Mary Wollstonecraft and feminist philosophy

Mary Wollstonecraft

Although she was born in 1759, Mary Wollstonecraft is hailed as the first modern feminist (Cucinello pp). Her "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," published in 1792, is the first great feminist treatise (Wollstonecraft pp). Wollstonecraft preached that women must be strong in mind and body and that sentimentality was symbolic with weakness (Wollstonecraft pp).

Born to a "gentry" farmer and an aloof mother, it is said she began protesting at an very young age, when her brother received that favored position when it was Mary who would protect her mother from the abusive father (Cucinello pp). For a number of years Wollstonecraft worked as a governess before deciding to make the unconventional career choice of becoming an editor and journalist (Cucinello pp). She wrote the "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters" in 1786 and in 1790 published "A Vindication of the Rights of Man" "as a response to the goals brought fourth by the French revolution" (Cucinello pp). But it was "Vindication of the Rights of Women" that propelled her to fame concerning feminist issues such as the "legal, economic and educational disabilities of women" (Cucinello pp). She believed in national education "where boys and girls, the rich and poor, should meet together. And to prevent any of the distinctions of vanity, they should be dressed alike, and all obliged to submit to the same discipline, or leave the school" (Wollstonecraft pp). Wollstonecraft believed that the equal rights applied to men should extend to women, that women had the right to an education, and that society could only progress when both sexes were equally educated (Cucinello pp). She urged women to let go of their old emotional stereotypes and view education as the means of achieving a place in society (Cucinello pp). She writes that woman is

"always represented as only created to see through a gross medium, and to take things on trust. But, dismissing these fanciful theories, and considering woman as a whole, let it be what it will, instead of a part of man, the inquiry is whether she has reason or not. If she has, which, for a moment, I will take for granted, she was not created merely to be the solace of man, and the sexual should not destroy the human character" (Wollstonecraft pp).

Although the goal of the majority of women during eighteenth century England, Wollstonecraft spoke against it simply because it gave the husband legal ownership of his wife and her property, as well as their children, thus, divorce meant that a woman was left with nothing (Cucinello pp). Ahead of her time, she believed that true independence for a woman could not be achieved through marriage, of which Mary claimed was nothing more than "legalized prostitution" (Cucinello pp). "If woman be allowed to have an immortal soul," Mary wrote, "she must have, as the employment of life, an understanding to improve" (Wollstonecraft pp). And to improve, a woman is "incited by present gratification to forget her grand destination, Nature is counteracted, or she was born only to procreate and die" (Wollstonecraft pp). Ironically, that is exactly how Wollstonecraft died in 1797, while giving birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, "later to become Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein" (Cucinello pp).

Wollstonecraft was greatly influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment as well as the French and American revolution, and was surrounded herself with intellectuals such as Paine, Burke, Rousseau, and Voltaire (Cucinello pp). Of Rousseau, she wrote, "Who ever drew a more exalted female character than Rousseau?" (Wollstonecraft pp). Patrice Cucinello points out that it is important to remember that the French Revolution began in 1789, and for the next half century, Europe was terrified of an another upheaval, thus, progressive and revolutionary ideas such as Paine's and Wollstonecraft's were viewed as dangerous to the very foundations of society and many feared that these "unconventional thoughts would spread to other nations across Europe" (Cucinello pp).

Cucinello writes that Wollstonecraft's work is a cornerstone in women's rights and the foundation for modern feminism, which sees education as the key to greater economic, political and social status (Cucinello pp). And although Wollstonecraft did not live to see the fruition of her ideals regarding women's rights, her vision is left as she states, "I have thrown down the gauntlet, it is time to restore women to their lost dignity and to make them a part of the human species" (Cucinello pp).

In "An Eve to Please Me," Saba Bahar asserts that the goal and impulse behind Wollstonecraft's work was to "recreate Western culture's canonical images of woman, women, and femininity in order to create a world that is more conducive to the lives of women and men" (Carlson pp). And it is this, according to Bahar, that gives credibility to Wollstonecraft's status as the mother of western liberal feminisim (Carlson pp). Wollstonecraft writes fearlessly and challenges both components of the archetypal woman, so familiar from Genesis and Paradise Lost, which is "Eve's status as second, and secondary, to man," reduced to the role of "helpmate, love object, and pleasure principle," and of course the origin of the world's sin (Carlson pp). Wollstonecraft is a woman who has thinking powers and she connect these to her autonomy and morality with the goal of creating a world in which a woman's rationality is seen as a primary and desirable trait (Carlson pp). In chapter nine, Wollstonecraft writes:

"But what have women to do in society? I may be asked, but to loiter with easy grace; surely you would not condemn them all to suckle fools and chronicle small beer! No. Women might certainly study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses. And midwifery, decency seems to allot to them, though I am afraid the word midwife, in our dictionaries, will soon give place to accoucheur, and one proof of the former delicacy of the sex be effaced from the language"

(Wollstonecraft pp).

Bahar promotes the aesthetic as a means addressing the social issues of Wollstonecraft's work and uses it to invalidate some of the more common objections to her as a model of feminist thinking (Carlson pp). Many claim that Wollstonecraft's life, particularly her love life, contradicts her writings and the priority she ascribe to reason (Carlson pp). Others claim that her commitment to rationality portrays sexual phobia and hostility to female pleasure,

While others say that her "investment in raising and educating children belies her quest for female autonomy," while still others say that the melancholy that found in her later works undermines her optimism and belief in change (Carlson pp).