Published: 1792
Mary Wollestonecraft was one of the historical heroines of"Second Wave" feminism, identified as "the first feminist", and her defining book A Vindication of the Rights of Women lauded as "the first" published work of feminist writing. The "firsts" weren't true, of course, but in the early days of academic feminism the claims drew a lot of attention to Wollestonecraft. Wollestonecraft was certainly an early feminist in the Western tradition, and was unique in her era as a woman who supported herself by her writing. She was also the mother of Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and Wollestonecrafts' own works presage Romanticism.
As you might imagine, Wollestonecraft has been the subject of many biographies.
I'm no longer sure why she initially drew my attention, but at this point I've read something like four of those biographies. Wollestonecraft was a fascinating -- and difficult -- person. No surprise. The ordinary, less-stubborn, and more practical middle-class woman of the late eighteenth century became wives. Failing marriage, they became dependents of their married siblings, or perhaps governesses or paid companions. The truly unfortunate presumably became prostitutes and/or died in penury. All of those fates were intolerable to Wollestonecraft. Some combination of determination and luck allowed her to transcend her failed career as a governess and her failed career as a school proprietress, and allowed her to become a professional writer.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is by far her most famous work. Despite its title, it's not really a general justification of rights for women. It's a treatise on education, and in particular, women's education. Its title is a product of its time, and a product of marketing. Wollestonecraft was writing in the immediate aftermath of the French revolution of 1789, and its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. More particularly, her title echoes that of her own earlier work, A Vindication of the Rights of Man, which was written as a hot rebuttal of the conservative Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. That book made her reputation and gave her a public profile. It was natural to title her next book in such a way as to remind readers of that fact.
Is the book relevant today? I bookmarked a few quotes that could have been written yesterday. But overall, its arguments aren't ones that one would make today, at least in the Western world. In Vindication, Wollestonecraft argues that women's intellectual and moral inferiority is a result of their ignorance. When girls were educated at all, their education focused on domestic skills and pleasing men. The result: ignorant, petty, and vain women who were unfit for their natural roles as mothers, teachers of children, and companions to men. Worst of all, women were unfit to live moral lives. The cure that Wollestonecraft advocated was to educate girls alongside boys, teaching all children the same range of historical, philosophical, and religious subjects.
Is there any reason to read Vindications today? It's certainly an important historical work. If you're interested in Mary Wollestonecraft, it is an essential complement to reading about her life. And like the Claudine novels, Vindications throws unintended light on the era in which it was written.
Wollestonecraft was raised in a family that skimmed the bottom of the middle class through the improvidence of her father. She worked as a governess for aristocratic Irish families. She operated a school for middle class girls, and she circulated in intellectual circles both in England and later in Revolutionary France. She was, of course, acquainted with servants, with whom she lived for most of her life. The portrait that she paints of women's lives was drawn from her own experience. It was designed to resonate with her audience as plausible background to her arguments for women's education.
It's upsetting.
The most telling part is that Wollestonecraft didn't argue that women would be just as able as men, given the same education and opportunities. Either she didn't believe that herself, or she thought that such an argument was be too far beyond the pale to be included in a serious work of analysis and advocacy -- even as she demonstrated her own learning via extensive in-line references to various learned sources throughout her work.
And even if you're familiar with period literature, you don't get the texture of everyday life from Jane Austen. Wollestonecraft paints a world where men automatically patronized women or preyed upon them....or both. Where women were on the whole ignorant, gossipy, scheming, weak, and silly...because middle class and aristocratic women had no outlet for their energies, no cultivation for their minds, and were degraded by the necessity of obedience first to their fathers, and then to their husbands. Even 'progressive' contemporary thinkers like Rousseau valued women almost exclusively for their appearance.
Yes, Wollestonecraft was writing a polemic. But from my young experiences working various blue collar jobs, I found that gossip, opinion, and petty scheming are much closer to the surface among people with less education. Education really does broaden one's perspective -- or at least teaches you to moderate your less attractive instincts. In a world where women's education was discouraged or blocked, I can well imagine that her world looked much as she described.
The moral of the story: if you're a woman, it's hard not to believe in historical progress. Female time travellers take note! Visiting different eras would be fascinating, but if you're looking to settle somewhere, the modern era rocks.
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