An Analysis Of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication For The Rights Of Women

Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 work, A Vindication for the Rights of Women, is a declaration for the rights of women in both the political and social sphere. Living in a male dominated society, Wollstonecraft explores and makes strong arguments for women's education, a new definition of virtue, women's rights and the role of political/domestic life. A year later William Blake published the poem Visions of the Daughter’s of Albion, a commentary on the “tyranny of rape and sexual possession”, but also mistreatment of women in a patriarchal society. (Damrosch 163) Both of these writers were members of circles of intellectuals influenced by enlightened ideals, revolutions in France and America, and new ideas on human rights including slavery. Although

Instead both men and women should be educated as moral beings and guided by reason. (Damrosch ) Second, she argued that the socialization of women and current state of education provided to women was a “false system of education,” which were really conduct manuals “written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creature, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized woman of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by

Evidence of this is seen in his poem, Visions of the Daughter’s of Albion. This poem is about Oothoon who abducted, held captive and is raped by Bromion, the rival of Oothoons’s lover Theotormon. The most obvious difference between the two pieces of work is that, while Wollstonecraft writes in a plain, straightforward fashion, Blake’s poem is fable like with mythological characters. Blake also emphasizes sexuality to drive his point, while Wollstonecraft emphasizes reason. For example, Oothoon while enslaved by Bromion fantasizes about participating in orgies with Theotormon, which according to Helen Bruder may signify how slave-like oppression could alter a woman’s rational thoughts or behavior. (http://zoamorphosis.com) What is most powerful about these lines and the poem as a whole is the way that Blake can move from the specifics of sexual oppression, for example within marriage, to an understanding of the wider extension of patriarchy and power. (http://zoamorphosis.com) Bromion manipulates Theotormon into rejecting Oothoon, by stereotyping her as a harlot. Blake uses the stereotyping to demonstrate the discursive ambivalence Theotormon’s position as an agent of patriarchy and imperialism.