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IN CONTEXT

IDEOLOGY

Feminism

FOCUS

Women’s emancipation

BEFORE

1589 Her Protection for Women by English novelist Jane Anger castigates men for seeing women merely as objects of sexual desire.

1791 In Declaration of the Rights of Woman, French playwright Olympe de Gouges writes: “Woman is born free and remains equal to man.”

AFTER

1840s In the US and the UK, women’s property is legally protected from their husbands.

1869 In The Subjection of Women, John Stuart Mill argues that women should be given the right to vote.

1893 In New Zealand, women are given the vote—one of the first countries to do so.

Published in 1792, British writer Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is seen as one of the first great feminist tracts. It was written at a time of intellectual and political ferment. The Enlightenment had established the rights of men at the center of political debate, which culminated in France in the Revolution against the monarchy in the very year that Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication. Yet few talked about the position of women in society. Indeed, French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an ardent advocate of political freedom, argued in his work Émile that women should only be educated to make them good wives able to give pleasure to men.

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Freedom to work

Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication to show how wrong Rousseau was about women. The rejuvenation of the world could only happen, she argued, if women were happy, as well as men. Yet women were trapped by a web of expectations due to their dependence on men. They were forced to trade on their looks and to connive to win the affections of a man. Respectable women—women who did not indulge in this game of seduction—were put at a huge disadvantage.

"How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by fulfilling any duty, than the most accomplished beauty."

Mary Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft argued that women needed the freedom to earn a living, granting them autonomy from men. To achieve this freedom required education. To those who argued that women were inferior to men intellectually, she insisted that this misapprehension was simply due to a woman’s lack of education. She argued that there were many occupations women could pursue with the right education and opportunities: “How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practiced as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry?” Independence and education for women would also be good for men, because marriages might be based on mutual affection and respect. Wollstonecraft proposed reforms to education, such as combining private and public education, and a more democratic, participatory approach to schooling.

  Wollstonecraft’s proposals for the education and emancipation of women were largely overlooked in her lifetime, and for a time after her death she was better known for her unconventional lifestyle than her ideas. However, later campaigners—such as Emily Davies, who set up Girton College for women at the University of Cambridge in 1869—were strongly influenced by her ideas. Change was nonetheless slow to come—it was more than 150 years after the publication of A Vindication that the University of Cambridge finally offered full degrees to women.

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Feminine charms were essential for a woman to advance in 18th-century European society. Wollstonecraft abhorred the fact that a woman had to attract a man to provide for her.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 to a family whose fortunes were in decline. In her early 20s she set up a progressive school in London, and then became a governess in Ireland to the children of Lady Kingsborough, whose vanity and disdain did much to foster Mary’s views on women.

  In 1787, she returned to London to write for the radical magazine Analytical Review. In 1792, she went to France to celebrate the Revolution and fell in love with American author Gilbert Imlay. They had a child but did not marry, and the relationship ended. After failed suicide attempts, and a move to Sweden, she moved back to London and married William Godwin. She died in 1797 giving birth to their only child, Mary, who wrote the novel Frankenstein under her married name of Shelley.

Key works

1787 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

1790 A Vindication of the Rights of Men

1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

1796 The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria

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