Females According to Christina Rossetti and Mary Wollstonecraft
What is it that separates and elevates human beings from the rest of the animal world? It is the ability to logically explain an action, decision, or conviction; it is the capacity to reason. As Rousseau states, “Only reason teaches us good from evil” (Wollstonecraft 238). According to him, as well as countless other intellectuals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through the exercise of reason men become moral and political agents. Of course, this Enlightenment theory does not include women. Rousseau declares his opinion of the female, “O how lovely is her ignorance!” (253) The woman is the man's fantasy, the man's student, the man's plaything. Controlled, contained, and defined by the man, the woman is inferior to him and thus, not human.
Eighteenth century writer and mother of female liberalism, Mary Wollstonecraft refutes this supposedly natural state of man being superior to woman in her treatise, "A Vindication of The Rights of Woman":
It is farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues
do not result from the exercise of reason... This was
Rousseau's opinion respecting men: I extend it to
women....till the manners of the time are changed...it
may be impossible to convince [women]that the illegitimate
power, which they obtain, by degrading themselves, is
a curse, and that they must return to nature and equality
...(239)
She proclaims the female to be equally capable of reason as the male. In order for the female to recognize and utilize this capability, society's males and females must alter their prejudicial definition of the feminine.
Wollstonecraft addresses the fema...
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...cquire virtues which they may call their own, for how can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?” (254) Indeed, it is only when the woman may call her skill, her experience, or her truth, all derived from reason, her own that she shall be independent. As Rossetti states, “Only my secret's mine...” (6). And, only when the societal norms change, shall the keeping of such a secret be by choice and not necessity.
Works Cited
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Vindication of the Rights of Women. The Longman
Anthology of British Literature. Vol 2A. Ed. David Damrosch. 2nd ed.
London: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, 2003. 227-255.
Rossetti, Christina. “Winter: My Secret.” The Longman Anthology of British
Literature. Vol. 2B. Ed. David Damrosch. 2nd ed. London: Addison-Wesley
Educational Publishers, 2003. 1617.
The Enlightenment is known as the revolution that brought to question the traditional political and social structures. This included the question of the woman’s traditional roles in society. As the public sphere relied more and more ?? and the advances in scientific and educated thinking, women sought to join in with the ranks of their male counterparts. Women held gatherings known as salons where they organized intellectual conversations with their distinguished male guests. Seeking to further their status, enlightened women published pamphlets and other works advocating for educational rights and political recognition. Even with this evolution of woman in society, many still clung to the belief that the role of the woman was solely domestic. The females that spoke up were usually deemed unnatural. However these women used the time period of reason and science that allowed them the opportunity to break away from their domestic roles and alter the view of women in society.
She draws a picture of her equality to men by expressing her strength and hard-working efforts as she “ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me.” Again, following this statement, “Ain’t I a woman?” She rhythmically continues this pattern, making a claim to her equality she feels with males and then following it with the powerful question “Ain’t I a woman?”.
In examining how women fit into the "men's world" of the late eighteenth century, I studied Eliza Fenwick's novel Secresy and its treatment of women, particularly in terms of education. What I found to be most striking in the novel is the clash between two very different approaches to the education of women. One of these, the traditional view, is amply expressed by works such as Jean-Jaques Rousseau's Emile, which states that women have a natural tendency toward obedience and therefore education should be geared to enhance these qualities (Rousseau, pp. 370, 382, 366). Dr. John Gregory's A Father's Legacy to His Daughters also belongs to this school of thought, stating that wit is a woman's "most dangerous talent" and is best kept a well-guarded secret so as not to excite the jealousy of others (Gregory, p. 15). This view, which sees women as morally and intellectually inferior, is expressed in the novel in the character of Mr. Valmont, who incarcerates his orphaned niece in a remote part of his castle. He asserts that he has determined her lot in life and that her only duty is to obey him "without reserve or discussion" (Fenwick, p.55). This oppressive view of education served to keep women subservient by keeping them in an ignorant, child-like state. By denying them access to true wisdom and the right to think, women were reduced to the position of "a timid, docile slave, whose thoughts, will, passions, wishes, should have no standard of their own, but rise, or change or die as the will of the master should require" (Fenwick, 156).
Wollstonecraft, Mary. “From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Class handout.
The idea and characteristics of gender, relate to the specific differences men and women deliver to society and the unique qualities and roles each demonstrate. The term ‘Femininity’ refers to the range of aspects and womanly characteristics the female represents. The foundation of femininity creates and brings forth many historical and contemporary issues. According to Mary Wollstonecraft in ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’, women’s femininity is considered a flaw of nature. Throughout the paper, history indicates how women are viewed and looked upon in a male dominated world which hinders a woman’s potential, her character, her mind, her dreams, her femininity. The paper particularly stresses the idea of power, the power of man. The historical argument leans towards man’s desire to treat women as inferior to them.
Mary Wollstonecraft was as revolutionary in her writings as Thomas Paine. They were both very effective writers and conveyed the messages of their ideas quite well even though both only had only the most basic education. Wollstonecraft was a woman writing about women's rights at a time when these rights were simply non-existent and this made her different from Paine because she was breaking new ground, thus making her unique. Throughout her lifetime, Wollstonecraft wrote about the misconception that women did not need an education, but were only meant to be submissive to man. Women were treated like a decoration that had no real function except to amuse and beguile. Wollstonecraft was the true leader in women's rights, advocating a partnership in relationships and marriage rather than a dictatorship. She was firm in her conviction that education would give women the ability to take a more active role in life itself.
In the nation, women make up approximately fifty percent of the population. Due to their sex, they are unable to obtain the same goals that are provided to men in Thomas Jefferson 's declaration. One notable difference between men and women is physiology. Nevertheless, Mary Wollstonecraft in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman states that both sexes were created equally by God (Wollstonecraft 45). Wollstonecraft’s argument is that rights should not be beneficial for one sex, but for all sexes since God created humans. Though there are slight differences between the two, women should have the rights as men, especially since they coexist together in society. In the "Declaration of Sentiments," Elizabeth Cady Stanton writes that women do not possess the right to property, right to vote or the right to formal education. In addition, the standards on which women are judged upon is harsher for women in the relationship between husband and wife. Cady Stanton relays, “In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master—the law giving him power to deprive
In 1848 Elizabeth Cady Stanton (an American social activist and one of the leading figures of the early women’s rights movement) stated that “man is infinitely women’s inferior in every moral virtue.” Feminism (defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as: “the theory of political, economic, and social equality of the sexes”)
Women today hold many roles in society. We are mother, care givers, daughters, wives, bosses, employees, educators, arbitrators and the list can go on and on. In my view we are the glue that can hold a family together and the ethical back bone in a still very male dominated society. Males have been the force behind most of the ethical and moral decisions that dominate our world. Women for much of our known history been subservient, dominated, and treated as second class citizens. We have been told that we are too sensitive and not as smart as men. It was believed and debated for many centuries that a women could only be virtues if she was a mother and a wife. This was her role because of her gender. With all the negativity towards women we
Vindication of the Rights for Women by Mary Wollstonecraft was published in 1792, during the French Revolution. Wollstonecraft preached that intellect will always govern to persuade women not to endeavor to acquire knowledge but convince them that the soft phrases, acceptability of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are most preferred. By intellect, I mean the men because they were the ones that were allowed to get an education therefore allowing them to become intellectual. Wollstonecraft cleverly does not try to prove her point through protests or accusations, but argue that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. She believed it was unfair for women to be treated differently and passionately wanted to make a change. That it was time to let go of feelings and begin the thought process behind the rationality of the women’s predicament. Men felt that while they would get an education an...
Feminism as an ideology has only really taken force since the late 18th century. (Fraser: 2014) In Mary Wollstonecra...
She explains in the very first paragraph that “I have lived with anger, on that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my vision to waste, for most of my life” (288), she has been silenced and now she want to speak up, to fight not only for herself, but also for women in the community, as well as women in the LGBT community, and probably other communities as well. Women in the other ethical community are taught to eliminate their voice, or they being taught not to have their voice being spoken out. Women are living in such lives until their last day on earth without recognizing that they are limited to rights they deserved to
Also obvious is her increasing frustration with the unnecessary limitations of femaleness. “For man and woman,” she maintained, “truth, if I understand the meaning of the word, must be the same...Women, I allow, may have different duties
Mary Wollstonecraft: the Mother of Modern Feminism Mary Wollstonecraft was a self-educated, radical philosopher who wrote about liberation, and empowering women. She had a powerful voice in her views on the rights of women to get good education and career opportunities. She pioneered the debate for women’s rights, inspiring many of the 19th and the 20th century’s writers and philosophers to fight for women’s rights, as well. She did not only criticize men for not giving women their rights, she also put blame on women for being voiceless and subservient. Her life and, the surrounding events of her time, accompanied by the strong will of her, had surely affected the way she chose to live her life, and to form her own philosophies.
She questions, “What if, in raising our children, we (the parents) focus on ability instead of gender. interest instead of gender” (36)? Simply, if negativity towards the opposite sex is eradicated in a new generation, there will be no more inequality to worry about. She also parallels Wollstonecraft in commenting on the fascinating diversity of males and females.