A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with - Early Modern Texts

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The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 4: The degradation of woman [Admitting that she is repeating herself, MW says that how a person thinks affects his or her character. Her present topic has been one special case of this general truth, namely the harm that women do to themselves by spending so much time thinking about ‘their persons’, e.g. what sort of effect they will have when they next appear in public.] Women of quality [MW’s phrase] seldom do any of the actual dress-making: all they exercise is their taste. And because they think less about the finery, when the business of their toilet is over they can ·put it behind them and· be at ease in a way that is usually not open to women who dress merely for the sake of dressing. In fact, the observation that the middle rank ·of society· is the one in which talents thrive best doesn’t apply to women. [If MW means her own observation on page 39, then she isn’t quite accurate. What she referred to back there was the well-known fact that ‘the middle rank contains most virtue and abilities’.] Women of the superior class do at least pick up a smattering of literature, and they converse more with men on general topics, so they acquire more knowledge than the women who ape their fashions and faults without sharing their advantages. As for virtue (using the word in 7 a comprehensive sense): I have seen most virtue in low life. Many poor women maintain their children by the sweat of their brow, and keep together families that the vices of the fathers would have scattered; but gentlewomen are too lazy to be actively virtuous, and are softened rather than refined by civilization. Indeed the good sense I have met with among poor women who have had few advantages of education yet have acted heroically has strongly confirmed my opinion that trivial activities have made women trivial. . . . In tracing the causes that I think have degraded woman, I have confined myself to ones that universally act on the morals and manners of the whole sex; and it seems clear to me that they all arise from lack of understanding. Does this weakness of the faculties arise from physical or from accidental causes? [That is: is it causally determined by the constitutions of women as such, or is it caused by their circumstances?] Time alone can tell. I shan’t lay any great stress on the example of a few women 7 who were given a masculine education from which they acquired courage and resolution; I only contend that men who have been placed in similar situations have acquired a similar character. . . . Sappho, Héloise, Catherine Macaulay, Catherine the Great of Russia, Madame d’Eon, etc. These and many more can be counted as ‘exceptions’; and aren’t all heroes and heroines exceptions to general rules? I want to see women neither as heroines nor as lower animals, but as reasonable creatures. [Catherine Macaulay was a contemporary of MW’s, a much respected thinker and writer; Madame d’Eon was in fact a man who passed as a woman through most of his life.] 52
The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 5: Pity bordering on contempt Chapter 5: Writers who have rendered women objects of pity, bordering on contempt We now have to examine the opinions on the female character and education that have been plausibly argued for in some modern publications, and have given the tone to most of the briefer and more casual things said about the sex [see Glossary]. 1: Rousseau I shall begin with Rousseau, giving a sketch of the character of women in his own words and interspersing comments and reflections. My comments will all spring from a few simple principles, and could be derived from what I have already said; but his argument has been constructed with so much ingenuity that I think I have to attack it in a more detailed manner, and make the application ·of my principles· myself ·rather than leaving it to the reader·. Sophie, says Rousseau, should be as perfect a woman as Émile is a man, and to make her so he has to examine the character that nature has given to the ·female· sex. He then proceeds to argue that woman ought to be weak and passive because she has less bodily strength than man; from which he infers that she was formed to please him and be subject to him, and that making herself agreeable to her master is the grand purpose of her existence. Still, to give a little mock dignity to lust he insists that when a man goes to a woman for pleasure he should not use his strength and should depend on her will. [In quotations from Rousseau’s Émile, three centered asterisks mean that the next quotation comes from a few pages later than the preceding one.] 8 What nonsense! [That is MW interrupting; and it was she who put that last clause in italics.] 53 ·ROUSSEAU· So we deduce a third conclusion from the different constitutions of the sexes, namely: The stronger should be master •in appearance but should depend on the weaker •in fact. . . . This is because of an invariable law of •nature, which goes like this: Nature gives woman a greater ability to arouse desires ·in man· than it has given man to satisfy them; so it—·nature·—makes the man dependent on the good pleasure of the woman, and forces him to try to please her in his turn, in order to obtain her consent that he should be stronger. 8 On these occasions, the most delightful circumstance that a man finds in his victory is to be unsure whether she has yielded to his superior strength or whether her inclinations spoke in his favour. The females are usually artful enough to leave this in doubt. Women’s understanding in this matter corresponds exactly to their constitution: far from being ashamed of their weakness, they glory in it; their tender muscles make no resistance; they pretend to be unable to lift the smallest burdens, and would blush to be thought robust and strong. What is the purpose of all this? Not merely for the sake of appearing delicate, but. . . .also to prepare the way for being feeble whenever that suits their purposes. ·WOLLSTONECRAFT· . . . .If Rousseau is right about woman’s duty—if pleasing man is the iron bed of fate that her character should be made to fit, stretching or contracting it regardless of moral and physical
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Contents A Vindication of the Right
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The Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonec
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