Vindication of the Rights of Woman!

Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Wollstonecraft's father was an alcoholic and used to beat family occasionally, and so she took over the family's welfare. She became a governess, and at some point she decided to begin to write. She met a radical publisher in London, who believed in women's rights. The publisher supported her in her writings. She wrote one of the first responses to a conservative writer who had attacked the French Revolution, "The Reflections to the Revolution in France."

She wrote a response named "The Vindication of the Rights of Men," in 1789. She wrote it anonymously and attacked the author. She set up being male with being virtuous and rational. She defended the necessity of republic and equal rights for all classes. After pressure from the radical publisher, in 1792, she wrote the "Vindication of the Rights of Woman."

By "Men" she means all classes and human beings. Nowadays we try to avoid using the term men to refer to all people. The term "Woman" here means a class of persons who have been treated the same. The Woman as an individual or a category?

Wollstonecraft sets up education as the root of their being kept down. They are conditioned to think that they are less than men. The term woman means the opposite of man, the opposite of virtue and rationality. Women try to exercise their power within the current system, a self-defeating action, and so can only channel their power through certain ways, such as tyranny in the household.

Liberal ideas such as no one should be above any other one person, and that individuals should be judged as a result of their merit. Morality is lost when one person is given power over another. Ex: teachers grading students in a classroom.

A standing army is incompatible with freedom because you are forced to be perfectly subordinate and forced to submit to the will of others.

"1. Like the fair sex, the business of their lives is gallantry -- They were taught to please, and they only live to please. Yet they do not lose their rank in the distinction of sexes, for they are still reckoned superior to women, though in what their superiority consists, beyond what I have just mentioned, it is difficult to discover." (from Ch. 2)

Men, if educated same as women, will get the same results!!! She uses soldiers as the example. They prove that women are not naturally inferior, but that a social system is what makes them different.

"What nonsense! When will a great man arise with sufficient strength of mind to puff away the fumes which pride and sensuality have thus spread over the subject! If women are by nature inferior to men, their virtues must be the same in quality, if not in degree, or virtue is a relative idea; consequently, their conduct should be founded in the same principles, and have the same aim." (from Ch. 2)

She postulates in Ch.3 that by giving women more power they will actually have less, as it will counteract their despotic tendencies. Women play on the weaknesses of men in order to gain power. Certain weaknesses of women can become attractive to men.

Wollstonecraft thought she was married to a man who did not agree (thought she was just another mistress), and she even tried to live with the man and her husband. She had a child out of wedlock, and tried to kill herself once rejected by that man.