Rights and Wrongs of Women (Mary Wollstonecraft)
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This study will apply the ideas from Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to its fictional companion Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman, showing how the ideas in Vindication are embedded in Maria. Essentially, Vindication argues that the inferior position of women in British society in the late 18th century is due not to any innate defect or weakness in women, but rather to the fact that men have the power to define and shape relationships, to make the laws, to own the property, and to decide the destiny of the genders socially, economically, and politically. The author does not absolve women of their responsibility for this situation. She first acknowledges the natural physical strength which men have over women, then adds:But not content with this natural pre-eminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amusement in their society (Wollstonecraft Vindication 7). Vindication is a plea, then, to both men and women: to men to "let woman share the rights" (201), and to women to take part in a "REVOLUTION in female manners" (199). Wollstonecraft argues that most of what are seen as the weaknesses of the female gender are in fact direct results of the social, economic, political, and educational de
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mprisoned in a terrible marriage is, to Wollstonecraft, the most miserable of victims:
For my part, I cannot suppose any situation more distressing, than for a woman of sensibility, with an improving mind, to be bound to such a man as I have described for life; obliged to renounce all the humanizing affections, and to avoid cultivating her taste, lest her perception of grace and refinement of sentiment, should sharpen to agony the pangs of disappointment. . . . I should despise, or rather call her an ordinary woman, who could endure such a husband as I have sketched (Wollstonecraft Maria 5-6).
Wollstonecraft's basic argument in Vindication is that a woman, like a man, is created by God and is therefore meant to develop her talents and her mind and spirit to the fullest, as expressions of God's greatness in human existence. Clearly, then, the subjugation of women by men in society and in marriage is an act of defiance against the will of God. Women, in the crucible of man's abuse, are "organized" not for full development of their faculties and soul but for "ignorance." Wollstonecraft argues that the worst result of such abuse is the perpetuation of stereotypes about women's character:
I come round to my old argument; if woman be a
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Approximate Word count = 2869
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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