"VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN."
The "Vindication of the Rights of Women" is the work on which Mary
Wollstonecraft's fame as an author rests. It is more than probable that,
but for it, her other writings would long since have been forgotten. In
it she speaks the first word in behalf of female emancipation. Her book
is the forerunner of a movement which, whatever may be its results, will
always be ranked as one of the most important of the nineteenth century.
Many of her propositions are, to the present advocates of the cause,
foregone conclusions. Hers was the voice of one crying in the wilderness
to prepare the way. Her principal task was to demonstrate that the old
ideals were false.
The then most exalted type of feminine perfection was Rousseau's Sophia.
Though this was an advance from the conception of the sex which inspired
Congreve, when he made the women of his comedies mere targets for men's
gallantries, or Swift, when he wrote his "Advice to a Young Married
Lady," it was still a low estimate of woman's character and sphere of
action. According to Rousseau, and the Dr. Gregorys and Fordyces who
re-echoed his doctrines in England, women are so far inferior to men that
their contribution to the comfort and pleasure of the latter is the sole
reason for their existence. For them virtue and duty have a relative and
not an absolute value. What they _are_ is of no consequence. The
essential point is what they _seem_ to men. That they are human beings is
lost sight of in the all-engrossing fact that they are women.
It is strange that Rousseau, who would have had men return to a state of
nature that they might be freed from shams and conventionalities, did not
see that the sacrifice of reality to appearances was quite as bad for
women. Mary Wollstonecraft, farther-sighted than he, discovered at once
the flaw in his reasoning. What was said of Schopenhauer by a Frenchman
could with equal truth be said of her: "Ce n'est pas un philosophe comme
les autres, c'est un philosophe qui a vu le monde." She had lived in
woman's world, and consequently, unlike the sentimentalists who were
accepted authorities on the subject, she did not reason from an outside
stand-point. This was probably what helped her not only to recognize the
false position of her sex, but to understand the real cause of the
trouble. She referred it, not to individual cases of masculine tyranny or
feminine incompetency, but to the fundamental misconception of the
relations of the sexes. Therefore, what she had to do was to awaken
mankind to the knowledge that women are human beings, and then to insist
that they should be given the opportunity to assert themselves as such,
and that their sex should become a secondary consideration. It would have
been useless for her to analyze their rights in detail until she had
established the premises upon which their claims must rest. It is true
she contends for their political emancipation. "I really think," she
writes, "that women ought to have representatives instead of being
arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in the
deliberations of government." And she also maintains their ability for
the practice of many professions, especially of medicine. But this she
says, as it were, in parenthesis. These necessary reforms cannot be even
begun until the equality of the sexes as human beings is proved beyond a
doubt. The object of the "Vindication" is to demonstrate this equality,
and to point out the preliminary measures by which it may be secured.
The book is now seldom read. Others of later date have supplanted it.
Conservative readers are prejudiced against it because of its title. The
majority of the liberal-minded have not the patience to master its
contents because they can find its propositions expressed more
satisfactorily elsewhere. Yet, as a work which marks an epoch, it
deserves to be well known. A comprehensive analysis of it will therefore
not be out of place.
It begins strangely, as it appears to this generation, with a dedication
to Talleyrand. Mary had seen him often when he had been in London, and
only knew what was best in him. She admired his principles, being
ignorant of his utter indifference to them. He had lately published a
pamphlet on National Education, and this was a subject upon which, in
vindicating women's rights, she had much to say. He had, in pleading the
cause of equality for all men, approached so closely to the whole truth
that she thought, once this was pointed out to him, he could not fail to
recognize it as she did. If he believed that, in his own words, "to see
one half of the human race excluded by the other from all participation
in government was a political phenomenon that, according to abstract
principles, it was impossible to explain," he could not logically deny
that prescription was unjust when applied to women. Therefore, as a new
constitution--the first based upon reason--was about to be established in
France, she reminds him that its framers would be tyrants like their
predecessors if they did not allow women to participate in it. In order
to command his interest, she explains briefly and concisely the truth
which she proposes to prove by her arguments, and thus she gives
immediately the keynote to her book.
"Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument," she tells
him, "is built on this simple principle, that if she be not
prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop
the progress of knowledge; for truth must be common to all, or it
will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general
practice. And how can woman be expected to co-operate unless she
know why she ought to be virtuous; unless freedom strengthen her
reason till she comprehend her duty, and see in what manner it is
connected with her real good? If children are to be educated to
understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a
patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of
virtues spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and
civil interests of mankind; but the education and situation of
woman, at present, shuts her out from such investigations.
"In this work I have produced many arguments, which to me were
conclusive, to prove that the prevailing notion respecting a sexual
character was subversive of morality; and I have contended, that to
render the human body and mind more perfect, chastity must more
universally prevail, and that chastity will never be respected in
the male world till the person of a woman is not, as it were,
idolized, when little virtue or sense embellish it with the grand
traces of mental beauty or the interesting simplicity of
affection."
In her Introduction Mary further states the object and scope of her work.
She advances the importance of bringing to a more healthy condition
women, who, like flowers nourished in over-luxuriant soil, have become
beautiful at the expense of strength. She attributes their weakness to
the systems of education which have aimed at making them alluring
mistresses rather than rational wives, and taught them to crave love,
instead of exacting respect. But, to prevent misunderstanding, she
explains that she does not wish them to seek to transform themselves into
men by cultivating essentially masculine qualities. They are inferior
physically, and must be content to remain so. Enthusiasm never carried
her to the absurd and exaggerated extremes which have made later
champions of the cause laughing-stocks. She also expresses her intention
of steering clear of an error into which most writers upon the subject,
with the exception perhaps of the author of "Sandford and Merton," have
fallen; namely, that of addressing their instruction to women of the
upper classes. But she intends, while including all ranks of society, to
give particular attention to the middle class, who appear to her to be in
a more natural state. Then, warning her sex that she will treat them like
rational creatures, and not as beings doomed to perpetual childhood, she
tells them:--
"... I wish to show that elegance is inferior to virtue, that the
first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character as a
human being, regardless of the distinction of sex, and that
secondary views should be brought to this simple touchstone."
The Introduction is important because, as she says, it is the "very
essence of an introduction to give a cursory account of the contents of
the work it introduces." Having learnt from it what she intends to do, it
remains to be seen how she accomplishes her task.
For the convenience of readers, the treatise may be divided into three
parts, though the author does not make this division, and was probably
unconscious of its possibility. The first chapters give a general
statement of the case. The second part is an elaboration of the first,
and is more concerned with individual forms of the evil than with it as a
whole. The third part suggests the remedy by which women are to be
delivered from social slavery.
Mary assumes as the basis of her entire argument that "the more equality
there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign
in society." The moral value of equality she demonstrates by the
wretchedness and wickedness which result whenever there is a substitution
of arbitrary power for the law of reason. The regal position, for
example, is gained by vile intrigues and unnatural crimes and vices, and
maintained by the sacrifice of true wisdom and virtue. Military
discipline, since it demands unquestioning submission to the will of
others, encourages thoughtless action. Even the clergy, because of the
blind acquiescence required from them to certain forms of belief, have
their faculties cramped. This being the case, it follows that society,
"as it becomes more enlightened, should be very careful not to establish
bodies of men who must necessarily be made foolish or vicious by the very
constitution of their profession." Now women, that is to say, one half of
the human race, have hitherto, on account of their sex, been absolutely
debarred from the exercise of reason in forming their conduct. As women
it has been supposed that they cannot have the same ideals as men. What
is vice for the latter is for them virtue. Their duty is to acquire
"cunning, softness of temper, _outward_ obedience, and a scrupulous
attention to a puerile kind of propriety." They are to render themselves
"gentle domestic brutes." In their education the training of their
understanding is to be neglected for the cultivation of corporeal
accomplishments. They are bidden to obey no laws save those of behavior,
to which they are as complete slaves as soldiers are to the commands of
their general, or the clergy to the _ex cathedra_ utterances of their
church. Fondness for dress, habits of dissimulation, and the affectation
of a sickly delicacy are recommended for their cultivation as essentially
feminine qualities; yet if virtue have but one eternal standard, it
should be the same in quality for the two sexes, even if there must be a
difference in the degree acquired by each. If women be moral beings, they
should aim at unfolding all their faculties, and not, as Rousseau and his
disciples would have them do, labor only to make themselves pleasing
sexually. Even if this be counted a praiseworthy end, and they succeed
in it, to what or how long will it avail them? The result proves the
unsoundness of such doctrines:--
"The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that
her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much
effect on her husband's heart when they are seen every day, when
the summer is past and gone. Will she then have sufficient native
energy to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant
faculties; or is it not more rational to expect, that she will try
to please other men, and, in the emotions raised by the expectation
of new conquests, endeavor to forget the mortification her love or
pride has received? When the husband ceases to be a lover--and the
time will inevitably come--her desire of pleasing will then grow
languid, or become a spring of bitterness; and love, perhaps the
most evanescent of all passions, give place to jealousy or vanity.
"I now speak of women who are restrained by principle or prejudice;
such women, though they would shrink from an intrigue with real
abhorrence, yet, nevertheless, wish to be convinced by the homage
of gallantry, that they are cruelly neglected by their husbands; or
days and weeks are spent in dreaming of the happiness enjoyed by
congenial souls, till the health is undermined and the spirits
broken by discontent. How, then, can the great art of pleasing be
such a necessary study? It is only useful to a mistress; the chaste
wife and serious mother should only consider her power to please as
the polish of her virtues, and the affection of her husband as one
of the comforts that render her task less difficult, and her life
happier."
Coquettish arts triumph only for a day. Love, the most transitory of all
passions, is inevitably succeeded by friendship or indifference.
The arguments which have been advanced to support this degrading system
of female education are easily proved to have no foundation in reason.
Women, it is said, are not so strong physically as men. True; but this
does not imply that they have no strength whatsoever. Because they are
weak relatively, it does not follow that they should be made so
absolutely. The sedentary life to which they are condemned weakens them,
and then their weakness is accepted as an inherent, instead of an
artificial, quality. Rousseau concludes that a woman is naturally a
coquette, and governed in all matters by the sexual instinct, because her
earliest amusements consist in playing with dolls, dressing them and
herself, and in talking. These conclusions are almost too puerile to be
refuted:--
"That a girl, condemned to sit for hours listening to the idle chat
of weak nurses or to attend at her mother's toilet, will endeavor
to join the conversation, is indeed very natural; and that she will
imitate her mother or aunts, and amuse herself by adorning her
lifeless doll, as they do in dressing her, poor innocent babe! is
undoubtedly a most natural consequence. For men of the greatest
abilities have seldom had sufficient strength to rise above the
surrounding atmosphere; and if the page of genius has always been
blurred by the prejudices of the age, some allowance should be made
for a sex, who, like kings, always see things through a false
medium."
The truth is, were girls allowed the same freedom in the choice of
amusements as boys, they would manifest an equal fondness for out-of-door
sports, to the neglect of dolls and frivolous pastimes. But it is denied
to them. Directors of their education have, as a rule, been blind
adherents to the doctrine that whatever is, is right, and hence have
argued that because women have always been brought up in a certain way
they should continue to be so trained.
The worst of it is that the artificial delicacy of constitution thus
produced is the cause of a corresponding weakness of mind; and women are
in actual fact _fair defects_ in creation, as they have been called. And
yet, after having been unfitted for action, they are expected to be
competent to take charge of a family. The woman who is well-disposed, and
whose husband is a sensible man, may act with propriety so long as he is
alive to direct her. But if he were to die how could she alone educate
her children and manage her household with discretion? The woman who is
ill-disposed is not only incapacitated for her duties, but, in her desire
to please and to have pleasure, she neglects dull domestic cares.
"It does not require a lively pencil, or the discriminating outline
of a caricature, to sketch the domestic miseries and petty vices
which such a mistress of a family diffuses. Still, she only acts as
a woman ought to act, brought up according to Rousseau's system.
She can never be reproached for being masculine, or turning out of
her sphere; nay, she may observe another of his grand rules, and,
cautiously preserving her reputation free from spot, be reckoned a
good kind of woman. Yet in what respect can she be termed good? She
abstains, it is true, without any great struggle, from committing
gross crimes; but how does she fulfil her duties? Duties--in truth,
she has enough to think of to adorn her body and nurse a weak
constitution.
"With respect to religion, she never presumes to judge for herself;
but conforms, as a dependent creature should, to the ceremonies of
the church which she was brought up in, piously believing that
wiser heads than her own have settled that business; and not to
doubt is her point of perfection. She therefore pays her tithe of
mint and cummin, and thanks her God that she is not as other women
are. These are the blessed effects of a good education! these the
virtues of man's helpmate!"
At this point Mary, after having given the picture of woman as she is
now, describes her as she ought to be. This description is worth quoting,
but not because it contains any originality of thought or charm of
expression. It is interesting as showing exactly what the first sower of
the seeds of female enfranchisement expected to reap for her harvest.
People who are frightened by a name are apt to suppose that women who
defend their rights would have the world filled with uninspired Joans of
Arc, and unrefined Portias. Those who judge Mary Wollstonecraft by her
conduct, without inquiring into her motives or reading her book, might
conclude that what she desired was the destruction of family ties and,
consequently, of moral order. Therefore, in justice to her, the purity of
her ideals of feminine perfection and her respect for the sanctity of
domestic life should be clearly established. This can not be better done
than by giving her own words on the subject:--
"Let fancy now present a woman with a tolerable understanding,--for
I do not wish to leave the line of mediocrity,--whose constitution,
strengthened by exercise, has allowed her body to acquire its full
vigor, her mind at the same time gradually expanding itself to
comprehend the moral duties of life, and in what human virtue and
dignity consist. Formed thus by the relative duties of her
station, she marries from affection, without losing sight of
prudence; and looking beyond matrimonial felicity, she secures her
husband's respect before it is necessary to exert mean arts to
please him, and feed a dying flame, which nature doomed to expire
when the object became familiar, when friendship and forbearance
take the place of a more ardent affection. This is the natural
death of love, and domestic peace is not destroyed by struggles to
prevent its extinction. I also suppose the husband to be virtuous;
or she is still more in want of independent principles.
"Fate, however, breaks this tie. She is left a widow, perhaps
without a sufficient provision; but she is not desolate. The pang
of nature is felt; but after time has softened sorrow into
melancholy resignation, her heart turns to her children with
redoubled fondness, and, anxious to provide for them, affection
gives a sacred, heroic cast to her maternal duties. She thinks that
not only the eye sees her virtuous efforts from whom all her
comfort now must flow, and whose approbation is life; but her
imagination, a little abstracted and exalted by grief, dwells on
the fond hope that the eyes which her trembling hand closed may
still see how she subdues every wayward passion to fulfil the
double duty of being the father as well as the mother of her
children. Raised to heroism by misfortunes, she represses the first
faint dawning of a natural inclination before it ripens into love,
and in the bloom of life forgets her sex, forgets the pleasure of
an awakening passion, which might again have been inspired and
returned. She no longer thinks of pleasing, and conscious dignity
prevents her from priding herself on account of the praise which
her conduct demands. Her children have her love, and her highest
hopes are beyond the grave, where her imagination often strays.
"I think I see her surrounded by her children, reaping the reward
of her care. The intelligent eye meets hers, whilst health and
innocence smile on their chubby cheeks, and as they grow up the
cares of life are lessened by their grateful attention. She lives
to see the virtues which she endeavored to plant on principles,
fixed into habits, to see her children attain a strength of
character sufficient to enable them to endure adversity without
forgetting their mother's example.
"The task of life thus fulfilled, she calmly waits for the sleep of
death, and rising from the grave may say, Behold, thou gavest me a
talent, and here are five talents."
Truly, if this be the result of the vindication of their rights, even the
most devoted believer in Rousseau must admit that women thereby will
gain, and not lose, in true womanliness.
From the primal source of their wrongs,--that is, the undue importance
attached to the sexual character,--Mary next explains that minor causes
have arisen to prevent women from realizing this ideal. The narrowness of
mind engendered by their vicious education hinders them from looking
beyond the interests of the present. They consider immediate rather than
remote effects, and prefer to be "short-lived queens than to labor to
attain the sober pleasures that arise from equality." Then, again, the
desire to be loved or respected for something, which is instinctive in
all human beings, is gratified in women by the homage paid to charms born
of indolence. They thus, like the rich, lose the stimulus to exertion
which this desire gives to men of the middle class, and which is one of
the chief factors in the development of rational creatures. A man with a
profession struggles to succeed in it. A woman struggles to marry
advantageously. With the former, pleasure is a relaxation; with the
latter, it is the main purpose of life. Therefore, while the man is
forced to forget himself in his work, the woman's attention is more and
more concentrated upon her own person. The great evil of this
self-culture is that the emotions are developed instead of the intellect.
Women become a prey to what is delicately called sensibility. They feel
and do not reason, and, depending upon men for protection and advice, the
only effort they make is to give their weakness a graceful covering. They
require, in the end, support even in the most trifling circumstances.
Their fears are perhaps pretty and attractive to men, but they reduce
them to such a degree of imbecility that they will start "from the frown
of an old cow or the jump of a mouse," and a rat becomes a serious
danger. These fair, fragile creatures are the objects of Mary
Wollstonecraft's deepest contempt, and she gives a good wholesome
prescription for their cure, which, despite modern co-education and Women
Conventions, female doctors and lawyers, might still be more generally
adopted to great advantage. It is in such passages as the following that
she proves the practical tendency of her arguments:--
"I am fully persuaded that we should hear of none of these
infantine airs if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise
and not confined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed and
their powers of digestion destroyed. To carry the remark still
further, if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps
created, was treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we
should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. It is true
they could not then with equal propriety be termed the sweet
flowers that smile in the walk of man; but they would be more
respectable members of society, and discharge the important duties
of life by the light of their own reasons. 'Educate women like
men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex, the less
power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I
do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves."
Some philosophers have asserted with contempt, as evidence of the
inferiority of the female understanding, that it arrives at maturity long
before the male, and that women attain their full strength and growth at
twenty, but men not until they are thirty. But this Mary emphatically
denies. The seeming earlier precocity of girls she attributes to the fact
that they are much sooner treated as women than boys are as men. Their
more speedy physical development is assumed because with them the
standard of beauty is fine features and complexion, whilst male beauty is
allowed to have some connection with the mind. But the truth is, that
"strength of body and that character of countenance which the French term
a _physionomie_, women do not acquire before thirty any more than men."
There are some curious remarks in reference to polygamy as a mark of the
inferiority of women, but they need not be given here, since this evil is
not legally recognized by civilized people, with the exception of the
Mormons. But there is a polygamy, not sanctioned by law, which exists in
all countries, and which has done more than almost anything else to
dishonor women. Mary's observations in this connection are among the
strongest in the book. She understands the true difficulty more
thoroughly than many social reformers to-day, and offers a better
solution of the problem than they do. Justice, not charity, she declares,
is wanted in the world. Asylums and Magdalens are not the proper remedies
for the abuse. But women should be given the same chance as men to rise
after their fall. The first offence should not be made unpardonable,
since good can come from evil. From a struggle with strong passions
virtue is often evolved.
To sum up in a few words Mary's statement of her subject, woman having
always been treated as an irrational, inferior being, has in the end
become one. Her acquiescence to her moral and mental degradation springs
from a want of understanding. But "whether this arises from a physical or
accidental weakness of faculties, time alone can determine." Women must
be allowed to exercise their understanding before it can be proved that
they have none.
While each individual man is much to blame in encouraging the false
position of women, inconsistently degrading those from whom they pretend
to derive their chief pleasure, still greater fault lies with writers who
have given to the world in their works opinions which, seemingly
favorable, are in reality of a derogatory character to the entire sex.
Having set themselves up as teachers, they are doubly responsible. They
add to their personal influence that of their written doctrine. They
necessarily become leaders, since the majority of men are more than
willing to be led. There were several writers of the eighteenth century
who had dogmatized about women and their education and the laws of
behavior. Rousseau was to many as an inspired prophet. No woman's library
was then considered complete which did not include Dr. Fordyce's Sermons
and Dr. Gregory's "Legacy to His Daughters." Mrs. Piozzi and Madame de
Stael were minor authorities, and Lord Chesterfield's Letters had their
admirers and upholders. These writers Mary treats separately, after she
has shown the result of the tacit teaching of men, taken collectively;
and here what may be called the second part of the book begins.
As Mary says, the comments which follow can all be referred to a few
simple principles, and "might have been deduced from what I have already
said." They are a mere elaboration of what has gone before, and it would
be therefore useless to repeat them. She exposes the folly of Rousseau's
ideal, the perfect Sophia who unites the endurance of a Griselda to the
wiles of a Vivien, and whose principal mission seems to be to make men
wonder, with the French cynic, of what use women over forty are in the
world. She objects to Dr. Fordyce's eulogium of female purity and his
Rousseau-inspired appeals to women to make themselves all that is
desirable in men's eyes, expressed in "lover-like phrases of pumped-up
passion." The sensuous piety of his Sermons, suggestive of the erotic
religious poems of the East, were particularly offensive to her. She next
regrets that Dr. Gregory, at such a solemn moment as that of giving last
words of advice to his daughters, should have added the weight of his
authority to the doctrine of dissimulation; she is indignant that Mrs.
Piozzi and Madame de Stael should have so little realized the dignity of
true womanhood as to have confirmed the fiat their tyrants had passed
against them; and she vigorously condemns Lord Chesterfield's vicious
system, which tends to the early acquirement of knowledge of the world
and leaves but little opportunity for the free development of man's
natural powers. These writers, no matter how much they differ in detail,
agree in believing external behavior to be of primary importance; and
Mary's criticisms of their separate beliefs may therefore be reduced to
one leading proposition by which she contradicts their main assertions.
Right and wrong, virtue and vice, must be studied in the abstract and not
by the measure of weak human laws and customs. This is the refrain to all
her arguments.
These remarks are followed by four chapters which, while they really
relate to the subject, add little to the force of the book. Introduced as
they are, they seem like disconnected essays. There is a dissertation
upon the effect of early associations of ideas to prove what has already
been asserted in an earlier chapter, that "females, who are made women of
when they are mere children, and brought back to childhood when they
ought to leave the go-cart forever," will inevitably have a sexual
character given to their minds. Modesty is next considered, not as a
sexual virtue but comprehensively, to show that it is a quality which,
regardless of sex, should always be based on humanity and knowledge, and
never on the false principle that it is a means by which women make
themselves pleasing to men. To teach girls that reserve is only necessary
when they are with persons of the other sex is at once to destroy in
their minds the intrinsic value of modesty. Yet this is usually the
lesson taught them. As a natural consequence, women are free and
confidential with each other to a fault, and foolishly prudent and
squeamish with men. They are never for a moment unconscious of the
difference of sex, and, in affecting the semblance of modesty, the true
virtue escapes them altogether. In their neglect of what _is_ for what
_seems_, they lose the substance and grasp a shadow. This consideration
of behavior, arbitrarily regulated, rather than of conduct ruled by
truth, leads women to care much more for their reputation than for their
actual chastity or virtue. They gradually learn to believe that the sin
is in being found out. "Women mind not what only Heaven sees." If their
reputation be safe, their consciences are satisfied. A woman who, despite
innumerable gallantries, preserves her fair name, looks down with
contempt upon another who perhaps has sinned but once, but who has not
been as clever a mistress of the art of deception.
"This regard for reputation, independent of its being one of the
natural rewards of virtue, however, took its rise from a cause that
I have already deplored as the grand source of female depravity,
the impossibility of regaining respectability by a return to
virtue, though men preserve theirs during the indulgence of vice.
It was natural for women then to endeavor to preserve what, once
lost, was lost forever, till, this care swallowing up every other
care, reputation for chastity became the one thing needful for the
sex."
As pernicious as the effects of distorted conceptions of virtue are those
which arise from unnatural social distinctions. This is a return to the
proposition relating to the necessity of equality with which the book
opens. In treating it in detail the question of woman's work is more
closely studied. The evils which the difference of rank creates are
aggravated in her case. Men of the higher classes of society can, by
entering a political or military life, make duties for themselves. Women
in the same station are not allowed these channels of escape from the
demoralizing idleness and luxury to which their social position confines
them. On the other hand, women of the middle class, who are above menial
service but who are forced to work, have the choice of a few despised
employments. Milliners and mantua-makers are respected only a little more
than prostitutes. The situation of governess is looked upon in the light
of a degradation, since those who fill it are gentlewomen who never
expected to be _humiliated_ by work. Many women marry and sacrifice their
happiness to fly from such slavery. Others have not even this pitiful
alternative. "Is not that government then very defective, and very
unmindful of the happiness of one half of its members, that does not
provide for honest, independent women, by encouraging them to fill
respectable stations?" It is a melancholy result of civilization that the
"most respectable women are the most oppressed."
The next chapter, on Paternal Affection, leads to the third part of the
treatise. It is not enough for a reformer to pull down. He must build up
as well, or at least lay the foundation stone of a new structure. The
missionary does not only tell the heathen that his religion is false, but
he instructs him in the new one which is to take its place. The
scientist, besides maintaining that old theories are exploded, explains
to the student new facts which have superseded them. Mary, after
demonstrating the viciousness of existing educational systems, suggests
wherein they may be improved, so that women, their understandings trained
and developed, may have the chance to show what they really are.
Family duties necessarily precede those of society. As the "formation of
the mind must be begun very early, and the temper, in particular,
requires the most judicious attention," a child's training should be
undertaken, not from the time it is sent to school, but almost from the
moment of its birth. Therefore a few words as to the relations between
parents and children are an indispensable introduction to the larger
subject of education, properly so called, which prepares the young for
social life.
Father and mother are rightful protectors of their child, and should
accept the charge of it, instead of hiring a substitute for this purpose.
It is not even enough for them to be regulated in this matter by the
dictates of natural affection. They must be guided by reason. For there
are the two equally dangerous extremes of tyrannical exercise of power
and of weak indulgence to be avoided. Unless their understanding be
strengthened and enlightened, they will not know what duties to exact
from their children. In their own disregard of reason as a guide to
conduct, they "demand blind obedience," and, to render their demand
binding, a "mysterious sanctity is spread around the most arbitrary
principle." Parents have a right to expect their children throughout
their lives to pay them due respect, give heed to their advice, and take
care of them should illness or old age make it impossible for them to do
this for themselves; but they should never desire to subjugate their sons
and daughters to their own will, after they have arrived at years of
discretion and can answer for their actions. To obey a parent, "only on
account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a
slavish submission to any power but reason." These remarks are
particularly applicable to girls, who "from various causes are more kept
down by their parents, in every sense of the word, than boys," though in
the case of the latter there is still room for improvement. That filial
duty should thus be reduced to slavery is inexcusable, since children can
very soon be made to understand why they are requested to do certain
things habitually. This, of course, necessitates trouble; but it is the
only way to qualify them for contact with the world, and the active life
which must come with their maturity.
Once this rational foundation has been laid for the formation of a
child's character, more immediate attention can be given to the
development of its mental faculties and social tendencies.
The first step in solving the great problem of education--and here both
sexes are referred to--is to decide whether it should be public or
private. The objections to private education are serious. It is not good
for children to be too much in the society of men and women; for they
then "acquire that kind of premature manhood which stops the growth of
every vigorous power of mind or body." By growing accustomed to have
their questions answered by older people instead of being obliged to seek
the answers for themselves, as they are forced to do when thrown with
other children, they do not learn how to think for themselves. The very
groundwork of self-reliance is thus destroyed. "Besides, in youth the
seeds of every affection should be sown, and the respectful regard which
is felt for a parent is very different from the social affections that
are to constitute the happiness of life as it advances." "Frank
ingenuousness" can only be attained by young people being frequently in
society where they dare to speak what they think. To know how to live
with their equals when they are grown up, children must learn to
associate with them when they are young.
The evils which result from the boarding-school system are almost as
great as those of private education. The tyranny established among the
boys is demoralizing, while the acquiescence to the forms of religion
demanded of them, encourages hypocrisy. Children who live away from home
are unfitted for domestic life. "Public education of every denomination
should be directed to form citizens, but if you wish to make good
citizens, you must first exercise the affections of a son and a brother."
Home-training on the one hand, and boarding-schools on the other, being
equally vicious, the only way out of the difficulty is to combine the two
systems, retaining what is best in each, and doing away with what is
evil. This combination could be obtained by the establishment of national
day-schools.
They must be supported by government, because the school-master who is
dependent upon the parents of children committed to his charge,
necessarily caters to them. In schools for the upper classes, where the
number of pupils is small and select, he spends his energies in giving
them a show of knowledge wherewith they may startle friends and relations
into admiration of his superior system. In common schools, where the
charges are small, he is forced, in order to support himself, to multiply
the number of pupils until it is impossible for him to do any one of
them justice. But if education were a national affair, school-masters
would be responsible to a board of directors, whose interest would be
given to the boys collectively and not individually, while the number of
pupils to be received would be strictly regulated.
To perfect national schools the sexes must be educated together. By this
means only can they be prepared for their after relations to each other,
women thus becoming enlightened citizens and rational companions for men.
The experiment of co-education is at all events worth making. Even should
it fail, women would not be injured thereby, "for it is not in the power
of man to render them more insignificant than they are at present."
Mary is very practical in this branch of her subject, and suggests an
admirable educational scheme. In her levelling of rank among the young,
she shows the influence of Plato; in her hint as to the possibility of
uniting play and study in elementary education, she anticipates Froebel.
Her ideas can be best appreciated by giving them in her own words:--
"To render this [that is, co-education] practicable, day-schools
for particular ages should be established by government, in which
boys and girls might be educated together. The school for the
younger children, from five to nine years of age, ought to be
absolutely free and open to all classes. A sufficient number of
masters should also be chosen by a select committee, in each
parish, to whom any complaint of negligence, etc., might be made,
if signed by six of the children's parents.
"Ushers would then be unnecessary: for I believe experience will
ever prove that this kind of subordinate authority is particularly
injurious to the morals of youth....
"But nothing of this kind [that is, amusement at the expense of
ushers] would occur in an elementary day-school, 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.
The schoolroom ought to be surrounded by a large piece of ground,
in which the children might be usefully exercised, for at this age
they should not be confined to any sedentary employment for more
than an hour at a time. But these relaxations might all be rendered
a part of elementary education, for many things improve and amuse
the senses when introduced as a kind of show, to the principles of
which, dryly laid down, children would turn a deaf ear. For
instance, botany, mechanics, and astronomy, reading, writing,
arithmetic, natural history, and some simple experiments in natural
philosophy, might fill up the day; but these pursuits should never
encroach on gymnastic plays in the open air. The elements of
religion, history, the history of man, and politics might also be
taught by conversations in Socratic form.
"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, the two sexes being still
together in the morning; but in the afternoon the girls should
attend a school where plain work, mantua-making, millinery, etc.,
would be their employment.
"The young people of superior abilities or fortune might now be
taught, in another school, the dead and living languages, the
elements of society, and continue the study of history and politics
on a more extensive scale, which would not exclude polite
literature. 'Girls and boys still together?' I hear some readers
ask. Yes; and I should not fear any other consequence than that
some early attachment might take place....
"Besides, this would be a sure way to promote early marriages, and
from early marriages the most salutary physical and moral effects
naturally flow....
"... Those (youths) who were designed for particular professions
might attend, three or four mornings in the week, the schools
appropriated for their immediate instruction....
"My observations on national education are obviously hints; but I
principally wish to enforce the necessity of educating the sexes
together to perfect both, and of making children sleep at home,
that they may learn to love home; yet to make private ties support,
instead of smothering, public affections, they should be sent to
school to mix with a number of equals, for only by the jostlings of
equality can we form a just opinion of ourselves....
"... The conclusion which I wish to draw is obvious: make women
rational creatures and free citizens, and they will quickly become
good wives and mothers; that is, if men do not neglect the duties
of husbands and fathers."
This is no place to enter into a discussion as to whether Mary
Wollstonecraft's theories were right or wrong. National education and
co-education are still subjects of controversy. But even those who object
most strongly to her conclusions must admit that they were the logical
results of her premises. Equality! was her battle-cry. All men and women
are equal inasmuch as they are human. Her scheme is the only possible one
by which this fundamental equality can be maintained. It covers the whole
ground, too, by its recognition of the secondary distinctions of rank and
sex, and the necessary division of labor. Mary was not a communist in her
social philosophy. She knew such differences must always exist, and she
allowed for them.
In the remaining chapter she cites instances of folly generated by
women's ignorance, and makes reflections upon the probable improvement to
be produced by a revolution in female manners. Some of the evils with
which she deals are trifling, as, for example, the prevailing mania for
mesmerism and fortune-telling. Others are serious, as, for instance, the
incapacity of ignorant women to rear children. But all which are of real
weight have already been more than amply discussed. She here merely
repeats herself, and these last pages are of little or no consequence.
A plainness of speech, amounting in some places to coarseness, and a
deeply religious tone, are to many modern readers the most curious
features of the book. A just estimate of it could not be formed if these
two facts were overlooked. A century ago men and women were much more
straightforward in their speech than we are to-day. They were not
squeamish. In real life Amelias listened to raillery from Squire Westerns
not a whit more refined than Fielding's good country gentlemen.
Therefore, when it came to serious discussions for moral purposes, there
was little reason for writers to be timid. It was impossible for Mary to
avoid certain subjects not usually spoken of in polite conversation. Had
she done so, she would but have half stated her case. She was not to be
deterred because she was a woman. Such mock-modesty would at once have
undermined her arguments. According to her own theories, there was no
reason why she should not think and speak as unhesitatingly as men, when
her sex was as vitally interested as theirs. And therefore, with her
characteristic consistency, she did so. But while her language may seem
coarse to our over-fastidious ears, it never becomes prurient or
indecent. In her Dedication she expresses very distinctly her disgust for
the absence of modesty among contemporary Frenchwomen. Hers is the
plain-speaking of the Jewish law-giver, who has for end the good of man;
and not that of an Aretino, who rejoices in it for its own sake.
Even more remarkable than this boldness of expression is the strong vein
of piety running through her arguments. Religion was to her as important
as it was to a Wesley or a Bishop Watts. The equality of man, in her
eyes, would have been of small importance had it not been instituted by
man's Creator. It is because there is a God, and because the soul is
immortal, that men and women must exercise their reason. Otherwise, they
might, like animals, yield to the rule of their instincts and emotions.
If women were without souls, they would, notwithstanding their
intellects, have no rights to vindicate. If the Christian heaven were
like the Mahometan paradise, then they might indeed be looked upon as
slaves and playthings of beings who are worthy of a future life, and
hence are infinitely their superiors. But, though sincerely pious, she
despised the meaningless forms of religion as much as she did social
conventionalities, and was as free in denouncing them. The clergy, who
from custom cling to old rites and ceremonies, were, in her opinion,
"indolent slugs, who guard, by liming it over, the snug place which they
consider in the light of an hereditary estate," and "idle vermin who two
or three times a day perform, in the most slovenly manner, a service
which they think useless, but call their duty." She believed in the
spirit, but not in the letter of the law. The scriptural account of the
creation is for her "Moses' poetical story," and she supposes that very
few who have thought seriously upon the subject believe that Eve was,
"literally speaking, one of Adam's ribs." She is indignant at the
blasphemy of sectarians who teach that an all-merciful God has instituted
eternal punishment, and she is impatient of the debtor and creditor
system which was then the inspiration of the religion of the people. She
believes in God as the life of the universe, and she accepts neither the
theory of man's innate wickedness nor that of his natural perfection, the
two then most generally adopted, but advocates his power of
development:--
"Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all _was_ right originally;
a crowd of authors that all _is_ now right; and I, that all _will
be_ right."
She, in fact, teaches the doctrine of evolution. But where its modern
upholders refer all things to an unknowable source, she builds her belief
"on the perfectibility of God."
Even the warmest admirers of Mary Wollstonecraft must admit that the
faults of the "Vindication of the Rights of Women" are many. Criticised
from a literary stand-point, they exceed its merits. Perfection of style
was not, it is true, the aim of the writer, as she at once explains in
her Introduction. She there says, that being animated by a far greater
end than that of fine writing,--
"... I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style. I aim
at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for
wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments than to
dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in
rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of
artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the
heart. I shall be employed about things, not words! and, anxious to
render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to
avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into
novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation."
Yet she errs principally from the fault she determines to avoid, as the
very sentence in which she announces this determination proves. Despite
her sincerity, she is affected, and her arguments are often weakened by
meretricious forms of expression. No one can for a moment doubt that her
feelings are real, but neither can the turgidity and bombast of her
language be denied. She borrows, unconsciously perhaps, the "flowery
diction" which she so heartily condemns. Her style, instead of being
clear and simple, as would have best suited her subject, is disfigured by
the euphuism which was the fashion among writers of the last century.
When she is enthusiastic, her pen "darts rapidly along" and her "heart
bounds;" if she grows indignant at Rousseau's ideal of feminine
perfection, "the rigid frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of
complacency which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his
voluptuous reveries." When she wants to prove that men of genius, as a
rule, have good constitutions, she says:--
"... Considering the thoughtless manner in which they lavished
their strength when, investigating a favorite science, they have
wasted the lamp of life, forgetful of the midnight hour, or when,
lost in poetic dreams, fancy has peopled the scene, and the soul
has been disturbed, till it shook the constitution by the passions
that meditation had raised, whose objects, the baseless fabric of a
vision, faded before the exhausted eye, they must have had iron
frames."
In her praise of the virtue of modesty, she exclaims:
"... It is the pale moon-beam that renders more interesting every
virtue it softens, giving mild grandeur to the contracted horizon.
Nothing can be more beautiful than the poetical fiction which makes
Diana, with her silver crescent, the goddess of chastity. I have
sometimes thought that, wandering in sedate step in some lonely
recess, a modest dame of antiquity must have felt a glow of
conscious dignity, when, after contemplating the soft, shadowy
landscape, she has invited with placid fervor the mild reflection
of her sister's beams to turn to her chaste bosom."
She is too ready to moralize, and her moralizing degenerates
unfortunately often into commonplace platitudes. She is even at times
disagreeably pompous and authoritative, and preaches rather than argues.
This was due partly to a then prevailing tendency in literature. Every
writer--essayist, poet, and novelist--preached in those days. Mary
frequently forgets she has a cause to prove in her desire to teach a
lesson. She exhorts her sisters as a minister might appeal to his
brethren, and this resemblance is made still more striking by the
oratorical flights or prayers with which she interrupts her argument to
address her Creator. Moreover, the book is throughout, as Leslie Stephen
says, "rhetorical rather than speculative." It is unmistakably the
creation of a zealous partisan, and not of a calm advocate. It reads
more like an extempore declamation than a deliberately written essay.
Godwin says, as if in praise, that it was begun and finished within six
weeks. It would have been better had the same number of months or years
been devoted to it. Because of the lack of all method it is so full of
repetition that the argument is weakened rather than strengthened. She is
so certain of the truth of abstract principles from which she reasons,
that she does not trouble herself to convince the sceptical by concrete
proofs. Owing to this want of system, the "Vindication" has little value
as a philosophical work. Women to-day, with none of her genius, have
written on the same subject books which exert greater influence than
hers, because they have appreciated the importance of a definite plan.
Great as are these faults, they are more than counterbalanced by the
merits of the book. All the flowers of rhetoric cannot conceal its
genuineness. As is always the case with the work of honest writers, it
commands respect even from those who disapprove of its doctrine and
criticise its style. Despite its moralizing it is strong with the
strength born of an earnest purpose. It was written neither for money nor
for amusement, too often the inspiration to book-making. The one she had
not time to seek; the other she could have obtained with more certainty
by translating for Mr. Johnson, or by contributing to the "Analytical
Review." She wrote it because she thought it her duty to do so, and hence
its vigor and eloquence. All her pompous platitudes cannot conceal the
earnestness of her denunciation of shams. The "Rights of Women" is an
outcry against them. The age was an artificial one. Ladies played at
being shepherdesses, and men wept over dead donkeys. Sensibility was a
cultivated virtue, and philanthropy a pastime. Women were the
arch-sufferers from this evil; but, pleased at being likened unto angels,
they failed to see that the ideal set up for them was false. It is to
Mary's glory that she could penetrate the mists of prevailing prejudices
and see the clear unadulterated truth. The excess of sentimentalism had
given rise to the other extreme of naturalism. In France the reaction
against arbitrary laws, empty forms, and the unjust privileges of rank,
led to the French Revolution. In England its outcome was a Wesley in
religious speculation, a Wilkes in political action, and a Godwin and a
Paine in social and political theorizing. But those who were most eager
to uphold reason as a guide to the conduct of men, had nothing to say in
behalf of women. Even the reformers, by ignoring their cause, seemed to
look upon them as beings belonging to another world. Day, in his
"Sandford and Merton," was the only man in the least practical where the
weaker sex was concerned. Mary knew that no reform would be complete
which did not recognize the fact that what is law and truth for man must
be so for women also. She carried the arguments for human equality to
their logical conclusion. Her theories are to the philosophy of the
Revolutionists what modern rationalism is to the doctrine of the right of
private judgment. She saw the evil to which greater philosophers than she
had been indifferent. The same contempt for conventional standards which
characterized her actions inspired her thoughts. Once she had evolved
this belief, she felt the necessity of proclaiming it to the world at
large; and herein consists her greatness. "To believe your own thought,"
Emerson says, "to believe that what is true for you in your private heart
is true for all men,--that is genius." The "Vindication of the Rights of
Women" will always live because it is the work of inspiration, the words
of one who speaketh with authority.
Furthermore, another and very great merit of the book is that the ideas
expressed in it are full of common sense, and eminently practical. Mary's
educational theories, far in advance of her time, are now being to a
great extent realized. The number of successful women physicians show how
right she was in supposing medicine to be a profession to which they are
well suited. The ability which a few women have manifested as school
directors and in other minor official positions confirms her belief in
the good to be accomplished by giving them a voice in social and
political matters. But what is especially to her credit is her
moderation. Apostles of a new cause or teachers of a new doctrine are, as
a rule, enthusiasts or extremists who lose all sense of the fitness of
things. A Diogenes, to express his contempt for human nature, must needs
live in a tub. A Fox knows no escape from the shams of society, save
flight to the woods and an exchange of linen and cloth covering for a
suit of leather. But Mary's enthusiasm did not make her blind; she knew
that women were wronged by the existing state of affairs; but she did not
for this reason believe that they must be removed to a new sphere of
action. She defended their rights, not to unfit them for duties assigned
them by natural and social necessities, but that they might fulfil them
the better. She eloquently denied their inferiority to men, not that they
might claim superiority, but simply that they might show themselves to be
the equals of the other sex. Woman was to fight for her liberty that she
might in deed and in truth be worthy to have her children and her husband
rise up and call her blessed!