Assignment:
- Wollstonecraft uses the Introduction to define and narrow her subject. What subtopics will a discussion of women’s rights entail? What is her main point?
- Wollstonecraft describes women as she finds them but uses her essay to argue for what they could be. What characterizes contemporary women, in her view?
- How does she distinguish “individual education” (103) from “female” or social education?
- Relatedly, what role do texts by Rousseau, Milton, and Dr. Gregory have in the Vindication?
- How does Wollstonecraft explain the paradox that women’s artificial weakness leads to tyranny?
- What questions do you have or connections would like to make to our other reading/discussion?
Discussion:
1. In Wollstonecraft’s Introduction of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she specifies her primary topic of discourse as the equal opportunity for education for women. She opens this argument, with the recognition that society’s current expectations of women both immobilize and dehumanize them, specifically through the sexualization and romanticizing of the female form and feminine role. She points out, in referencing her audience, that for the purpose of her argument, women in nobler classes will be so affected by the pleasurable aspects of the romanticizing that they will not see the value in transcending the present gender roles. Additionally, Wollstonecraft’s contextualization of the woman as an asset to men, for purely sensory (instinctual, animal) purposes, defines her as a stimuli, and is only judged based on how well she pleases. The main point she seeks to arrive at in discussing this, is the hypocrisy associated with the notion that women are inferior to men, as an understanding of “natural order”. Primarily, the irony of the opinion is that women are seen as unable to comprehend or benefit from the virtues and faculties of education, and yet an uneducated woman is seen as a threat to men; thus, one must reach the conclusion, that the women must have some inherent virtue or are at least created as equals, and thusly squandered by society.
“… In the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of nature; and it does not appear to suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. A degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore be denied—and it is a noble prerogative! But not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavor to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain durable interest in their hearts…” (Pg. 99)
2. Wollstonecraft paints a picture of contemporary women as more ‘masculine’, writing, on page 99 “the attainment of those [manly] virtues which ennobles the human character and which raise females to the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind;—all those… I should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine.”. Prior, in the paragraph, she discusses the false notion that ‘masculine’ women are ones that disparage those recreation which men enjoy and which help them form a greater society. Rather, she espouses that a ‘masculine’ woman, simply finds a way to fulfill her greater person as a human by better fitting herself into a civilization rooted in man-hood.
3. Wollstonecraft specifies individual education as that which will “…enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue.”. She goes on to clarify that the primary function of an individual education, is to develop the development of independent thought that is both based in morality, but finds it’s grounds in the cross-analysis of emotion and reality. She contrasts her idealized education, with her conception of how women were (then currently) being educated. This, she defines as ‘social’ or education through the comparison of women to soldiers. She claims that both of them have a loose basis of education which has strengthened their obedience, and then formulate (through observation) notions of the world within their own mind. Wollstonecraft specifies that while the two (soldiers and women) have, essentially, the same education, Soldiers are looked at as worldly, while women are objectified and infantilized due to their lack of fact-based perspective. Thus, ‘social’ education, is simply being educated through societal rules (which negatively punish deviance) as opposed to individual education, which forms habits of virtue to inspire independent thought.
4. The texts by Rousseau, Milton, and Dr. Gregory, provide a context of inequality and rhetoric, as well as foundation for Wollstonecraft’s discourse on education inequality for women. Each of their texts, though different, provides a context where women are forced into within society: segregated as servants of men, un-complex creatures, or simply objects of visual value. This provides the groundwork necessary for Wollstonecraft’s text, as it gives her opinions to analyze, and reason to seek vindication of women. I feel as though each text provides a prison for women, from which Wollstonecraft seeks to free them.
5. Wollstonecraft explains the paradox that women’s artificial weakness leads to tyranny, by explaining that their weakness is ingrained in them by societal rules. Wollstonecraft writes “…the instruction which women have hitherto received has only tended, with the constitution of civil society, to render them insignificant objects of desire—mere propagators of fools!” (pg 101). In this way, women are both expected to be “insignificant objects of desire” and yet persecuted for being limited to fulfilling this role. This is the paradox that Wollstonecraft says lead to cunning manipulation, or ‘tyranny’, as they are left powerless by society and must thus resort to enforcing their will through methods of weakness.
6. On page 103, Wollstonecraft adds words to passages from Milton’s Paradise Lost, I’m slightly confused by how this helps to make her point, other than accentuating the prejudice within Milton’s writing. Additionally, I find it interesting how Burke segregated matters if society to the Noble, while Wollstonecraft segregates the higher classes from her audience explicitly, stating that they will not like advocate for the same rights, or see the same faults as they do not have to adhere to the same societal rules.
