Assignment:
- Evaluate the “prevailing opinion” that women were created for men. What implications derive from this opinion? How does Wollstonecraft aim to change it? To what extent are her arguments valid today?
- How is romantic love used to degrade women? In what sense can passion be rational according to Wollstonecraft?
- How important is beauty to women, and why does Wollstonecraft criticize this?
- What arguments does Wollstonecraft make in favor of expanding women’s education? Whom is she trying to persuade?
- Although Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Man was the more immediate response to Burke’s Reflections, in what ways is her Vindication of women’s rights also a retort?
Discussion:
1 . Wollstonecraft explains that the implications derived from the “prevailing opinion” that women were created for men (based on Genesis 2.21-23 or the story of Adam and Eve) are, in their primary nature, reductionistic (pg. 108). The primary implication which Wollstonecraft discusses is, of course, that because women were made for men, they were thus made to serve or please men. Moreover, the implication maintains that this is their sole purpose- and thus they have been, as Wollstonecraft points out, reduced to only mistresses, and not embraced for the purpose they serve in society as mothers and wives. On page 109 Wollstonecraft explains this one dimensional view of women as problematic, writing, “How then can the great art of pleasing be such a necessary study? it is only useful to a mistress; the chaste wife, and serious mother, should only consider her power to please as the polish of her virtues… whether she be loved or neglected, her first wish be to make herself respectable and not to rely for all her happiness on a being subject to like infirmities with herself.”. The second part of this line alludes to the next implication derived from the “prevailing opinion”, which is that women are not only made for man, but are made of them. While this notion, in society at the time, implied that women were in fact only partially human- having been derived initially from Adam’s rib, it refuses to acknowledge still that women and men are thus made from the same tissues, and outside of anatomical strength (according to Wollstonecraft) are (by nature) able to exert the same mental exercises and develop the same faculties and virtues. Wollstonecraft hopes to utilize this reasoning to redefine women in the eyes of men, and thus allow them a chance at exercising reason. On page 108 Wollstonecraft frames her argument that this is an unjust inequality, wholly based on prejudice, writing, “… I cannot discover why, unless they are mortal, females should always be degrade by being made subservient to love or lust.”. This also refers to the aesthetic pedestal upon which women are placed— which they possess on the basis that they were made to amuse men— that is also a hypocritical inference made to minimize the value of women by refusing their holistic value. Her solution to this inequality, is to allow women to prove themselves as equals (to some degree), and on pg. 116 she writes “… if they be really capable of acting like rational creatures, let them not me treated like slaves…”.
2. On a similar, note Wollstonecraft notes how the notion of romantic love has been further utilized in society to entrap women. Page 109 in its entirety discusses the various innerworkings of passion seen to be embodied through the legal act of marrying one another. Which, Wollstonecraft argues, actually diminishes passion as it simplifies love through the necessities of domestic life. Additionally, as marriage is the institution within which women are indentured into servitude of men, Wollstonecraft points out that the societal expectation of passion and affection, is often undermined by the practicality that truly encompasses marriage. Furthermore, she points out that this is a way in which society cultivates expectation for women, and is the only future they are prepared or trained for. She does argue, however, that friendship is a form of passion in which marriage can be founded. Friendship, of course, requires a multi-dimensionally perspective of women, and the perspective that they are intellectual equals to males. Wollstonecraft ponders this possibility on page 110, writing “To gain the affections of a virtuous man is affection necessary?”. Further, she expresses that the education of women will found more marriages based on reasonable love, writing, “ Weakness may excite tenderness and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship!”.
3. Wollstonecraft discusses women’s value of their own beauty on page 115, majorly noting on the forced context within which they are placed, but also the lack of resistance against this society (which she disapproves of). In discussing women who believe that by being beautiful, they are further becoming better wives by further serving their husbands, she notes, “Do passive indolent women make the best wives?…Do the women who, by attainment of a few superficial accomplishments, have strengthened the prevailing prejudice, merely contributing to the happiness of their husbands?” (pg. 115). Through these rhetorical questionings, she is really establishing that those women who profess to be happy by simply serving their husbands, merely contribute to the false notions surrounding women in society. Her evidence supporting this, is that any remarkable women that have performed outside of their society role acceptably, and have thus been valued by society, are depicted as “…male spirits, confined by mistake in female frames.” (pg. 115) I believe Wollstonecraft is criticizing those women who tend to reside in their domesticity complacently, and who value beauty, because they uphold the notion of functional femininity, when she is arguing that in a society centered around mankind, women may only be fully actualized by becoming masculine in spirit, and thus in disposition.
4. Wollstonecraft makes numerous arguments in favor of expanding women’s education. However, most of them are centered around the societal benefits that would be procured when women are treated equitable and allowed to pursue development of their intellect. This is an argument directed, primarily, towards men- and through utilization of their opposing opinions as contexts, also acts as a rebuttal to other popular literature at the time (Rousseau, Milton, Dr. Gregory, Burke). Laced throughout her argument, which particularly accentuates her audience, are comments that restate her desire, not to upheave societal standards, but simply to see what would happen if women were to be given an equitable education. Her primary argument is that, if it proves that women are capable of reason and virtue, the society will gain better mothers and wives, (pg. 110-111) and if it does prove that women are capable of such faculties, they will simply assume the natural order- having known better (pg.116).
5. Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman also acts as a response to Burke, in that it “Vindicates” the notions of femininity and masculinity which he outlined in his “Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.”. (pg. 114) Not only does Wollstonecraft directly alludes to Burke’s writing on page 114, but her entire piece is based around redefining femininity and masculinity- and which gender is capable of embodying each. This acts as a counter to Burke’s segregated account of what women are, and what men are, and what specific feelings, intentions, or actions, define them as deviant from these identities or otherwise align with them. She also addresses how this works to segregate men and women, as having entirely different pretexts of mortality- and thus virtue. Her belief opposes this ideology of Burke’s, and states a point rather applicable to Burke, “ For, is it not universally acknowledged that kings, viewed collectively, have ever been inferior, in abilities and virtue, to the same number of men taken from the common mass of mankind—yet, have they not, and are they not still treated with a degree of reverence that is an insult to reason?” (pg. 117). This points out the hypocrisy in Burke’s unfailing adoration and affection towards the monarchy, which degrades himself as a man, while simultaneously not realizing the same revere of men by women has a similar effect. Additionally, this works further to equate men and women with one another as equals.