Vindication Of The Women's Rights: Enlightenment Ideals And Gender
The late 1750s to early 1800s bore witness to a shift in the intellectual advancement of women. In Britain, this tilting viewpoint was spurred on by the establishment of female literary circles, such as the Bluestockings, who offered women an opportunity to reconsider their gender in terms of a collective female identity. Although the Bluestockings were relatively conservative and not explicitly political, they galvanised the likes of Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft to initiate important debate on the availability of Enlightenment ideals for women. Both Macaulay’s Letters on Education and Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman make a strong case for the furtherance of female education. Macaulay broached the topic in connection with her ardent republicanism, joining the dots between gender-neutral education and how this could be used to benefit the public sphere. Wollstonecraft cared less about a political agenda and concentrated more on changing the opinions of men towards women. Therefore, this essay shall focus on the influence of Wollstonecraft’s Vindication on expanding the availability of Enlightenment ideals, whilst prompting women to recognise the ways in which they could come to appreciate Enlightenment modes of thought.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman has been labelled “A founding manifesto in Western feminist theory”. Within it, Wollstonecraft strives to show that Enlightenment values were free for all to appreciate and describes the manner in which these ideals should become available to women. At the heart of her argument is the belief that men and women were born with an innate capacity to reason and that this rational ability was granted by God, in order for human beings to perfect themselves. Wollstonecraft’s stance is founded upon the Lockean tenet of the “tabula rasa”- that social and environmental influences, rather than defects based on biological sex, moulded women into subordinate creatures. In her eyes, the notion of a just God who would create woman and, thereafter, deny her the capacity to acquire reason, a trait which allows the attainment of virtue, is an inconceivable one. She asserts that woman stand alongside man, ranked above the level of the beast, as decided by God alone. Wollstonecraft decries man for his natural superiority, questioning “Who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift of reason?”.
Affirming that Enlightenment ideals should be made available to all, regardless of gender, she emphasises the non-distinction between the rational capacities of men and women. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication offers a launch pad from which to attack Enlightenment thinkers who promoted female inferiority. Her focus rests mainly on refuting Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s contention that a woman’s value was measured in terms of sexual allure; a viewpoint which led women to believe that they were incapable of reasonable thought. Wollstonecraft lambasts this, “All the writers that have written on the subject of female education and manners…have contributed to render women more artificial, weak characters than they would otherwise have been”. In a direct address to leading male philosophers, Wollstonecraft asserts that the continuous confinement of women to the private sphere, hidden from politics or participation in public discourse, inevitably renders them slaves to male desire. Women cannot recognise their intrinsic abilities to indulge in Enlightenment ideals, simply because they are destined to be “the galling yoke of sovereign man”.
The argument that Enlightenment ideals should be free for all to appreciate is further strengthened by Wollstonecraft’s conviction that domestic duties, motherhood and reason are not mutually exclusive. She emphasises that, to be good mothers, women must exert independent thought, “Reason is absolutely necessary to enable a woman to perform any duty properly”. Dismissing that marriage is the sole factor necessary for female fulfilment, Wollstonecraft argues that women should be viewed as marital partners rather than puppets: Nay, marriage will never be sacred till women, by being brought up with men, are prepared to be their companions rather than their mistresses…virtue will never prevail in society till the virtues of both sexes are founded on reason. Her viewpoint aligns with the picture Voltaire paints of men and women working together for the common good. Each sex is dependent on the other, underlining that virtue is bereft of sexual character - it is a human attribute, a divine gift used in the struggle for advancement and the attainment of perfection. Wollstonecraft emphasises that, for the Enlightenment to succeed in catalysing social progress, it is necessary for women to abandon “false femininity” in favour of rationality and self-dependence. Having communicated that Enlightenment principles must be free for all to appreciate, Wollstonecraft continues her Vindication by demonstrating how these ideals may be made available through gender-neutral education. The crux of her argument is that women do not lack reason- they simply have not been afforded the opportunity of a rational education and the lessons of virtue ensured by this.
Wollstonecraft stresses the importance of education, attesting that the woman who employs her own intellect assumes the power of self-governance, “I do not wish them to have power over men but over themselves”. Education offer a route for women to acquire mental strength, transforming them from silently sexualised objects to speaking subjects, unafraid to lend their views to political and social commentary. By remaining sheltered from the realities of life and saturated in romantic illusions, Wollstonecraft claims that women become ignorant and vulnerable. The frailty and wavering opinions carefully nurtured within them by a patriarchal society act as barriers to their understanding of Enlightenment ideals. She drives home her opinion that both sexes ought to be co-educated, in efforts to “shut out gallantry and coquetry.” Although critical of women for their indulgence in frivolity, Wollstonecraft insists that the female penchant for “coquetry” arises solely from lack of access to a well-rounded education. Although it may be argued that women were permitted a degree of independent thought in certain cases, e.g. in the salon culture of post-Revolution France; one must bear in mind that such societies welcomed women merely as “civilisers”, intended to soften the passions of over-excitable men.
This essay has striven to show that Enlightenment ideals were intended for all to appreciate, yet they remained unattainable for members of the female sex. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication offers “a bold response to the profound exclusion of women from both the discourse and practice of Enlightenment philosophy”. The text emphasises the manner in which social distinctions rendered women creatures of cunning rather than rational beings. At the heart of it is the conviction that, without an acknowledgement of female rationality, the journey towards a wholly enlightened society is hindered by oppression and power-mongering.
References
- Mary Caputi. “‘The Manly Virtues’: Macaulay’s Influence, Wollstonecraft’s Legacy,” in Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women: Virtue and Citizenship, ed. Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt, Paul Gibbard and Karen Green, (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013), 175. Caputi, The Manly Virtues, 173.
- Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, (1792), ed. Janet Todd. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), xlv.
- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), ed. John W. Yolton. (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1997), 77
- Wendy Gunther-Canada, “The Feminist Author and Women’s Rights,” in Rebel Writer: Mary Wollstonecraft and Enlightenment Politics. (Illinois: Northern Illinois Press, 2001), 101.
- Barbara Taylor, “Feminists versus Gallants: Manners and Morals in Enlightenment Britain,” in Women, Gender and Enlightenment, ed. Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 52.
- Gunther-Canada, The Feminist Author and Women’s Rights, 109.
- Steven Kale, “Women’s Intellectual Agency in the History of Eighteenth - and Nineteenth-Century French Salons,” in Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women: Virtue and Citizenship, ed. Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt, Paul Gibbard and Karen Green. (Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013), 127.
