FEMINIST THOUGHT

Eighteenth-Century Thought: Equal Education 13
equality of opportunity, which would undoubtedly require and lead to
both.” 10 Very few, if any, contemporary liberal feminists favor the elimination
of government-funded safety nets for society’s most vulnerable members.
Since it is nearly impossible to discuss all liberal feminist thinkers, movements,
and organizations in a single book, I have decided to focus only on
Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Harriet Taylor (Mill), the woman’s
suffrage movement in the United States, Betty Friedan, and the National
Organization for Women. My aim is to construct a convincing argument
that, for all its shortcomings, the overall goal of liberal feminism is the worthy
one of creating “a just and compassionate society in which freedom
flourishes.” 11 Only in such a society can women and men thrive equally.
Eighteenth-Century Thought:
Equal Education
Mary Wollstonecraft wrote at a time (1759–1799) when the economic and
social position of European women was in decline. Up until the eighteenth
century, productive work (work that generated an income from which a family
could live) had been done in and around the family home by women as
well as men. But then the forces of industrial capitalism began to draw labor
out of the private home and into the public workplace. At first, this industrialization
moved slowly and unevenly, making its strongest impact on married,
bourgeois women. These women were the first to find themselves left at home
with little productive work to do. Married to relatively wealthy professional
and entrepreneurial men, these women had no incentive to work outside the
home or, if they had several servants, even inside it. 12
In reading Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 13 we see
how affluence worked against these eighteenth-century, married, bourgeois
women. Wollstonecraft compared such “privileged” women (whom she
hoped to inspire to a fully human mode of existence) to members of “the
feathered race,” birds that are confined to cages and that have nothing to do
but preen themselves and “stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch.” 14
Middle-class ladies were, in Wollstonecraft’s estimation, “kept” women who
sacrificed health, liberty, and virtue for whatever prestige, pleasure, and
power their husbands could provide. Because these women were not allowed
to exercise outdoors lest they tan their lily-white skin, they lacked healthy
bodies. Because they were not permitted to make their own decisions, they
lacked liberty. And because they were discouraged from developing their
powers of reason—given that a great premium was placed on indulging self
and gratifying others, especially men and children—they lacked virtue.