Scan barcode
A review by spenkevich
The Feminist Papers: A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
4.0
‘Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.’
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft dropped a bomb into the intellectual world with A Vindication of the Rights of Women, widely considered the first feminist manifesto. It will come as no surprise that there was a hostile reception, though it was reviewed positively in many magazines, received a second printing almost immediately, and quickly came to the US and was translated into French. Mary delivers a strong rallying cry for the education of women and sharp criticisms of social norms that oppress women and coach them into submission, ideas that would resonate through the ages and inspire generations of feminist thought that would expand upon them. This includes her own daughter, famed author [a:Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|11139|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1699348762p2/11139.jpg] who also shocked the world releasing [b:Frankenstein|35031085|Frankenstein The 1818 Text|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631088473l/35031085._SY75_.jpg|4836639] at the age of 18, and many of her ideas about women given the space for their own financial mobility feel like prototypes for [a:Simone de Beauvoir|5548|Simone de Beauvoir|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1555042345p2/5548.jpg]’s arguments in [b:The Second Sex|9684227|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348744262l/9684227._SY75_.jpg|879666]. Sharp, witty, and full of fiery intensity, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (published here as The Feminist Papers) is an excellent historical document on the fight for women’s liberation and still remains an engrossing read today.
‘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. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.’
A Vindication of the Rights of Women may well be one of the earliest feminist manifestos, though the term “feminism” was not coined for another century. This novel-length manifesto may feel dated in many ways—I mean it was 1792 so don’t expect the nuance of modern discourse around gender—yet also reads as impressively ahead of it’s time. She knows her audience, though, and couches much of her arguments in religious contexts seeing as her readers would likely be religious and, in an appeal for reason, writes in a context that reason was bestowed and decreed by God. Similarly, acknowledging that men would largely be reading this, much of it is addressed diretly to the men of her time to urge them to be active in undoing the shackles of patriarchal rule and acknowledge that their actions are what have lead to the oppression and mistreatment of women. In this way, she also counteracts many typical responses against women’s liberation, namely that even with equality women would still be “lesser” than men. ‘Let men prove this, and I shall grant that woman only exists for man,’ she writes, arguing that without being given the opportunity to see what happens under a more equal society their argument is meaningless conjecture. She writes ‘there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude,’ in response to the slippery-slope claims that giving women financial agency or a space in the workforce outside the home would cause them to become ‘too masculine’ or become oppressors themselves. To any fearmongering against women’s equality, she proclaims ‘what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!’ and calls for space for women instead of neglecting it by assuming the worst.
‘I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.’
The key to her manifesto is the establishment of a National Education system that gives equal opportunities and access to men and women. The argument is that if education allowed men to thrive, women would also thrive under greater enlightenment. This was written in response to a report by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord which has called for women to only receive a “domestic education,” something she saw as society ensuring women would have no agency beyond the duties of a housewife. Wollstonecraft argues that without proper enrichment in the sciences, the scope of women’s interest will never extend beyond superficial household issues and the gatekeeping of education is also gatekeeping them from fulfillment in a larger society. Her statement that without a proper education women will be ‘dependent on the novelist for amusement,’ a nice jab at the men of letters (also hilarious considering her own daughter’s success as a writer later on) but implying that women will have no scope of the world beyond the entertainment of fiction, or in modern parlance, saying they will want nothing beyond sitting and watching bad tv.
This manifesto does mostly to serve the needs of a middle class in its critique of the wealthy ruling class. She writes that ‘after the age of nine, girls and boys, intended for domestic employments, or mechanical trades, ought to be removed to other schools, and receive instruction, in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual,’ so the poorer working class will still be given some education but expected to remain laborers. This isn’t a perfect manifesto that achieves Fannie Lou Hamer’ statement that ‘nobody's free until everybody's free,’ but all the same this was radically progressive for its time.
‘My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.’
I really enjoyed the way Wollstonecraft dissects society to show how the belief of women as lesser and submissive to men is something coached by social norms and is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy dictated by patriarchal rule. As society is ruled from the top down in terms of wealth, so too is society ruled with regard to gender under an assumption that men are more capable and deserving of ruling. She looks at the way the treatment of women, such as the lack of access to education or employment, leaves them with no social agency or mobility and thus, in resignation, become the very thing men wish them to be. ‘All the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience,’ she writes, insisting women stop allowing themselves to be pigeonholed into these roles.
This extends to topics such as marriage, and while she admits there isn’t much opportunity for women without being married, urges women to not allow themselves to become a slave to their husband. She says how men act like tyrants in marriage and that there in no reason for it to be an institution of oppression, something Beauvoir would expand upon greatly in [b:The Second Sex|9684227|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348744262l/9684227._SY75_.jpg|879666] charting how possession of women became equated with possession of property as another way that equality was denied simply by seeming ridiculous in a society where women were dehumanized as objects.
‘It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.’
In a society where reason and virtue is valued, Mary Wollstonecraft argues that without the access to education and equality for women, than it is all meaningless signaling. A Vindication of the Rights of Women remains a sharp, insightful text and excellent look at the early wave-making of feminist thought that would grow and gain power and force over generations. It is certainly not perfect, and reads rather dated (it can also be assumed women’s rights likely just meant white women) but is still quite interesting. This was an excellent read for Women’s History Month, and while it is a bit of a denser read, it is still quite accessible and interesting. Mary Wollstonecraft helped light a fuse that continues in the fight for women’s rights and a more just, equitable society.
4/5
‘Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the justice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of man will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet.’
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft dropped a bomb into the intellectual world with A Vindication of the Rights of Women, widely considered the first feminist manifesto. It will come as no surprise that there was a hostile reception, though it was reviewed positively in many magazines, received a second printing almost immediately, and quickly came to the US and was translated into French. Mary delivers a strong rallying cry for the education of women and sharp criticisms of social norms that oppress women and coach them into submission, ideas that would resonate through the ages and inspire generations of feminist thought that would expand upon them. This includes her own daughter, famed author [a:Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|11139|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1699348762p2/11139.jpg] who also shocked the world releasing [b:Frankenstein|35031085|Frankenstein The 1818 Text|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631088473l/35031085._SY75_.jpg|4836639] at the age of 18, and many of her ideas about women given the space for their own financial mobility feel like prototypes for [a:Simone de Beauvoir|5548|Simone de Beauvoir|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1555042345p2/5548.jpg]’s arguments in [b:The Second Sex|9684227|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348744262l/9684227._SY75_.jpg|879666]. Sharp, witty, and full of fiery intensity, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (published here as The Feminist Papers) is an excellent historical document on the fight for women’s liberation and still remains an engrossing read today.
‘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. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.’
A Vindication of the Rights of Women may well be one of the earliest feminist manifestos, though the term “feminism” was not coined for another century. This novel-length manifesto may feel dated in many ways—I mean it was 1792 so don’t expect the nuance of modern discourse around gender—yet also reads as impressively ahead of it’s time. She knows her audience, though, and couches much of her arguments in religious contexts seeing as her readers would likely be religious and, in an appeal for reason, writes in a context that reason was bestowed and decreed by God. Similarly, acknowledging that men would largely be reading this, much of it is addressed diretly to the men of her time to urge them to be active in undoing the shackles of patriarchal rule and acknowledge that their actions are what have lead to the oppression and mistreatment of women. In this way, she also counteracts many typical responses against women’s liberation, namely that even with equality women would still be “lesser” than men. ‘Let men prove this, and I shall grant that woman only exists for man,’ she writes, arguing that without being given the opportunity to see what happens under a more equal society their argument is meaningless conjecture. She writes ‘there is little reason to fear that women will acquire too much courage or fortitude,’ in response to the slippery-slope claims that giving women financial agency or a space in the workforce outside the home would cause them to become ‘too masculine’ or become oppressors themselves. To any fearmongering against women’s equality, she proclaims ‘what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!’ and calls for space for women instead of neglecting it by assuming the worst.
‘I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.’
The key to her manifesto is the establishment of a National Education system that gives equal opportunities and access to men and women. The argument is that if education allowed men to thrive, women would also thrive under greater enlightenment. This was written in response to a report by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord which has called for women to only receive a “domestic education,” something she saw as society ensuring women would have no agency beyond the duties of a housewife. Wollstonecraft argues that without proper enrichment in the sciences, the scope of women’s interest will never extend beyond superficial household issues and the gatekeeping of education is also gatekeeping them from fulfillment in a larger society. Her statement that without a proper education women will be ‘dependent on the novelist for amusement,’ a nice jab at the men of letters (also hilarious considering her own daughter’s success as a writer later on) but implying that women will have no scope of the world beyond the entertainment of fiction, or in modern parlance, saying they will want nothing beyond sitting and watching bad tv.
This manifesto does mostly to serve the needs of a middle class in its critique of the wealthy ruling class. She writes that ‘after the age of nine, girls and boys, intended for domestic employments, or mechanical trades, ought to be removed to other schools, and receive instruction, in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual,’ so the poorer working class will still be given some education but expected to remain laborers. This isn’t a perfect manifesto that achieves Fannie Lou Hamer’ statement that ‘nobody's free until everybody's free,’ but all the same this was radically progressive for its time.
‘My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.’
I really enjoyed the way Wollstonecraft dissects society to show how the belief of women as lesser and submissive to men is something coached by social norms and is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy dictated by patriarchal rule. As society is ruled from the top down in terms of wealth, so too is society ruled with regard to gender under an assumption that men are more capable and deserving of ruling. She looks at the way the treatment of women, such as the lack of access to education or employment, leaves them with no social agency or mobility and thus, in resignation, become the very thing men wish them to be. ‘All the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience,’ she writes, insisting women stop allowing themselves to be pigeonholed into these roles.
This extends to topics such as marriage, and while she admits there isn’t much opportunity for women without being married, urges women to not allow themselves to become a slave to their husband. She says how men act like tyrants in marriage and that there in no reason for it to be an institution of oppression, something Beauvoir would expand upon greatly in [b:The Second Sex|9684227|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348744262l/9684227._SY75_.jpg|879666] charting how possession of women became equated with possession of property as another way that equality was denied simply by seeming ridiculous in a society where women were dehumanized as objects.
‘It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.’
In a society where reason and virtue is valued, Mary Wollstonecraft argues that without the access to education and equality for women, than it is all meaningless signaling. A Vindication of the Rights of Women remains a sharp, insightful text and excellent look at the early wave-making of feminist thought that would grow and gain power and force over generations. It is certainly not perfect, and reads rather dated (it can also be assumed women’s rights likely just meant white women) but is still quite interesting. This was an excellent read for Women’s History Month, and while it is a bit of a denser read, it is still quite accessible and interesting. Mary Wollstonecraft helped light a fuse that continues in the fight for women’s rights and a more just, equitable society.
4/5
‘Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the justice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of man will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet.’