal home is better for the education of women; they have less need to learn to deal with the interests of others, than to accustom themselves to a calm and secluded life.

A VINDICATION of the RIGHTS of WOMAN

In her dedication, Wollstonecraft states that the main idea in her book is based on the simple principle: if woman is not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue
In it, which is comprised of 13 chapters, Wollstonecraft argues that true freedom necessitates equality of the sexes; intellect, or reason, is superior to emotion, or passion; persuade women to acquire strength of mind and body convince women that what had traditionally been regarded as soft, womanly virtues are synonymous with weakness.

A VINDICATION of the RIGHTS of WOMAN

Wollstonecraft advocates education as the key for women to achieve a sense of self-respect and a new self-image that can enable them to live to their full capabilities.

ROUSSEAU vs. WOLLSTONECRAFT

ROUSSEAU vs. WOLLSTONECRAFT

In his work Emile, which described the ideal education of a young man, had included a chapter on the very different education of Sophie, Emiles future wife. For Rousseau, mens and womens natures and abilities were not the same, and these biologically given differences defined their whole role in society, with men becoming citizens and women wives and mothers.

Little girls always dislike learning to read and write, but they are always ready to sew.

ROUSSEAU vs. WOLLSTONECRAFT

I have, probably, had an opportunity of observing more girls in their infancy than Rousseau. this kind of femininity is a social construct rather than being womens true ability.

WOLLSTONECRAFTS REACTIONS
If mens and womens common humanity is based on their shared and Godgiven possession of reason, how can they be irrational characters?
As one of Wollstonecrafts contemporaries, Mary Astell (16661761) said, If all men are born freehow is it that all women are born slaves?

WOLLSTONECRAFTS REACTIONS
Because of that, Wollstonecraft insisted on the idea that women must be given knowledge and education so that they can make rational choices, and these rational choices are necessary for the betterment of the society.

Besides the education and knowledge, women also needed to have independent employment, property and the protection of the civil law to be able to get rid of the economic necessity that lead them into the forced marriages.

WOLLSTONECRAFTS REACTIONS
She expressed how women were legally prostituted through these forced marriages, and explained how men considered females rather as women than human creatures and how they were anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers

Shortly, for Wollstonecraft, a woman who is forced to perform traditional female roles will do so very badly, but if men
would... 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.

PARADOXICAL STATEMENTS

Wollstonecraft did not expect that education and freedom of choice would lead most women to reject their traditional role, but argued that they would enable them to perform better. She didnt accept the public/private split ;rather she sought to show that domestic duties, properly performed, were a form of rational citizenship: that is, they were to be seen as public responsibilities rather than a source of private satisfaction

The objections to these statements

The problem with this is that in a world in which domestic duties are unpaid, the economic dependence of a woman upon her husband remains. By leaving women dependent on the goodwill of men to snap their chains, the male monopoly of formal political and legal power is still survived. The predominantly domestic role Wollstonecraft outlines for womena role that she viewed as meaningfulwas interpreted by 20th-century feminist literary critics (and also for the ones in 21st) as paradoxically confining them to the private sphere.

Wollstonecraft accepts the definition of her time that women's sphere is the home, BUT

she does not isolate the home from public life as many others did and as many still do. For Mary Wollstonecraft, the public life and domestic life are not separate, but connected. Men have duties in the family, too, and women have duties to the state.

Sounds good, but what are these duties? Here comes the opinion of Rousseau again about the women duties.
Why would any free man bother to stick around long enough to help raise the children and look after his wife if he didn't have to, since those are both large demands on one's free individuality especially to his psychological freedom, his sense of being wholly independent?

The wife's job, simply put, is to deceive the man into staying at home by sustaining for him the illusion of his freedom, by serving his psychological and sexual needs.

So, the husband will remain a loving parent and a good citizen, without ever sensing that his freedom is being restricted. Emile's independence paradoxically is going to depend upon Sophie - though he must never be aware of that.

What about Wollstonecrafts reactions to this idea of Rousseau?

If Sophie is to carry out all that Rousseau wants her to do in maintaining Emile's sturdy sense of autonomy, she has to have an educated reasonable intelligence in order to carry out her main task of sustaining the family.

The major problem in Rousseau's argument

If women are to have the more difficult role in society,

if they have to understand men and society sufficiently well to protect the family,
if they have to be educated for these tasks,

then , the various things Rousseau wants them to be taught simply do not seem adequate.
Wollstonecraft concludes her ideas by saying that to deal with men in the way Rousseau demands, surely women require the chance to learn what men learn.

That is, Wollstonecraft wants true equality in education

because only when woman and man are equally free, and woman and man are equally dutiful in exercise of their responsibilities to family and state, can there be true freedom.

an education which recognizes her duty to educate her own children, to be an equal partner with her husband in the family, and which recognizes that woman, like man, is a creature of both thought and feeling: a creature of reason.

another major problem arises from Wollstonecrafts uncritical adoption of a concept of reason which is bound up with the need to subdue passion and emotion qualities traditionally associated with the female.

ROUSSEAU vs. WOLLSTONECRAFT

Rousseau: the rule of reason was to be achieved by the exclusion of the objects of passion women from public life, because if women enter public life they not only disrupt it but they also destroy its domestic foundations.

Wollstonecraft was against the idea that women were irrational creatures, because reason is a God-given possession and men and women are equal in the eyes of God.

GOT STUCK between REASON & PASSION: Paradox again!

She was angry with Rousseau, but she also accepted that REASON involved the overcoming or control of love and passion.

Although she recognised the existence of female sexuality, like love, must be subordinated to reason, so that marriage and motherhood must be based on rational choice and duty.

FEMALE SEXUALITY & SENSIBILITY

She is against false and excessive sensibility, particularly in women.

She argues that women who are "the prey of their senses" cannot think rationally, because these women - due to the pleasure of the attention of men - actually prefer being considered as objects rather than as rational beings.
She continues that women are told from their infancy, softness of temper and outward obedience will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, everything else is needless, for at least twenty years of their lives.

FEELING + THOUGHT = REASON

Reason and feeling are not independent for Wollstonecraft; rather, she believes that they should inform each other.

The goal, for Wollstonecraft's ethics, is to bring feeling and thought into harmony. The harmony of feeling and thought she calls reason.
In bringing together feeling and thought, rather than separating them and dividing one for woman and one for man, Mary Wollstonecraft was also providing a critique of Rousseau, who desires to convert a woman into a coquettish slave and a sweeter companion to man whenever he chooses to relax himself, because a woman who lacks reason and who is full of passion must be subject to the superior faculties of man.

As part of her argument and defence to Rousseau

Wollstonecraft advocates that

women should not be overly influenced by their feelings, they should not be constrained by or made slaves to their bodies or their sexual feelings.

As part of her argument and defence to Rousseau

IF WOMEN ARE NOT INTERESTED IN SEXUALITY, THEY CANNOT BE DOMINATED BY MEN.

Modern feminists think

Wollstonecraft advises her readers

"calmly let passion subside into friendship" in the ideal companionate marriage.

youth is the season for love in both sexes; but in those days of thoughtless enjoyment provision should be made for the more important years of life, when reflection takes place of sensation.
The more important years of life were those that did not include attention based on appearance only, but on thought, reflection, and virtue.

As Mary Poovey explains

Wollstonecraft

fears that until women can transcend their fleshly desires and fleshly forms, they will be hostage to the body.

Wollstonecraft was so determined to wipe sexuality from her picture of the ideal woman, because if the lustful desires cannot be controlled how women can be free and more rational.

To realize this dream, women should be given the same opportunities for growth and education as the great men of history had enjoyed, because both men and women are rational creatures.

But one concerned writer expressed that her life is totally inconsistent with the nature of a rational being when we consider her two illegitimate pregnancies, attempts to commit suicide twice (almost successfully) and her letters to William Godwin full of vanity and passion, even though she argues that rationality would stop the passion for love.

To sum up
Wollstonecraft established the main guidelines for the future liberal feminist movement, which sees access, education, and the changes in the laws necessary to achieve those the key elements in the struggle for women's equality. Today, it may be nave to imagine that simply equalizing educational opportunity will ensure true equality for women, but the century after Wollstonecraft was a progression of newly opened doors for women's education, and that education significantly changed the lives and opportunities for women in all aspects of their lives.

To sum up,
Without equal and quality education for women, women would be doomed to Rousseau's vision of a separate and always inferior sphere. Reading A Vindication of the Rights of Woman today, most readers are struck with how relevant some parts are, yet how archaic are others. This reflects the enormous changes in the value society places on women's reason today, as contrasted to the late 18th century; but it also reflects the many ways in which issues of equality of rights and duties are still with us today.

EXAM TIME

THE DEBATE BETWEEN ROUSSEAU & WOLLSTONECRAFT

QUESTION
Should we, like Rousseau, insist that women, because they are not like men and because they have a special social role to play, especially in marriage and family life, should be educated and treated differently from menwith a special emphasis on their lives as wives and mothers? Like Wollstonecraft, insist that men and women should, in all the most important social and personal roles, think of themselves as equal? And how does our decision on this thorny point affect our marriage and family life? BECAUSE Women become like men rather than developing fully as women.

THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR ATTENTION :)

M. DERYA NAZLIPINAR