Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

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Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a seminal work of literature by one of the first great feminist writers, arguing for the first time that women were rational beings who deserved a public education, in order that they might earn their own living and contribute to society.

Source: http://www.britishlibrary.cn/zh-cn/works/vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman/

Picture source: Mary Wollstonecraft in 1790–1, by John Opie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft

Who Was Mary Wollstonecraft?

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. She is considered as the founder of feminism. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original stories from real life

Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38, eleven days after giving birth to her second daughter, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. This daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, became an accomplished writer herself, as Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

What were women’s rights in Wollstonecraft’s time?

In the 18th century, in the eyes of the law, a married woman had no property, no vote, no money of her own, nor any rights to her children. The system of coverture governed all marriages: this was a legal doctrine which regarded a husband and wife as a single person. Upon marriage, a woman’s legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband and she was legally under his protection and authority. While single or widowed women could own money, property and run businesses, married women had no equivalent rights without pursuing expensive legal settlements. It was not until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, and subsequent legislation, that married women were allowed to keep money they earned directly and have ownership of property acquired before or after marriage.

In 1878, the University of London had been the first university in Britain to admit female students.

University education was not seen as suitable for women, who could therefore not pursue professional careers. Rare stories survive of those who managed to thrive in the world of work, despite their gender: it was not discovered until after her death that the army surgeon James Barry was, in fact, a woman, the Irish-born Margaret Bulkley. She was disguised as a boy from the age of ten, and passed her whole adult life as a man, studying at medical school in Edinburgh and qualifying as a doctor in 1812 and as a surgeon in 1813. It would be another century before Eleanor Davies-Colley became the first recognised woman surgeon in 1911.

Barry (left) with John, a servant, and Barry's dog Psyche, c. 1862, Jamaica

Eleanor Davies-Colley 1874-1934

Why did Mary Wollstonecraft write A Vindication of the Rights of Woman?

In 1791, the French Bishop and politician Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord had submitted a report to the French National Assembly, in which he reinforced the contemporary view that women should only receive an education in ‘the paternal home’. In an ardent response to this, Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, calling for equality between the sexes, particularly in the field of education. At the heart of her argument was the claim that women only appeared intellectually inferior to men because of their lack of public education.

According to William Godwin, Wollstonecraft wrote the book quickly over the course of only six weeks, with the intention of publishing a second volume. The book was written in 1791 and published in 1792. It was sold as volume 1 of the work, but Wollstonecraft did not write subsequent volumes.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote this pioneering book in part as a reaction to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, published in late 1790. Burke saw the French Revolution as a movement which would inevitably fail, as society needed traditional structures such as inherited positions and property in order to strengthen it. Wollstonecraft’s initial response was to write A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), a rebuttal of Burke that argued in favour of parliamentary reform, and stated that religious and civil liberties were part of a man’s birthright, with corruption caused in the main by ignorance. This argument for men’s rights wasn’t unique – Thomas Paine published his Rights of Man in 1791, also arguing against Burke – but Wollstonecraft proceeded to go one step further, and, for the first time, a book was published that argued for women’s rights to be on the same footing as men’s.

Excerpts from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge…  how can women be expected to co-operate unless she know why she ought to be virtuous?

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists—I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

Dismissing then those pretty feminine phrases, which the men condescendingly use to soften our slavish dependence, and despising that weak elegancy of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners, supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker vessel, I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a human being, regardless of the distinction of sex; and that secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone.

The most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart; or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent.

I do not know of what use is an improved taste, if the individual be not rendered more independent of the casualties of life; if new sources of enjoyment, only dependent on the solitary operations of the mind, are not opened. People of taste, married or single, without distinction, will ever be disgusted by various things that touch not less observing minds.

for I here throw down my gauntlet, and deny the existence of sexual virtues, not excepting modesty. For man and woman, truth, if I understand the meaning of the word, must be the same;

to improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship, nor will women ever fulfil the peculiar duties of their sex, till they become enlightened citizens, till they become free, by being enabled to earn their own subsistence, independent of men; in the same manner, I mean, to prevent misconstruction, as one man is independent of another.

Asserting the rights which women in common with men ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate their faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society. If so, 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.

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