“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners – time to restore to them their lost dignity – and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world.” Mary Wollstonecraft is best known for her philosophical and political insightful fervor, especially for her strenuous and lucid defense of the rights of women in society. This excerpt, taken from the third chapter of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, bears witness to a well-articulated picture.
An Unusual Life
Wollstonecraft’s life – thirty-eight intense years – mirrors the condition of English women in her age. Born in 1759 in the East End (London), second of six children, she got used to move from place to place since the very first months due to the unstable financial fortune of her family. In her youth, she tried out most of the jobs available at the time for a woman. She left her house in 1778, to be a lady’s companion to a widow in Bath. That lasted for two years. After a short time, she opened up a school with her sisters and her best friend Fanny Blood, in Newington Green. The school closed in 1785, upon the deteriorating health conditions of Fanny. She then moved to Ireland, to homeschooling the daughters of an Anglo-Irish family. Soon enough, she grew tired of the meager horizons of her position. It was at this point that she decided to move back to London and start an unusual life for a woman: working in publishing. That was 1787. In the next ten years, she pledged a first-rate contribution to the intellectual life of her times.
Reputation
Wollstonecraft was convinced that the good reputation supposed to frame family relationships of her time was responsible for much of the immorality found in civil society. Virtuous behaviors are what matters, and in specific occasions these may call for actions apparently detrimental to reputation. Thus, when Eliza – Mary’s sister – found herself in postpartum depression, Mary arranged for her to separate from her husband and child. Mary herself did not hesitate to challenge social norms on several occasions. Her choice to write about philosophical and socio-political issues probably stands as the chief challenge to contemporary norms. Other key episodes of her private life bear no less witness. In the early 90s, she fell in love with the American diplomat and author Gilbert Imlay; without ever marrying him, they had a daughter, Fanny, in May 1794. The following May, fleeing from a lover who did not reciprocate, she took once more quarters in London, where she then married the philosopher William Godwin. She died of puerperal fever, just a few days after giving birth to her second daughter. Her name was Mary Godwin, later known as Mary Shelley.
Three Main Genres
What literary genres were more appropriate for a British woman at the time of the French revolution? One: books of education. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1797), the first volume published by Wollstonecraft, puts together the lessons she had drawn from her recent work experiences. Two: novels. 1788 was the year of Mary: A Fiction, a novel which paid debt to the deep friendship with Fanny Blood. It was the third genre she used, however, to establish her as a key figure in contemporary reflection on women’s rights. The essay. During her life Wollstonecraft published two influential works denouncing the unjust conditions in which some human beings had to live. A Vindication of the Rights of Men was first published anonymously in November 1790, as a response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Two years later (1792) came A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, nowadays considered as the first manifesto of women’s rights and her most representative legacy. Wollstonecraft’s work includes also a number of reviews, translations (from French and German), and letters.
Different Human Natures?
In 1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau had published a novel, Emile: or, on Education, where he famously argued that women and men have two different natures. The latter would be bestowed reason, which only can lead to the highest forms of virtue. The former, instead, may at best exercise in gallantry, in entertaining themselves and others, and in aiding men. In a nutshell: woman was created for man. Analogous sentiments were shared by a large number of people, more or less educated, and Wollstonecraft found such ideas foolish, to say the least. In the second and third chapter of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she argued that Rousseau-style arguments were made to “excuse the tyranny of man.” Why? One topic brought far more evidence towards her cause than any other one: education.
Education, Equality, and Justice
“All the difference that I can discern, arises from the superior advantage of liberty, which enables the former [men] to see more of life.” For Wollstonecraft, the fact that women were excelling less than men in the pursuit of intellectual virtues and in government rested on their respective unequal upbringings. While men had a well-established path, designed to develop the skills and abilities required to do research and rule over a civil body, women had no access to such training. Additionally, men’s education encompassed also more liberties, such as economic independency or the possibility to travel extensively. No wonder, hence, if you see differences! Social justice could be restored first and foremost by equalizing educational opportunities.
A Guide for Social Progress?
For Wollstonecraft, education was a trampoline to improve the social condition of the woman, allowing among others financial independency, access to careers, and a more equitable role in family matters. In the decades to come, these will be themes of heated debate in Western political reflection, brilliantly taken up – among others – in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929). Wollstonecraft’s work has been also of significance for facing different forms of inequality, such as racial inequality. Ultimately, her work stands as one of the earliest and most strenuous advocacies of fair and same treatment among all humans. “If women are by nature inferior to men, their virtues must be the same in quality, if not in degree, or virtue is relative idea; consequently, their conduct should be founded on the same principles, and have the same aim.”
