DOCSLIB.ORG

1 'A Genius Will Educate Itself': Mary Wollstonecraft As Autodidact

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
1 'A Genius Will Educate Itself': Mary Wollstonecraft As Autodidact Notes 1 ‘A genius will educate itself’: Mary Wollstonecraft as Autodidact 1. William Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, eds Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker (Ontario and Letchworth, Herts: Broadview Press, 2001), p. 44. Henceforth cited in parenthesis as MAVRW. 2. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler (London: Pickering, 1989), 1: 124. All quotations are taken from this edition and will henceforth be cited in parenthesis. 3. Letterpress copy of letter dated 11 January, 1798. Abinger Archive. Dep.b.227/8. 4. See Matthew Mercer, ‘Dissenting Academies and the Education of the Laity, 1750–1850’, History of Education, 30:1 (2001), 35–58; and William St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys: A Biography of a Family (Baltimore, Maryland: The John Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 8–9. 5. Abinger Archive, Dep.b.214/3. 6. I am indebted to Michael Franklin for tracing the quotations except for William King, which was provided in Janet Todd’s The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 2. The latter only came out as this book was being revised. 7. Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain 1760–1800 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989), p. 86. 8. Susan Gubar, ‘Feminist Misogyny: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Paradox of “It takes One to Know One”’, Feminist Studies 20:3 (1994), 453–73. 9. See Stuart Brown’s entry in The Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philos- ophers, eds John W. Yolton, John Valdimir Price and John Stephens (Bristol and Sterling, Virginia: Thoemmes Press, 1999), 2, 872–4. 10. Letter of 18 Feb 1784. Abinger archive, Dep.b.210/9. 11. William Robinson, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Stoke Newington in the County of Middlesex, Containing an Account of the Prebendal Manor, the Church, Charities, Schools, Meeting Houses etc (London, 1842). 12. Abinger archive, Dep.c.604/1. 13. John Gasgoigne, ‘Anglican Latitudinarianism, Rational Dissent and Political Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in Knud Haakonsen (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 219–240, p. 224. 14. Gasgoigne, ‘Latitudinarians, Rational Dissent and Radicalism’, p. 231. 15. Barbara Taylor argues for the religious context of Wollstoncraft’s feminism in ‘The Religious Foundations of Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminism’, in Claudia L. Johnson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 99–118. Her impressive monograph on the subject, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination 212 Notes 213 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) came out as this book was at the revision stage. Chapter 3 is essential reading on MW’s personal faith. 16. I am indebted for my summary of Price’s theology to D.O. Thomas, The Honest Mind: The Thought and Work of Richard Price (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), chs 1–5. 17. Thomas, The Honest Mind, p. 201. 18. See Cheryl Turner, Living By The Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 36–9. 19. Thoughts on Education, Tending Chiefly to Recommend the Attention of the Public, some Particulars Relating to That Subject, which are not Generally Considered with the Regard their Importance Deserves (Boston, 1749), p. 15. 20. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse (eds), The Ideology of Conduct: Essays in Literature and the History of Sexuality (New York and London: Methuen, 1987), p. 4. 21. Gary Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), p. 31. 22. Hannah More, Essay on Various Subjects, Principally Designed for Young Ladies, 2nd edn (London: Wilkie, 1778), p. 3. All quotations are taken from this edition and henceforth cited in parenthesis. 23. See John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London: Harper Collins, 1997), p. 78. 24. Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 49. 25. Quoted in Claire Tomalin, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1974), p. 75. 26. Katherine Sobba Green uses the term in connection with Mary: A Fiction in The Courtship Novel, 1740–1820: A Feminized Genre (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1991), p. 96. 27. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination, p. 193; see also: Jacqueline Pearson, Women’s Reading in Britain 1750–1835: A Dangerous Recreation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 28. Taylor, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination, pp. 108–10. She comments that a strong Platonist element was discernible in Unitarian thought, especially in Price’s moral philosophy and the writings of Anna Barbauld. 29. Taylor, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination, p. 205. 30. English Review, 16 (1790), 465. See also Monthly Review, NS 2 (1790), 352–3. 2 ‘When the voices of children are heard on the green’: Mary Wollstonecraft the Author-Educator 1. Linda A. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 269. 2. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, eds John W. and Jean S. Yolton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 195–6. 3. The Works of the Rev. Isaac Watts, 7 vols (Leeds: Edward Baines, n.d.), VI: 359–60. 214 Notes 4. Mary V. Jackson, Engines of Instruction, Mischief and Mag!c: Children’s Literature in England from Its Beginnings to 1839 (Aldershot, Hants and Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 104. 5. Harvey J. Graff, The Labyrinths of Literacy: Reflections on Literacy Past and Present (London, New York and Philadelphia: The Falmer Press, 1987), p. 34. 6. Bette P. Goldstone, Lessons To Be Learned: A Study of Eighteenth-Century English Didactic Children’s Literature (New York, Berne and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984), p. 43. 7. Mitzi Myers. ‘Impeccable Governesses, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children’s Books’, in Children’s Literature, eds Margaret Higonnet and Barbara Rosen (New Haven and London: Yale University, Press, 1986), 31–59. 8. Gary Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Woll- stonecraft (Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), p. 58. See also: Isaac Kramnick, ‘Children’s Literature and Bourgeois Ideology’, in Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth- Century England and America (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 99–132; and M.O. Grenby, ‘Politicizing the Nursery: British Children’s Literature and the French Revolution’, The Lion and the Unicorn, 27:1 (2003), 1–26. 9. Quoted by Grenby, ‘Politicizing the Nursery’, p. 1. Grenby also notes the Privy Council’s investigation of Godwin’s Juvenile Library, which an informer said was propagating ‘the principles of democracy and Theophilanthropy’, p. 2. His argument that 1790s children’s literature was not political excludes the religious dimension of ideology. 10. Mrs Sarah Trimmer, A Comment on Dr. Watts’ Divine Songs to Children with Questions Designed to Illustrate the Doctrines and Precepts to Which They Refer; and Induce a Proper Application of them as Intruments of Early Piety (London, 1789), p. iv. 11. G.E. Bentley, Jr, ‘William Blake in France: The First Foreign Engravings after Blake’s Designs’, Australian Journal of French Studies 26 (1989), 125–47. I have obtained the information on the French edition from Bentley. 12. Reprinted in Essays in Honour of William Gallacher, eds P.M. Kemp-Ashraf and Dr J. Mitchell (Humboldt: Universität zu Berlin, 1966), pp. 339–340. 13. See Malcom Chase, ‘The People’s Farm’: English Radical Agrarianism 1775–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 21–2. 14. Susan Khin Zaw, ‘The Reasonable heart: Mary Wollstonecraft’s view of the relation between reason and feeling in morality, moral psychology, and moral development’, Hypatia, 13:1 (Winter 1998), 78–117, 96. 15. Compare Wollstonecraft’s emphasis on social conscience with the Cavinist concentration on personal salvation exhibited by Jane Taylor, author with her sister Ann of the phenomenally successful Original Poems for Infant Minds (1805), who wrote to a friend, ‘I have sometimes thought that more might be done than is commonly attempted in education, to familiarize the idea of death to the minds of children, by representing it as the grand event for which they are born’. See Memoirs, Correspondence and Poetical Remains of Jane Taylor, 3 vols (Boston and Philadelphia: Perkins, 1835), I: 209. 16. Alan Richardson comments that Wollstonecraft acknowledges ‘the inherently compromised nature of the fictionalized object lesson in the book’s preface, Notes 215 noting the vast superiority of proper habits “imperceptibly fixed” by daily experience’, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft on Education’, in The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Claudia L. Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 24–41, p. 29. 17. Saba Bahar, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Social and Aesthetic Philosophy: ‘An Eve to Please Me’ (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 138–9. 18. On Blake’s illustrations as ironic commentary on the stories, see, Dennis Welch, ‘Blake’s Response to Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories’, Blake: An Illus- trated Quarterly, 13 (1979), 4–15; Nelson Hilton, ‘An Original Story’, in Nelson Hilton et al. (eds), Unnam’d Forms: Blake and Textuality (Berkely: University of California Press, 1986); Jeffrey Parker, ‘Text and Iconography in the Commercial Designs of William Blake’, PhD thesis (University of South Carolina, July 1991). Orm Mitchell seems to me to exaggerate the irony in ‘Blake’s Subversive Illustrations to Wollstonecraft’s Stories’, Mosaic, 17:4 (Autumn, 1984), 17–34. 19. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Rousseau Or Wollstonecraft?
    Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online) Vol.7, No.6, 2016 Who Won the Debate in Women Education? Rousseau or Wollstonecraft? Clifford Owusu-Gyamfi Faculty of Theology, University of Geneva, Chemin du Riolet 8, 1012-Lausanne, Switzerland Abstract Curriculum framework in the education of children became debatable during the enlightenment. Jean-Jacque Rousseau's treatise, Emile , outlined an educational curriculum based on natural rights. Rousseau thought education should be based on espousing and exploring the natural abilities of a person. Therefore, since women have a natural responsibility of care giving, their education should be given in line with helping them to enhance these natural caring abilities. Wollstonecraft, an enlightened philosopher, took on a literary protest against Rousseau's sexual politics in her treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Women . This paper will show why Wollstonecraft’s idea is worth considering, in that it points the way past and out of a world of discrimination to create nondiscriminatory educational concept for future generation. Since discriminatory educational ideologies perpetrates in contemporary societies in diverse fashions, this paper challenges such cultures to rethinking the imperativeness of women education. Keywords: Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Women education, Sexist politics Acknowledgement: My deepest appreciation to Abigail Gyasi of Temple University for the encouragement to write about this subject. 1. Introduction Emile is a treatise written by the French enlightened author Jean-Jacque Rousseau. In this popular work, Rousseau seeks to put across the point that education should be based on espousing and exploring the natural abilities of a person (Rousseau & Allan, 1979: 37).
    [Show full text]
  • Psychology: an International 11
    WOMEN'S STUDIES LIBRARIAN The University ofWisconsin System EMINIST ERIODICALS A CURRENT LISTING OF CONTENTS VOLUME 13, NUMBER 3 FALL 1993 Published by Phyllis Holman Weisbard Women's Studies Librarian University of Wisconsin System 430 Memorial Library / 728 State Street Madison, Wisconsin 53706 (608) 263-5754 EMINIST ERIODICALS A CURRENT LISTING OF CONTENTS Volume 13, Number 3 Fall 1993 Periodical literature is the cutting edge of women's scholarship, feminist theory, and much ofwomen'sculture. Feminist Periodicals: A Current Listing of Contents is published by the Office of the University of Wisconsin System Women's Studies Librarian on a quarterly basis with the intent of increasing pUblic awareness of feminist periodicals. It is our hope that Feminist Periodicals will serve several purposes: to keep the reader abreast of current topics in feminist literature; to increase readers' familiarity with a wide spectrum of feminist periodicals; and to provide the requisite bibliographic information should a reader wish to subscribe to ajournal or to obtain a particular article at her library or through interlibrary lOan. (Users will need to be aware of the limitations of the new copyright law with regard to photocopying of copyrighted materials.) Tabie of contents pages from current issues of majorfeminist journals are reproduced in each issue ofFeminist Periodicals, preceded by a comprehensive annotated listing of all journals we have selected. As pUblication schedules vary enormously, not every periodical will have table of contents pages reproduced in each issue of IT. The annotated listing provides the following information on each journal: 1. Year of first publication. 2. Frequency of pUblication.
    [Show full text]
  • Our Debt to Mary Wollstonecraft, Moral and Intellectual Pioneer for Women
    Our Debt to Mary Wollstonecraft, Moral and Intellectual Pioneer for Women By Susan Roberts I teach a course entitled Leadership in Writing at the United States Coast Guard Academy that includes both male and female Officer Candidates. The women in my class are strong and unafraid to accept challenges. They perform jobs often seen as men’s work, live by the Coast Guard’s Core Values of Honor, Respect and Devotion to Duty, and balance their time between being on active duty and being wife, mother, or both. In our classes, we focus on examples of leadership in the military and civilian world. To mark Women’s History Month in March, I asked each Officer Candidate (OC) to select a female who exemplifies leadership and to present a speech about her. Their choices included Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sarah Palin, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Boudicca, Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, Sally Ride, Amelia Earhart, Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Mother Teresa, and Marie Curie. I responded by noting, “I see no one has claimed Mary Wollstonecraft.” A few moments of silence were followed by a series of questions: “Who is she?” “Is she in politics?” “Is she a writer?” “Why did you expect us to know her name?” and “Did she have anything to do with the Coast Guard?” I responded, “She was an eighteenth century writer. Women today owe her a debt of gratitude for we are beneficiaries of her ideas, which were quite revolutionary for her times. She advocated moral and intellectual education for women in a world where a woman’s voice rarely counted.” One of the handful of female OCs in class was curious enough to claim Wollstonecraft as the figure for her leadership speech, and all of the students were introduced to the life of this woman, the social changes she called for over two hundred years ago, and the impact of her work on opportunities for women then and now.
    [Show full text]
  • About the Authors
    About the Authors Moira Ferguson was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and took a B.A. at the University of London and a Ph.D. at the University of Washing- ton. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and former chairwoman of women's studies. She has been a fellow of the Henry E. Huntington Library and has received an American Council of Learned Societies Award and an American Association of University Women Founders Fellowship. Her scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in such journals as Philological Quarterly, Minnesota Review, Signs, English Language Notes, Romantic Movement, Wordsworth Circle, Victorian Studies^ and Women's Studies International Forum. She is the compiler and editor of First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578-1799 (1983). She is currently preparing a study of women's protest writings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Janet Todd, fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, was born in Llandrindod-Wells, Wales. She took a B.A. at the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. at the University of Florida. From 1964 to 1967 she taught in Ghana, mainly at the University of Cape Coast, and from 1972 to 1974 at the University of Puerto Rico. Since then, until 1983, she was professor of English at Rutgers University. She has been the recipient of NEH and ACLS awards and of a Guggen- heim Fellowship. Her books include In Adam's Garden: A Study of John Clare's Pre-Asylum Poetry (1973), A Wollstonecraft Anthology (1977), Women's Friendship in Literature (1980), and, with M.
    [Show full text]
  • II. Hannah More: Concise Biography
    DISSERTATION Titel der Dissertation HANNAH MORE: MORALIZING THE BRITISH NATION Verfasserin Mag. phil. Helga-Maria Kopecky angestrebter akademischer Grad Doktorin der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) Wien, 2014 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt: A 092 343 Dissertationsgebiet lt. Studienblatt: Anglistik und Amerikanistik Betreut von: o. Univ. Prof. Dr. Margarete Rubik 2 For Gerald ! 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my great appreciation to those who assisted me in various ways in this project: to my first supervisor, o. Professor Dr. Margarete Rubik, for guiding me patiently and with never ending encouragement and friendliness through a difficult matter with her expertise; to my second supervisor, ao. Professor Dr. Franz Wöhrer, for his valuable feedback; to the English and American Studies Library as well as the Inter-loan Department of the Library of the University of Vienna; the National Library of Australia; and last, but certainly not least, to my family. It was their much appreciated willingness to accept an absent wife, mother and grandmother over a long period, which ultimately made this work at all possible. Thank you so much! 4 Of all the principles that can operate upon the human mind, the most powerful is – Religion. John Bowles 5 Table of Contents page I. Introduction General remarks ……………………………………………………. 9 Research materials ………………………………………………... 12 Aims of this thesis ………………………………………………… 19 Arrangement of individual chapters ...…………………………... 22 II. Hannah More: Concise Biography Early Years in Bristol ……………………………………………….. 24 The London Experience and the Bluestockings ………………... 26 Return to Bristol and New Humanitarian Interests ................... 32 The Abolitionist .......................................................................... 34 Reforming the Higher Ranks ..................................................... 36 The Tribute to Patriotism ........................................................... 40 Teaching the Poor: Schools for the Mendips ............................
    [Show full text]
  • Enlightenment and Dissent No.29 Sept
    ENLIGHTENMENT AND DISSENT No.29 CONTENTS Articles 1 Lesser British Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin Writers during the French Revolution H T Dickinson 42 Concepts of modesty and humility: the eighteenth-century British discourses William Stafford 79 The Invention of Female Biography Gina Luria Walker Reviews 137 Scott Mandelbrote and Michael Ledger-Lomas eds., Dissent and the Bible in Britain, c. 1650-1950 David Bebbington 140 W A Speck, A Political Biography of Thomas Paine H T Dickinson 143 H B Nisbet, Gottfried Ephraim Lessing: His Life, Works & Thought J C Lees 147 Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt, Paul Gibbard and Karen Green eds., Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women Emma Macleod 150 Jon Parkin and Timothy Stanton eds., Natural Law and Toleration in the Early Enlightenment Alan P F Sell 155 Alan P F Sell, The Theological Education of the Ministry: Soundings in the British Reformed and Dissenting Traditions Leonard Smith 158 David Sekers, A Lady of Cotton. Hannah Greg, Mistress of Quarry Bank Mill Ruth Watts Short Notice 161 William Godwin. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice ed. with intro. Mark Philp Martin Fitzpatrick Documents 163 The Diary of Hannah Lightbody: errata and addenda David Sekers Lesser British Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin Writers during the French Revolution H T Dickinson In the late eighteenth century Britain possessed the freest, most wide-ranging and best circulating press in Europe. 1 A high proportion of the products of the press were concerned with domestic and foreign politics and with wars which directly involved Britain and affected her economy. Not surprisingly therefore the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary War, impacting as they did on British domestic politics, had a huge influence on what the British press produced in the years between 1789 and 1802.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's Emancipation Through Education: the Radical Agenda of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 359 085 SO 022 348 AUTHOR Roberts, Leonard H.; Pollman, Mary Jo TITLE Women's Emancipation through Education: The Radical Agenda of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). PUB DATE [92] NOTE 43p. PUB TYPE Information Analyses (070) Reports Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Educational Change; *Educational History; Educational Opportunities; Educational Philosophy; Educational Theories; Elementary Secondary Education; *Equal Education; Females; *Feminism; Sex Bias; Sex Discrimination; *Womens Education IDENTIFIERS *Wollstonecraft (Mary) ABSTRACT Two hundred years ago, Mary Wollstonecraft, the English women's rights pioneer, published her immortal work: "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." In it she placed much ofthe blame for women's inferior political, intellectual, and socialstatus on "faulty education." In "Vindication," she offered a number of recommendations aimed at enhancing the quality of educationfor women. These included: boys and girls schooled together and sharinga curriculum rich in experiential learning, particularly in scientific studies. She advocated physical exercise and playas well as health education specifically aimed at women's needs. These andother education proposals marked her asan important progenitor of many modern and widely accepted educational innovations. Contains20 references. (Author) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best thatcan be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************
    [Show full text]
  • Representations of America in the English Jacobin Novel
    SPECULATIONS fiNANCIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL NANCY E. ] OHNSON "Seated on her Bags of Dollars": Representations of America in the English Jacobin Novel N THE 17905, THE ENGLISH jacobin novel engaged in a sus­ I tained narrative critique of comracrarianism. While it supported the foundational premises of comractarianism-for example, the concept of inalienable rights for the individual-it also exposed the restrictive requirements and specifications that proponents of the social contract were imposing on political agency. In the fiction of Roben Bage, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Charlotte Smith, among others, it becomes evident that libcrry is a function of properry.1 To establish political authority, one has to be able to claim the right of properry, which begins with self-governance and culminates in proprietorship within society2 Financial dependence means dis­ qualification, and it precludes enfranchisement or claims to politi­ cal authority in any form, thereby excluding large segments of the populations such as women. Consequently, the English jacobin ' For an extended discussion of liberty as a function of property in early contractarian thought, see C.B. Macpherson, Ibe Political 7beory of Possesst~>e IndividualiSm (London: Oxford UP, 1962). 2 In Two TreatiSes on Gwernmem, Locke establishes ownership of the self as the IU~l fundam~nlal funH uf prupric:Lun,!Jip an<J ~~~~ t:::~~lllii.tl p~tUIMJI lo JX>liltc..iJI authority. "Though the Eanh, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Man, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself.· See Locke, Two TreatiSes of Go,•emment, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • Enlightenment Thinkers and Democratic Government
    1.3 Enlightenment Thinkers and Democratic Government Standard 1.3: Enlightenment Thinkers and Democratic Government Explain the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on the American Revolution and the framework of American government. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T1.3] FOCUS QUESTION: How did the Enlightenment Contribute to the Growth of Democratic Principles of Government? Building Democracy for All 1 "British Museum Room 1 Enlightenment" by Mendhak is licensed under CC-BY-SA-2.0 The Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) is the term used to define the outpouring of philosophical, scientific, and political knowledge in Europe at the beginning of the 18th century. European civilization had already experienced the Renaissance (1300-1600) and the Scientific Revolution (1550-1700). The Enlightenment further transformed intellectual and political life based on the application of science to dramatically alter traditional beliefs and practices. Explore our resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page to learn more about the Main Ideas of Enlightenment Thinkers. Enlightenment thinkers believed that rational reasoning could apply to all forms of human activity. Their writing can be "broadly understood to stand for the claim that all individuals have the right to Building Democracy for All 2 share their own ends for themselves rather than let others do it for them" (Pagden, 2013, p. x). Politically, they asked what was the proper relationship of the citizen to the monarch or the state. They held that society existed as a contract between individuals and some larger political entity. They advanced the idea of freedom and equality before the law. Enlightenment ideas about how governments should be organized and function influenced both the American and French Revolutions.
    [Show full text]
  • Frankenstein, Matilda, and the Legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft
    2 PAMELA CLEMIT Frankenstein, Matilda, and the legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft [My mother’s] greatness of soul & my father high talents have perpetually reminded me that I ought to degenerate as little as I could from those from whom I derived my being . my chief merit must always be derived, first from the glory these wonderful beings have shed [?around] me, & then for the enthusiasm I have for excellence & the ardent admiration I feel for those who sacrifice themselves for the public good. (L ii 4) In this letter of September 1827 to Frances Wright, the Scottish-born author and social reformer, Mary Shelley reveals just how much she felt her life and thought to be shaped by the social and political ideals of her parents, William Godwin, the leading radical philosopher of the 1790s, and his wife, the proto-feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The multiple liter- ary, political, and philosophical influences of Godwin and Wollstonecraft may be traced in all six of Mary Shelley’s full-length novels, as well as in her tales, biographies, essays, and other shorter writings. Yet while she con- sistently wrote within the framework established by her parents’ concerns, she was no mere imitator of their works. Writing with an awareness of how French revolutionary politics had unfolded through the Napoleonic era, Mary Shelley extends and reformulates the many-sided legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft in extreme, imaginatively arresting ways. Those legacies received their most searching reappraisal in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Mary Shelley’s remarkable first novel, and were re- examined a year later in Matilda, a novella telling the story of incestuous love between father and daughter, which, though it remained unpublished until 1959, has now become one of her best-known works.
    [Show full text]
  • Ignorance and Marital Bliss: Women's Education in the English Novel, 1796-1895 Mary Tobin
    Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2006 Ignorance and Marital Bliss: Women's Education in the English Novel, 1796-1895 Mary Tobin Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Tobin, M. (2006). Ignorance and Marital Bliss: Women's Education in the English Novel, 1796-1895 (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1287 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ignorance and Marital Bliss: Women’s Education in the English Novel, 1796-1895 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Department of English McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Mary Ann Tobin November 16, 2006 Copyright © 2006 Mary Ann Tobin Preface The germ of this study lies in my master’s thesis, “Naive Altruist to Jaded Cosmopolitan: Class-Consciousness in David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend,” with which I concluded my studies at Indiana State University. In it, I traced the evolution of Dickens’s ideal gentle Christian man, arguing that Dickens wanted his audience to reject a human valuation system based on birth and wealth and to set the standard for one’s social value upon the strength of one’s moral character. During my doctoral studies, I grew more interested in Dickens’s women characters and became intrigued by his contributions to what would become known as the Woman Question, and, more importantly, by what Dickens thought about women’s proper social functions and roles.
    [Show full text]
  • Authorship of the Pentateuch
    M. Bajić: Authorship of the Pentateuch Authorship of the Pentateuch Monika Bajić Biblijski institut, Zagreb [email protected] UDK:27-242 Professional paper Received: April, 2016 Accepted: October, 2016 Summary This piece is a concise summary of the historical and contemporary develo- pment of Pentateuch studies in Old Testament Theology. This article aims to provide information on the possible confirmation of Mosaic authorship. The purpose is to examine how the Documentary Hypothesis, Fragment and Su- pplemental Hypotheses, Form and Traditio-Historical Criticism, Canonical and Literary Criticism have helped to reveal or identify the identity of the author of the Torah. To better understand the mentioned hypotheses, this article presents a brief description of the J, E, D, and P sources. Key words: Pentateuch, authorship, Mosaic authorship, Torah, Documen- tary Hypothesis, Fragment and Supplemental Hypothesis, Form and Tradi- tio-Historical Criticism, Canonical and Literary Criticism. In the most literal sense, the Pentateuch 1 (or Torah) is an anonymous work, but traditional views support the belief of Mosaic authorship (Carpenter 1986, 751- 52). Yet, with the advent of humanism and the Renaissance, the sense of intellec- tual freedom and upswing in research have led to the fact that many have begun to read the Bible critically, trying to challenge its text as well as the traditions and beliefs that are formed from it (Alexander 2003, 61-63). One of the most commonly attacked beliefs is Moses’ authorship of the Torah. There has been an 1 Taken from the Greek translation LXX. Pentateuch is derived from the Greek word pentateu- chos, which means a five-book work, known as the Books of Moses (Carpenter 1986).
    [Show full text]