Centro De Estudios De Postgrado

UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN Centro de Estudios de Postgrado

Master’s Dissertation/ Trabajo Fin de Máster

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: THE OTHER FACE OF THE ENLIGHTENED PERIOD

Student: Leiva Aguilera, Ana María Tutor: Dr. María de la Cinta Zunino Garrido Dpt.: English Philology

Estudios de Centro Postgrado de

July, 2016

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... 1

RESUMEN ...... 1

KEY WORDS...... 2

PALABRAS CLAVE ...... 2

1.-GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCH ...... 2

2.- JUSTIFICATION ...... 3

3.- THEORETICAL FOUNDATION ...... 4

4.- ANTECEDENTS ...... 6

5.-MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, THE OTHER FACE OF THE ENLIGHTENED PERIOD ...... 8

5.1.-Introduction to the author ...... 8

5.2.- A Vindication of the Rights of Men: A rational revision of tradition ...... 10

5.3.- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: A critique to artificiality ...... 15

5.4.-Critique to prejudices ...... 19

5.5.-Reason and virtue as processes of emancipation in women ...... 22

5.6.-Education as a tool of amendment ...... 30

5.7.-Woman as a sexual object ...... 35

6.-NEOFEMINISM AS AN ENLIGHTENED HERITAGE ...... 43

7.-CONCLUSION ...... 45

REFERENCES ...... 47

ANNEX I: CONCEPTUAL MAPS ...... 51

ANNEX II: FROM `VINDICATIONS´ TO HER CONFLICTIVE ADMIRATION AND INDIGNATION TOWARDS ROUSSEAU ...... 67

ABSTRACT

In this dissertation we would like to show that feminism had some of its roots in the Enlightened Period, and that the so called ‘coherent Enlightenment’ (the one which vindicates for the rights of woman) played a decisive role in the emergence of the feminist ideas which would eventually thrive at the dawn of the twentieth century. Even though in the times of the French Revolution the call for freedom and equality did not translate into a full recognition of the rights of women, it did propitiate that authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft established the basis for future feminist movements, which would lead to a series of emancipation processes. Hence, we consider it suitable in this essay to examine what could be deemed an Enlightened protofeminism as a critical-feminist line of thought. Moreover, we will unveil this other side of the Enlightenment (empowered basically by women) which did also exist. It will be our purpose to bring to light those voices that the Enlightened period rejected to illuminate. That is the reason why we aim to analyse works such as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), which, despite the distance in time, may still be regarded as a key referent in the universalization of education conceived as the only possible basis for the attainment of equality of rights and freedoms in a genuine global world.

RESUMEN

En esta investigación queremos mostrar que el feminismo tiene su nacimiento en la Ilustración y que la que podríamos denominar “Ilustración coherente” (la que reivindica los derechos de la mujer) jugó un papel determinante en el surgimiento de las ideas feministas que finalmente florecerían a principios del siglo XX, ya que, aunque en tiempos de la Revolución Francesa esto no se tradujera en un reconocimiento de los derechos de las mujeres, sí que propició que autoras como Mary Wollstonecraft sentaran las bases para que, más adelante, los movimientos feministas iniciaran los procesos de emancipación. De ahí que consideremos adecuado hablar de un protofeminismo ilustrado como un pensamiento crítico- feminista de esta otra Ilustración que también existió. Queremos sacar a la luz aquellas voces que la Ilustración no quiso iluminar. Nos planteamos analizar obras como A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) de Wollstonecraft, que, a pesar de la distancia temporal, pueden seguir siendo referente en la universalización de la educación, como el único camino en la consecución de igualdad de derechos y libertades en un mundo plenamente global.

KEY WORDS

Mary Wollstonecraft, feminism, Enlightenment, vindications, patriarchy, sex, gender, public vs private, reason, equality, freedom, prejudices, subjection, education, power relationships, culture, ideology, suffragist movement, Poullain de la Barre, Olympe de Gouges, Rousseau, J.S. Mill, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millet.

PALABRAS CLAVE

Mary Wollstonecraft, feminismo, Ilustración, vindicaciones, patriarcado, sexo, género, público/privado, razón, igualdad, libertad, prejuicios, sumisión, educación, relaciones de poder, cultura, ideología, sufragismo, Poullain de la Barre, Olympe de Gouges, Rousseau, J. S. Mill, Simone de Beavoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millet,

1.-GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCH

“Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16)

I have chosen the figure of Mary Wollstonecraft as a referent, inasmuch as she is considered the first European author who publishes a systemized essay on the relegated situation of women and explicitly proposes the recognition of their rights. Her personal and professional life clearly reflects women’s difficulties in the hostile world they live in, as well as her intention to modify both the legislation of the time and a hard daily life reality.

What had been considered as innate qualities of women (household and children care, giving birth) until then, turned out to be the effect of a kind of education they (women) were subjected to. This notion is what we find reflected in Wollstonecraft, who departs from Nativist ideas based on the notion that women were born to devote themselves to motherhood, husband’s care and children’s bearing. Wollstonecraft’s criticism anticipates the ideology defended by Simone de Beauvoir1: woman is not born, but rather becomes, she is made out of the patriarchal education she is exposed to and, subsequently, determined by a lack of expectations in life.

These ideas conform what we could term a kind of proto-feminism, whose goals comprise retaking, assuming and overcoming the notions developed during the Enlightened period

1 Le Deuxième Sexe (1949) where, just like Wollstonecraft, she will affirm that woman has been understood as a cultural product, socially constructed under the domains of patriarchy. 2

which fostered freedom, equality and fraternity, and which served as foundations for the 18th century revolutionary vindications. Notwithstanding, and as is widely known, such vindications excluded the feminine collective. That is why we are interested in Wollstonecraft’s works, because she understands that it is possible to foster awareness on the need to acquire gender equality by means of including women within the civic sphere. Our aim will consist on pointing out the contradictions of the Enlightened thought, which failed to be coherent with its own egalitarian pronouncements, especially with those concerning the principles of equality, fraternity and freedom for all human beings, with the exception of women.

The division between the public and the private spheres, as well as the legitimization of the exclusion of woman, led to the necessity of an Enlightened revelry which will be the object of our study: the analysis of the ambiguity in Wollstonecraft’s works, by relying on some sections such as her rational revision of tradition in A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) 2, her critique to artificiality or prejudices, at the same time she bases herself on education, reason and virtue as processes to end up with the idea of woman as a mere sexual and domestic object, as it is shown in 3A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).

The methodology we are going to follow consists in making a rereading of the Enlightenment from a feminist point of view. We will help ourselves from reason as a critical weapon against the subjection of women. We will polemicize on female education mainly reading Wollstonecraft’s works and analysing their relation to Rousseau’s ideas. We will tackle some of the antecedents of liberal feminism with the analysis of some of the ideas exposed in Rights of Woman (1792) by Wollstonecraft, who, as it is the case of other authors such as Condorcet, Olympe de Gouges, J.S. Mill or Betty Friedan, claimed for the equality of women’s rights.

2.- JUSTIFICATION

The purpose of this research is aimed at revealing, with the focus on some texts by Mary Wollstonecraft, the definition of woman given by patriarchy and its connection with the duty to preserve their virtue. Moreover, we will compare women’s patriarchal roles with those of men. In this line, Amelia Valcárcel (2007) says that: “La Edad Global nos exige repensar el humanismo. Primero como raíz de la Ilustración; después como matriz del universalismo, por último en su presentación feminista” (p.7). And that is precisely what we are going to pose in

2 Hereinafter it will appear as Rights of Men 3 Hereinafter it will appear as Rights of Woman 3

here: to rethink both about the Enlightened Period and its subsequent influence in the coining of the notion of ‘gender’.

My purpose in reproducing and analysing here some texts of proto-feminist Enlightened literature is not aimed at adding something new to the historical reconstruction of events such as the French or American revolutions. There is already a great deal of literature about that. In contrast, my aim is focused on the analysis of the Enlightened feminist vindications taking as inspiration the texts of its authors and its primary sources. It is in this line where I would like to place Mary Wollstonecraft. This way, we get to know a hidden side of the Enlightenment that advocates for gender equality, which in time would see the light in a more explicit way with the arrival of the first 20th century feminist movements (Amorós, C. 1977).

According to Amelia Valcarcel (2007): “La humanidad necesita una historia crítica” (pp: 97- 112). That fight is the one we propose ourselves to analyse by focusing on the concrete example of Wollstonecraft and interrogating, as if applying the Socratic maieutics, the different texts about an Enlightened rebelliousness which has lasted until today.

3.- THEORETICAL FOUNDATION

To begin with, it is necessary to reinforce even more the idea of why it is suitable to talk about the notion of ‘Enlightened feminism’ for this research. In this sense, I textually quote a fragment by Amelia Valcárcel taken from her book Feminismo en el mundo global (2008) as a reliable support: “El feminismo viene de la Ilustración […] es cuando toma su primer gran impulso […] [y cuando] presenta el primer feminismo como una de las partes polémicas del programa ilustrado.” (p.57).

Valcárcel says that feminism had really begun during the Enlightenment but it has never been recognized that way, since feminism in Wollstonecraft’s days functioned on a theoretical basis, looking for the means to create that world in which women had the same rights to those of men. In this sense, we should agree with Valcárcel on the idea that “el feminismo es un hijo no querido de la Ilustración” (p. 25), since, as we show in this research, the ideas of freedom and equality were only attributed to one of the two sexes, as women kept relegated to the domestic scope and to a sexual, and not social, kind of contract. Even when the Enlightenment could have been the real outcome of feminism, as we know this term nowadays, it failed to develop feminism in a practical way because of the large amount of oppressions and delays it received by the defenders of patriarchy. But, at the end of the day, 4

pro-feminism was trying to stop a process which would end up by being irreversible later in time. Thus, we could assert that 19th century feminism was the actual radicalization of the Enlightenment. In other words, to Valcárcel feminism is the direct heir of the Enlightened concepts. It is an Enlightened movement in itself even though it reached its practical realization in the suffragist movements of the 19th century. Feminism is one of the footprints of the Enlightenment. The vindication of the equality among the sexes actually begins at that moment (pp: 53-54).

Therefore, when we remark that feminism has its birth in the Enlightenment and we label it (metaphorically, indeed) as its ‘rejected son’, what we really mean is that, as a result of the Enlightened polemics because of the differences among the sexes, a new kind of social discourse is born. And the main aim of this discourse is not going to rely on the comparison among males and females looking at their differences. On the contrary, this new discourse is going to vindicate (as Wollstonecraft did) the privatization of the rights of women in relation to all those universal declarations which were paradoxically composed following Rousseau’s writings. That is the reason why Wollstonecraft’s line of thought is of paramount importance in order to understand the current notion of feminism, understood as the first significant mainstream of Enlightened democracy.

Mary Wollstonecraft recognizes, by following Rousseau, that both Du Contrat Social ou Principles du droit politique (1762) and L’Émile (1762) are the key elements defining how the state and its educative system should be built up towards a new kind of citizenship based on the French Revolution principles. Yet, she rejects to accept the exclusion of women from that new kind of citizenship. Wollstonecraft agrees on the idea that every individual must be free and rightful and should not be guided by a particular interest but by a general one (as Kant would explain through his ‘categorical imperative’ concept later on), and that is why individuals should conclude a contract with the general will, regulated by the State in pursuit of the public good. But Wollstonecraft could just not accept that a half part of humanity, that is, the female sex, was excluded from this longing for reason.

That is why we say, following Amelia Valcárcel, that feminism seemed to be the ‘rejected son’ of the Enlightenment, as it entailed the subversion of a power of organization that few— if any—were willingly to put into practice, since it seemed to be threatening the mainstays of family and involved the redefinition of male and female roles. Men had always represented

culture, ideas, rationality; whereas women were associated to nature, as their destiny consisted in giving birth for the species’ preservation. That was exactly how patriarchal society wished the situation to remain. Feminism, as it put into question sexual submission—an aspect which was pigeonholed within the private sphere—was attacked by the moralists and ignored by governors. Feminism, as stated by Valcárcel (2008) had always wanted to move to the public sphere (in the shape of laws and agreements) but those against equality did their best to delay it (p. 76). Celia Amorós says in the introduction to her book La Ilustración olvidada4 that feminism is a peculiar result of the Enlightenment, like the voice of consciousness of all those emancipatory ideas trying to release women from that role of Cinderella (p. 9).

On the basis of these considerations, we should recognize that, even though the notion of feminism has its origins in the Enlightened period, the moment in which this proto-feminism stops being an intention, a theoretical dream, an imaginary philosophical notion, and turns into something prone to become real, we get the actual consolidation of feminism as such and its progressive strengthening in the days of the liberal thought gave birth to the 19th century suffragist movements. Thus, we can say that the initial phase of the Enlightenment reached its pinnacle and realization with the putting into practice of the suffragist movement, which brought the idea of equality under the scopes of socialism and feminism and asked for the abolition of the hierarchies of the strongest and most powerful ones. It perfectly justifies our focus on Spanish contemporary philosophers such as Rosa Cobo, Amelia Valcárcel, Celia Amorós and Alicia Puleo, who set their classification of feminism (even though it was still a proto-theoretical feminism) in the Enlightenment, in opposition to the theories of American philosophers such as Susan B. Anthony or Lucy Stone, who place the first wave of feminism within the suffragist movement.

4.- ANTECEDENTS

If we delve into the roots of Mary Wollstonecraft’s vindications and thoughts, we will discover that one of the most significant antecedents of feminism was that of going against the abuse of the patriarchal power. This was also the purpose of Christine de Pizan, who, in the 15th century attacks in her works men who slander women by means of their publications. Her book La cite des dames (1405) is a replica of such misogynist publications. Thus, with the controversy over

4 This book by Alicia Puleo also labels the Enlightenment as a powerful root of the feminist line of thought

female education, the seeds of the first steps towards the current line of thought we know as ‘feminism’ were planted.

The notion of the so-called bon sens appears on stage, understood as the judgement and discernment ability recognized to women as a gift of Nature, independently of any knowledge acquired in books. In Pizan, the good sense is not opposed to the inherited positive knowledge. A positive use of this concept will not be carried out until nearly three centuries later by Poullain de la Barre, after having received the decisive influence of ‘Cartesianism’. According to Celia Amorós (1997), in De l’education des dames pour la counduite de l’espirit dans les sciences et dans les mœurs (1674), Poullain attaches the utmost importance to women also having the opportunity of being instructed in equal terms to men. To Poullain: “l’espirit n’a pas de sexe” (p. 88). Poullain establishes a deep connection between freedom and equality. In this respect, equality principle of equality determines that we should only let ourselves be guided by the notion of freedom.

Hence authors such as Olympe de Gouges, who in 1792 wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizen, affirmed in that women are born free and they have the same rights to those of men. But maybe the one who most influenced Wollstonecraft’s line of thought was her friend and academic tutor Richard Price5, a dissident and liberal academic who remained to the so called circle of the friendships she used to attend to. This dissenting circle had a prominent impact on her line of thought. She praised for the necessity of social reforms in tune with what Price conveyed in his speech dedicated to the commemoration of the French Revolution. Of course, this opinion did not go unanimous in England since Price was criticized by Edmund Burke, who described him as ‘too progressive’ in his works. This leads to Wollstonecraft to begin a debate with Burke in her Rights of Woman. Another precedent in the conceptions of society’s education and organization was John Locke, whom Wollstonecraft quotes in Rights of Woman. In the Enlightenment Locke was in the main acknowledged for his defence of individual rights and tolerance, which—somehow—supposed a clear antecedent to the contemporary democratic thought.

I will leave for the end of this section a character who has not had all the recognition he deserves as it was the case of de Condorcet Marquis, who, just like Wollstonecraft herself, considers that

5 Heir of the Glorious Revolution which emerged in 1688 in England as a rejection to Charles II’s Absolutism 7

the reasons to differentiate the two sexes did not rely on nature but on education and promotes the idea of equality in terms of coeducation.

5.-MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, THE OTHER FACE OF THE ENLIGHTNED PERIOD

5.1.-Introduction to the author

The life of Wollstonecraft coincides with the French Revolution and the British Industrial Revolution, the double leaf which definitely opened the door to a wider line of thought in the Western world. Turmoil movements in France or the outburst of the Bastille in 1789 rekindled the British reform movement which had been on the edge of death for a whole decade.

Wollstonecraft is included within the Enlightened rational thought. Her line of thought comes from a double conviction: on the one hand, from the fact that every human being independently of his/her sex can be able to reach reason and, on the other hand, from the belief in equality. But Wollstonecraft will put the Enlightenment Period against the rock and a hard place when she asked herself where those natural rights addressed to women were. Yet, such natural rights kept on being male exclusive when put into practice.

Wollstonecraft faced the stereotypes of her days defining women’s roles and asked for the natural rights of women, which supposed to be paramount during the Enlightened Period. She defends female independence and claims for the universal recognition of women as independent beings by going against Rousseau’s theories, which professed to support the presumed female inferiority and relied on traditions. She testifies her rejection against such biases and the attempt at disclaiming women the gift of reason they should share with men in equal measure.

Wollstonecraft establishes a critic dialogue with the Enlightened Period and poses with wonderful bravery the disappointment which, from the point of view of the female situation, brought female exclusion on account of their prolongation to be subjected to men.

The main objectives of our author will be the vindication of the inclusion of the half part of the human gender (women) in the universal principles of the Enlightenment, as well as the application of the principle of equality, education and emancipation of every prejudice. Wollstonecraft’s main thesis will be that of highlighting the problem of internalisation on the

part of women in relation to what constituted the source of any serfdom: they were not allowed neither to consider themselves nor wish to be something else than a male-oriented object of desire.

Mary Wollstonecraft guides her reflections towards natural subordination and its subsequent female political exclusion. Her questions are related to female nature, whether women’s qualities are as equally apt as those of men and whether they are suitable for the intellectual work. She makes us reflect upon every right the other half of the human race (woman) is deprived of. The fact of women owning a soul was even put into question and that is the reason why society did not worry about instructing them, since their only virtue was thought of relying on their body. Their physical weakness was another proof of their general weakness.

Over the thirteen chapters that make up Rights of Woman, Rousseau’s main philosophical rationales are analysed among many other aspects. A great deal of the conceptual studding of the works is definitely based on the treatises on education. L’Émile, among them, acquired a higher profile in those days. The woman who followed Rousseau’s ideals would lose all her power over herself and her destiny. She would lose the power she had won paradoxically while reading the other Rousseau: the one who talked about the ability of thinking following one’s principles and never being conditioned by others.

But Rights of Woman is just much more than a critique to Rousseau and others who have ever written on female submission. Her critique is addressed to men because of their historical appropriation of reason. Her objections go against the writers of the time, who built a model of woman who contradicted nature, by presenting her as an artificial being, weak and inferior to men.

Wollstonecraft rejects the education model established for women, by means of which sexist stereotypes were strengthened. She proposes a women’s disposition-strengthening-oriented education by allowing them to develop their intellect, exercising their own reason as well as acceding to the different social slots and to develop their own life project.

Our philosopher rejected the notions of female education, based on appearances and superficiality. Hence, she addressed her Vindication to Talleyrand and to all those philosophers and politicians (such as Rousseau and Gregory) who considered ignorance as a part of female charms and virtues. 9

Her reflections on the inability to conceive women as political subjects, due to the classical tradition, and on the way they were relegated to the domestic sphere were progressively building her proto-feminist conception. It consisted on the idea that women kept on being the perennial absent being within the political discourse.

To Mary Wollstonecraft women had been the object of a differential analysis which has related women to ‘nature’ opposed to the male concept of culture and science. This way, the English author elaborated a feminist theory in which we find the distinction between the biological concept of sex against a gender-based depiction. Apart from the physical distinction, any other difference among the sexes is the result of social conventions and differences in men’s and women’s education. This claim clearly constituted a challenge against Rousseau and all those authors who justified sex-based social distinctions.

To Wollstonecraft both men and women share the same rational abilities directly deriving from God. Her religious orientation is linked to the notion of rationality but, at the same time, with an interest towards a sensitive and imaginary world consistent with her Romantic radicalism. This is shown in the mainstream and still contradictory currents of thought of her days: puritanism vs radicalism, enlightened rationalism; romantic subjectivity, passion vs reason. All these were fully reflected in a life in which she fought against herself when trying to change the world surrounding her.

5.2.- A Vindication of the Rights of Men: A rational revision of tradition

A Vindication of the Rights of Men was written in the middle of the French Revolution’s environment and the debates it generated in Great Britain. This animated war of leaflets, in which monarchy was questioned, lasted from 1789 to the end of 1795.

The French Revolution, apart from advocating for the demise of the authoritarian and despotic state, defended individuals becoming citizens and stop being subjects. Mary Wollstonecraft trusted that human rights were going to be recognized at long last and how that would correspond to the outcome of justice.

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, the whole circle of the radicals support Mary Wollstonecraft with the conviction that such an event would wind oppression down. Burke, having a dissenting opinion, publishes his Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790 where he defends the aristocratic government. This author sees the French Revolution as a

violent overthrow of a legitimate government. He argues that citizens have not the right to revolt against their own government, because if we do not accept traditions, the result will be that of anarchy. Burke was a defender of social hierarchies and believed that the French Revolution ideas were not only a menace to the crown, the Church or the English aristocracy but a real attack on citizen’s rights and property. That is why he defends hierarchical order as something natural and divinely arranged. To him humankind’s destiny was governed by passions and customs and not by reason.

In view of that, what she intends in Rights of Men is to unmask the supposed naturalness of the tradition Burke appealed to: “Its appetite punishments, when he is of an age from implicit obedience to parents and private punishments, when he is of an age to be subject to the jurisdiction of the laws of his country” (p. 37). To Wollstonecraft tradition and feelings were arbitrary feelings fixed by practice. Edmund Burke established as natural a model of society which was nothing but a mask concealing passivity in respect to traditional injustices within the English society. This idea of mask was very much present in all the Enlightened intellectuals, especially in Rousseau, who considered that appearances did not show what men were but covered their original essence. Ronald Grimsley (1973) cites some words from Discours sur les sciences et les arts de Rousseau, chapter IV where he says that: “the typical social man is always under a mask”, to what Grimsley himself answers that “[…] what is covered by the mask is not the authentic human nature but the corrupted being who has been marginalized of social development” (p. 29).

What Wollstonecraft criticises is that Burke defended the property of the rich and the subordination of the most part of the population around a structured society according to property and hereditary rights: “When we doubt the infallible wisdom of our ancestors, it is only advancing on the same ground to doubt the sincerity of that law, and the property of that servile appellation—OUR SOVEREIGN LORD THE KING. Who were the dictators of this adulatory language of the law?” (p. 34). On the contrary, what Wollstonecraft supports are the values of effort against hereditary privileges. Nevertheless, Wollstonecraft does not only criticise a society deeply imbued by gender differences, but also stands up against the situation of women whom she makes responsible of keeping their reason asleep: “Girls are sacrificed to family convenience, or else marry to settle themselves in a superior rank” (p. 38). In A Vindication of the Rights of Men, Wollstonecraft questioned the role of that domestic angel typical of the Puritan and bourgeoisie cultures.

While Burke supported the aristocracy, the monarchy and the Church, liberals such as Godwin, Paine or Wollstonecraft defended republicanism, agrarian socialism, anarchy and religious tolerance. Moreover, they were linked by the same critiques: the opposition to a monarchy and aristocracy which, according to them, was illegally getting hold of the power of the people.

Wollstonecraft’s discourse is written following Burke’s style, in an epistolary style, using the same forms but turning them over. Rights of Men does not intend to present an alternative political theory to that by Burke but to show the contradictions of his argumentation.

In line with it, Wollstonecraft’s aim is that of proving Burke to be a tyrant. When taking Burke as a representative of the Enlightened Old Regime, Wollstonecraft defends the reforming initiatives of the new French government and censures the British political elites because of their corruption and inhumane treat to the poor:

Then you must have seen the clogged wheels of corruption continually oiled by the sweat of the laborious poor, squeezed out of them by unceasing taxation. You must have discovered that the majority in the House of Commons was often purchased by the Crown, and that the people were oppressed by the influence of their own money […] (p. 35).

Rights of Men is an attack on Burke and his despise toward the people, whom she reprimands because of having supported the elites, especially to Marie-Antoinette. By contrasting her middle-class values with those of Burke, Wollstonecraft states that people should be judged because of their merits and not following their birth-rights. The vision of the society unveiled in Rights of Men consisted in making it possible that non-privileged children could compete in equal terms with the rich:

How many families have been plunged […] into misery and vice for some paltry transgression of these coercive laws, by the natural consequence of that anger which a man feels when he sees the reward of his industry laid waste by unfeeling luxury?— when his children’s bread is given to dogs! (p. 29).

Wollstonecraft puts the emphasis on hard work, self-discipline and morality, values she contrasts with the vices of the high-class. Both she and Burke associate Richard Price with the Enlightened thought, especially with the idea that civilization can progress throughout rational

debate. But while Burke thought that the people’s act of questioning things would lead to anarchism, Wollstonecraft linked price to reason, freedom, as well as with free speech and rejection to power and richness (fundamental values of the Middle-class society): "Granting, for a moment, that Dr. Price’s political opinions are Utopian reveries and […] they could, however, only be the reveries of a benevolent mind […] That worthy man in his whole life never dreamnt of struggling for power or riches” (p. 31).

Wollstonecraft attends to the definition of property by the philosopher John Locke, obtained with hard work opposed to the idea of inherited richness by Burke. He states that heritage is one of the main obstacles for the progress of the European civilization and holds that the problems of Great Britain have their root in the unequal distribution of property: “You have shown […] you seem to consider the poor as only the livestock of an estate, the feather of hereditary nobility” (p. 29). Even though Wollstonecraft was not a supporter of a completely egalitarian richness distribution, she did wish it was more equalitarian like. Rights of Men charges inherited monarchy and fosters a Republican ideology by supporting on ideas of the 17th and early 18th centuries. She keeps that virtue relies on the nucleus of citizenship. The objectives of Wollstonecraft’s republicanism are based on the individual’s state of happiness and prosperity, in opposition to the greatest quantity of benefits to landlords. Even if she puts the emphasis on the benefits the individual would collect under republicanism, she also holds that the reform could only have an effect at a social level. This makes a difference in respect to her former line of thought, based on the familiar scope. Private virtues are the underpinnings of public virtues. Through the influence of Rousseau, she will say in The Rights of Men that: “Individuals would learn and practice virtue in their home, virtue that would not only make them self-sufficient, but also prompt them to feel responsible for the citizens of their society” (p. 30).

One of the central points in Rights of Men is that rights must be awarded because they are reasonable and fair; not because they are traditional. Whereas Burke kept that civil society and the government must trust traditions, Wollstonecraft states that all the agreements are subjected to a rational revision. To Wollstonecraft the past is the realm of superstition, oppression and ignorance, which can only be overcome with the Enlightened idea of progress, an idea which also puts into question Burke’s sexist definition describing female virtue as weakness. This way, women were not offered any relevant role within the public sphere and remained relegated to inutility: “Nature, by making women little, smooth, delicate, fair

creatures, never designed that they should exercise their reason to acquire the virtues that produce opposite, if not contradictory, feelings” (p. 73).

From these initial writings, Wollstonecraft broke the silence of her sex with a particular interpretation of the French Revolution. In Vindication of the Rights of Men the importance of civil and religious freedom is underlined as well as fundamental rights. At the same time, equality is defended and tradition condemned since, under a supposed naturalness, tradition perpetuates the subordination of a great deal of the population throughout hierarchy, property and heritage acquired rights: “Property […] if it were more equally divided amongst all the children of a family […], in consequence of a barbarous feudal institution, that enables the elder son to overpower talents and depress virtue.” (p. 39).

The Enlightened philosophical context and the revolutionary political sphere provided Mary Wollstonecraft (and many other women of those times, who received with bated breath the French revolution) with new referents to that situation: the search for emancipation, rationality, the fight against authorities, fundamental rights, etc. As a result, the so called cahiers de doléances (‘complaint notebooks’) were written down in 1789 in order to pass on the complaints on the part of tiers to the General States, summoned by Louis XVI. These notebooks prove the great diversity of petitions from women who applied for the right to work, education, marriage rights as well as the right to vote.

This was, with no doubt, Wollstonecraft’s first and brave incursion in the field of political writings. Her voice and written word appear in this work as what was considered a male space, as it was the case of the political thought. This moment was collected by Godwin in her Memoirs: “[…] those whom curiosity prompted to seek the occasion of beholding her, expected to find a sturdy, muscular, raw-boned virago; and they were not a little surprised, when, instead of all this, they found a woman, lovely in her person, and in the best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners” (p. 56).

Once said that, it is clear that our philosopher will assimilate watchwords already used by the revolutionaries to impugning the Old Regime, by retaking them with the aim of reworking them due to their incoherence from the sex distinction point of view. Her role was not that of passive and enthusiastic spectator but, in opposition to the radical liberal male’s contribution, she barged in the debate reclaiming the upright realization of the revolutionary principles for both of the sexes. It was about the construction of a new world which should benefit women

in an equal degree. It was a question of common sense, precisely understood as the autonomous ability to judge and rationalize without allowing to be led by prejudices, what may remind us to the moral autonomy, exposed in Kant’s The Metaphysics of Morals or Critique of Pure Reason.

When she writes Rights of Woman two years later, she widened many of the arguments she had already included in Rights of Men. If everyone must be judged according to merits, women should be included in that group. As we will see thereupon, Wollstonecraft is going to handle the collapsing of the distinction between the private and the public, as well as demanding that all the male and female citizens have the opportunity to take part in the public sphere.

5.3.- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: A critique to artificiality

I would like to begin this section with some words by Jemima, a character of the novel Maria or The Wrongs of Woman (written in 1789, three years before Rights of Woman) which will be very useful to learn about the condition of women in Wollstonecraft’s days: “regardless of the contempt […] was I the mark of cruelty […] I had no one to love me; or make me respected” (p. 40). Moreover she describes how she “[…] was despised from [her] birth, and denied the chance of obtaining a footing for myself in society […]” What is worse, she explicitly confesses: “I was in fact born a slave, and chained by infamy to slavery during the whole of existence” (p. 64).

On the basis of the above, encouraged by Thomas Paine and influenced by Condorcet6, Wollstonecraft writes in less than six weeks A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, being encouraged by Thomas Paine and influenced by the Marquis Nicolas de Condorcet’s works, who had published in 1787 the Letters from a Bourgeois of New Haven to a Citizen of Virginia and On the Admission of Women to Citizenship. This work is of a somewhat careless style due to its creative enthusiasm and lacking, in some occasions, of a logical order avoiding a repetition of ideas. Nonetheless, we should underline its vitality and direct denounce in respect to the situation of women. The underpinnings of 19th feminism are established with this book but rather than carrying out a vindication of specific political rights, it raises a vindication of women’s individualization and their ability to choose their own destiny. It supposed a moment of detachment with regard to the attributions projected on women, a

6In 1787 he had written Four Letters of a Citizen of New Heaven and On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship in 1790, where he defended political equality among the sexes. 15

gesture of enlightened revelry. Hence Rights of Woman answers to this context of revolution marked by key changes and debates on the meanings of education. Wollstonecraft will criticize the French national nature because of its superficiality and weakness, aspects which she precisely will intend to eradicate from the personality of British men and women.

The dedication Wollstonecraft addresses to Talleyrand-Perigord (good-looking politician during the French Revolution who presented a project on the Public Instruction to the Constituent Assembly) would clearly complaint about the fact that women were excluded from the scope of reason as well as from civil and political rights. Two inseparable exclusions which go along with one cause: men’s tyranny. In her letter to Talleyrand, Wollstonecraft signalizes that women’s exclusion of civil and political rights show men’s tyranny and the undermining of morality. This male tyranny—depriving of reason, virtue and women’s political rights—oppresses women just like aristocracy oppresses the people. We may spot that Wollstonecraft turns to a feminist critical use of the Enlightened principles. She vindicates the possibility of debating and arguing with men with no conditions whatsoever. She also advocates for the possibility of contesting a social system disgorging into female oppression. Yet it is just not enough to put a question to the tyrant. It is necessary to visualize a free society with no tyrants and equality, since “[…] the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society” (Rights of Woman, p. 10).

Even though Rights of Woman may be said to have a slightly careless literary style, its solid argumentation opens in different directions: the defence of the species’ unity and the equality between genres, the radical fight against prejudices, the exigency of a non-discriminatory education for girls, as well as the claim for the right of citizenship for women. Wollstonecraft’s strength does not rely on how she says it, but on what she says. The passionate tone and the conviction with which it is written do not go impassively. It is about one of the key texts of feminism which cannot be untied from the Enlightenment.

Rights of Woman is presented as a work of political debate about the exclusion of women from the bourgeois public sphere. Nonetheless, its fundamental theme is not that of the broadcast of the middle-class women’s rights, but the female education understood in its widest sense of socialisation. The discussion of this English author was placed beyond the problems of women: She addressed, still succinctly, the privileges of the high classes and the problematic of slavery, by linking it with sexual domination. Wollstonecraft contrasts female resistance, opposing to patriarchal oppression, with the antislavery movement. Rights of 16

Woman is impregnated with a vision of the world which defends modesty and goes against richness. He establishes a networking between four concepts with the aim of arguing about the role of women within society. These concepts are: ‘right’, ‘reason’, ‘virtue’ and ‘duty’, to which we will devote a specific chapter in our research.

In Rights of Woman Wollstonecraft begins to ask herself whether there is such a thing as a biological distinction between the sexes leading to the submission of women to men or, on the contrary, whether the disparity between the sexes is the product of a different kind of education. Of course, she leans towards this last mentioned possibility. Down below, she pursues to study the position of women in the society of her days by showing how the place they are expected to occupy was established by men. She criticises women because of being stupid, superficial and worried about their beauty (as if they were Disney princesses). They are reprimanded because of their inability to reason and their limitations when all this is just a consequence of the inadequate education they get. Wollstonecraft highlights that humanity would enrich itself if women were exposed to a rational education so that they could take part in society.

One of the most scathing criticisms of Rights of Woman is the one she makes against the false and excessive sensitivity of women. She argues that those women who succumb to sensitivity are preys of their senses and that is how they cannot think in a rational manner. And so, she considers they damage not only themselves but also to the whole civilization. Wollstonecraft does not defend that reason and feelings can go unfixed but rather that they are interdependent from each other.

The critique to the artificiality of the female scheme is as constant in Vindications as it is her critique towards a Rousseau who established that physical and moral differences between men and women were deduced from the physical anatomy with the aim of raising, only afterwards, the prescription of different models of moral behaviour in which women should be subjected to men, so that they could make men’s preparation to becoming citizens easier. The misleading sexual distinctions elaborated by Rousseau and other authors of those days shared a common purpose: to keep the patriarchal privilege by perpetuating subjection through a female marriage-oriented education from early childhood. Thus, women were to be prepared for marriage and retreat within the private sphere (to be seen Annex II of the critique made by Wollstonecraft to Rousseau’s chapter V from L’Émile).

Wollstonecraft understood that women, in opposition to Rousseau’s social contract, were not born free nor would they meet freedom, since their biological conditions determined their destiny. The infringement of the principles of equality as far as women are concerned (reflected through the character of Sophie) is especially appreciated in the specific education for women. That is to say, in the imposition of domestic nature, discretion, self-control, and the significance of public opinion about them. Sophie’s destiny was inexorably marked by dependence and subjection. On the contrary, Emile’s destiny was ruled by independency. Within the Puritan context surrounding the epoch, men and women were arranged under a hierarchical ladder. The man constituted the head, the woman the body. Men should order and women obey. It was in the 18th century that women were considered responsible of the success and development of Puritan culture. Thereupon, they were demanded to preserve a pure conduct and caste feelings. On the contrary, men were allowed to behave more lasciviously. On the other hand, there emerges a new current of feminism during the 1970s. It is interested in going deeper in the relationship among the sexes from the point of view of the difference in order to build a female subject with her own identity. Differences among the sexes are analysed as a gender social constructions, which were already present in the days of Wollstonecraft or Simone de Beauvoir. The feminism of the difference, mostly of French tradition, vindicates the essence of the feminist against the abuses of the male identity throughout history. It highlights difference as a value by labelling as qualities anything which achieves to relate women with nature, maternity, personal care, sensitivity, etc.

The dilemma is made even more accurate when the right for women to become citizens is vindicated. There are two possible paths in order to make it possible, so delimited and incompatible at the same time: One possibility is to ask for a common political identity both for men and women, based in a complete equality. Another possibility is to vindicate for a distinctive citizenship which advocates for varied qualities, necessities and abilities which make of women unique beings. Mary Wollstonecraft’s arguments travel in both directions and if, on the one hand she says that women’s destiny is that of children’s care, on the other, she argues that we will never see affectionate women until social equality rises up dizzily.

On the one hand, imbued in the revolutionary ideal, the English author vindicates the equalitarian extension of the rights of citizenship and claims that female education should be based in a wider development of the faculties of reason against feelings. According to her, that will be the key of equality. Nonetheless, patriarchal motivations, which protected the

exclusion of women from the public universe of reason, held a majority in her times and those women of the last 18th century, who dared to show up against those dominant guidelines, were considered to be in an unnatural state. That is the reason why, to Mary Wollstonecraft the revolution for the breaking up with the stereotypical female roles is part of the necessity to recover a ‘lost dignity’. The answer to the discourse of the difference of the sexes is the one which lead to the vindication of female dignity throughout a revolution against the establishment of the roles of women which involved the disappearance of educated women solely for the sake of becoming silent and subjected objects who made way to their spotlight with as subjects with their own voice. The equality of reason demands women to read and educate themselves thank to the great philosophical and historical works and not throughout literature, which was thought of degrading women up to making of them mere objects of desire for men.

It will be necessary to overcome the hallucinations of reason from which philosophers such as Rousseau or Kant talk about and retaking the Cartesian bon sens which, as in Poulain de la Barre, demanded a good understanding between men and women.

Ultimately, Rights of Woman was a paramount theoretical compendium of the Bourgeois radical feminism emerged before of the possibility of liberal and feminist movements with which revolutionary feminist could be identified, as well as movements such as Suffragism. Her critiques towards patriarchal prejudices, her defence for an equalitarian education for both sexes, the liberation of traditional habits throughout reason and the revelation of women against a mere sexual and domestic object, unavoidably leads us to the specialized analysis of each one of these sections.

5.4.-Critique to prejudices

To Wollstonecraft women had been denied the use of reason, the right to citizenship and had been made dependent beings or victims of the male. She clarifies that male hierarchy and superiority are an unfair endorsed by immemorial prejudices which are the ones we propose ourselves to analyse in this section, since what men exercise on women is not a natural authority but an unjust privilege, a way to apply a supposed ancestral hierarchy between the sexes.

In Maria or The Wrongs of Woman (1798) the character of Jamima denounces the fact that prejudices are wished to be kept, even by the poorest, because their minds have been educated 19

to do so (p. 76). The poor, just like women, accept their subjection (as B. Friedan would say later in time): “things are very well as they are” (p. 49) as Henry says, who also complains that “it is the lot of the majority to be oppressed in this life” (p. 49) and even he justifies that as if it was a divine design. Maria adds that affections and feelings must be “regulated by an improving mind” (p. 49), so that heart and mind move forward at the same pace, so that the sensitive and the intelligible world complement each other. Maria complains about the fact that no man in equal conditions to hers would be coming through the hardships she was: “Condemned to labour, like a machine, only to earn bread, and scarcely that, I became melancholy and desperate” (p. 49). All these experiences on the part of Jamima led Maria to “consider the oppressed state of women, and to lament that she had given birth to a daughter” (p. 54).

In Rights of Woman Wollstonecraft criticizes the notion of ‘prejudice’ when she worries about female oppression, just like Poullain de la Barre did. She firmly believes that prejudices are deeply linked to that social awareness, up to the point of shadowing reason and having been so much assimilated that human beings are unable to get rid of them.

It will be in this critique to the concept of ‘prejudice’, understood as one of the most powerful instruments for the legitimation of the male power over women, where Wollstonecraft’s critique against tradition achieves its maximum splendour. She asserts that we cannot allow men—being proud of their power—to use similar arguments to those of tyrannical kings, affirming that a “[…] woman ought to be subjected because she has always been so […]” (p. 24).

Wollstonecraft addresses in Rights of Woman her point of view against those moral books which support an ideal of femininity excluding rational women who claim for their rights to belong to the public-political sphere. Furthermore, these domestic roles will be justified throughout a patriarchy, by looking for support on the idea that women are inferior to men. According to Wollstonecraft, all this contractual and unfair oppression rests on some old prejudices: I know that a kind of fashion now prevails of respecting prejudices; and when any one dares to face them, though actuated by humanity and armed by reason, he is superciliously asked, whether his ancestors were fools. (p. 57).

Nonetheless, prejudices can never be innocent, especially in so far as they reinforce a society sector at the expense of the other. Prejudices are usually designed according to the interests of the one holding the power.

I do not mean to allude to all the writers who have written on the subject of female manners […] the prerogative that may emphatically be called the iron sceptre of tyranny, the original sin of tyrants, I declare against all power built on prejudices. (Rights of Woman, p. 51).

To Wollstonecraft, women, just like men, are equal as they belong to the generic title of human being. However, in order to understand Rights of Woman and understand with accuracy the refutation to Rousseau’s theories, it is necessary to explain the concept of reason by Wollstonecraft. Her notion of reason is similar to the bon sens by the philosopher Descartes, mixed with what Poullain de la Barre had added: the bon sens operates within the social scenario as an exposure of prejudices. Thus, the notion of reason by Wollstonecraft is a completely Enlightened kind of reason, conceived as an instrument of exposure of traditions. Prejudices have to be dismantled by reason, above all when such prejudices legitimate unfair prerogatives or immoral despotisms. Wollstonecraft puts reason at the service of the criticism of those prejudices preventing female emancipation:

[…] If the submission demanded be founded on justice—there is no appealing to a higher power—for God is justice itself […] But, if it be proved that this throne of prerogative only rests on a chaotic mass of prejudices […] without sinning against the order of things. (Rights of Woman, p. 51).

And so, she continues saying:

Woman in particular, whose virtue is built on mutual prejudices, seldom attains to this greatness of mind; so that, becoming the slave of their own feelings, she is easily subjugated by those of others. Thus degraded, her reason, her misty reason is employed rather to burnish than to snap her chains. (Rights of Woman, p. 51).

It could be asserted that both in Descartes’ ideas and in the Enlightenment, feminist criticism is set up as a synonym of critique to the concept of prejudice. As it is the case of Poullain de la Barre, there was an attempt at applying the Cartesian line of thought to the notions of

prejudice, tradition and practices and approximating them to a new perspective in favour of the rights of women and equality.

Enlightened authors such as Rousseau or Kant consider women as an inferior being secluded from general interest. In opposition to this, Wollstonecraft will call upon the universality of the good sense as an ability to judge by our own selves. Such an ability that, as defended by Poullain de la Barre, is owned in a peculiar manner by those women who had escaped from an educative system riddled with all kinds of prejudices. Wollstoncraft will defend the common underpinnings of virtue, inasmuch as both sexes share the same rational ability, universalizing this way the link between reason and virtue (just like Aristotle had already done).

5.5.-Reason and virtue as processes of emancipation in women

We have already seen how, according to our author, we can only develop mental faculties in women throughout the exercise of reason, which is the only thing which will allow them to achieve their independency. It is about strengthening the female mind for them to be able to claim for their rights on citizenship and equality. But to Wollstonecraft female emancipation was not in the political frame but in the liberation of traditional habits.

Wollstonecraft applies, in Rights of Woman, the approach on the universalization of female reason with the aim of underlying the inconsistencies of the patriarchal Enlightenment. Her idea lies on the basis that reason is the attribute distinguishing human beings from animals, turning us into moral beings. The ideas of reason and virtue are inherent: “every being may become virtuous by the exercise of its own reason” (p. 12). The systematic exercise of reason leads us to virtue and makes us free inasmuch as it releases us from tradition.

Wollstonecraft asserted that it was a farce to call ‘virtuous’ to women when their virtues were not the product of the exercise of their own reason. Hence it was deduced that female virtue was nothing but a fancy dress imposed by misogynist mentality in order to keep them subjected. That is what we will see reflected afterwards in those who signalled Seneca Fall’s Declaration against this idea of morality which, in its last extreme has the purpose of averting women from public spaces.

To Wollstonecraft a nation could not progress if half of its population, as it was the case of women, were confined to domestic tasks by force and were private from their legitimate political and civic rights. In order to understand Rights of Woman in a correct manner, it is

necessary to explain her concept of reason, which, just like in Poullain de la Barre, expands to the social sphere to dismantle prejudices, traditions and customs, as well as moral and social values. Mary uses reason as a critical instrument against prejudices delaying female emancipation. From this point of view is where she criticises Rousseau, who considered female habits as innate features.

As we previously saw, Wollstonecraft criticizes Rousseau’s concept of virtue. She considered that the good citizen was worth of the label of ‘virtuous man’. In contrast, women could not access virtue because they were not included within the concept of general will and, hence, nor in that of citizenship. If Rousseau talks about a specific female virtue, what is translated into faithfulness to her husband and the rising up of children as future citizens, Wollstonecraft—by leaning on the unity of human gender—believes in a unique virtue for all individuals.

Wollstonecraft does not really understand the praise towards women’s ignorance made by Rousseau since if women are responsible of transmitting the notion of virtue to the future citizens—the future subjects of the social contract—how could they do it if women are supposed not to have that kind of virtue? Let alone if she is unable to reflect. To Wollstonecraft there is just one single means for both sexes to be virtuous: the use of reason and understanding. In her view, the use of understanding, as it made possible the development of individual autonomy, allowed subjects to acquire the necessary perfections in order to achieve a better life from the individual and collective point of view. In such a way, our author, as a daughter of her times, related human progress with moral autonomy. That is, she defended that men and women achieved, throughout education, virtuous habits enabling them to be free.

To her, no being whose virtue is the result of the exercise of his/her own reason could be labelled as ‘virtuous’. That is why she deferred on the rules imposed in the Bourgeoisie. Everything taught to women was based on superficial notions related with appearance, obedience and satisfaction. The authentic moral and civic values were being restrained with that kind of education, as she pointed in The Rights of Woman:

Women are everywhere in this deplorable state; for, in order to preserve their innocence, as ignorance is courteously termed, truth is hidden from them, and they are made to assume an artificial character before their faculties have acquired any 23

strength. Taught from their infancy, that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. (p. 23).

Coquetry and the way of educating women had no other aims than those of rendering complacency to men and, against that, Wollstonecraft defended the preparation of good female self-sufficient citizens who were able to acquire human perfections instead of staying ignorant and compliant. In this connection, Wollstonecraft specifies in chapter III from Rights of Women that women should be able to acquire human virtues by the same means to those used by men. Wollstonecraft understood that in order to chip in the civic progress, there was the need to make of women active participants of the Enlightened values, of a series of moral principles which allowed people to take part in the common heritage of civilization and progress.

In relation to the above mentioned, the author pointed out that we could not expect any virtue from ignorant and submissive women. She asked herself: how could Rousseau expect women to be virtuous like when they were denied the use of reason and the knowledge of truth?7 In her opinion, the false system of female manners only contributed to steal women’s dignity. Against the educative notions addressed to physical appearance, obedience and ignorance, Wollstonecraft tried to educate true female citizens. The use of reason and understanding constituted the basic tool for the exercise of civic virtue. Without knowledge there could be no morality, as ignorance was a fragile basis of virtue. Without the recognition of their rights, female citizens lacked of the necessary competences to exert their duties as citizens, mothers and wives.

The concept of duty is fundamental in order to understand our philosopher since, as we have already highlighted, her defence for the rights of women was associated to the emergence of the most solid and lasting values, that is, she wanted to make of women the best citizens. Notwithstanding, if we pay attention there appear continuous references to the role of women as mothers and wives in Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft identified female civic obligations with the duties derived from motherhood and family and pointed, in various occasions, that

7To Rousseau women were ruled by feelings and not by reason. Therefore, they could not take part in the State issues nor in assemblies. It was not possible to be a woman and a citizen. One thing would exclude the other. Women were disabled to conduct the contract which every individual makes with the general will. That is why they should stay under the authority of a concrete male. 24

without virtue (that is, without independence), women could not exercise adequately their domestic functions. That is the reason why, to her, the lack of preparation for wives and mothers relied on a reduction of the general process of citizenship. The contribution of women to citizenship was carried out simultaneously in two scopes: in the civic and in the domestic one. According to Wollstonecraft, women’s first duty, just like it is exposed in chapter IX of Rights of Woman, is that of being rational beings and the next that of being citizens. Women counted with two kinds of duties: common obligations within the humanity framework—as rational beings—but also with specific obligations as mothers and wives.

But isn’t there a basic contradiction between these two fundamental objectives? Isn’t the acquisition of autonomy and independency incompatible with the exercise of household tasks?

It seems that Rights of Woman describes two ideals of citizenship: some civic and universal rights, as well as some peculiar responsibilities for each sex. This leads us to affirm that Wollstonecraft did not break with the moral division between the public and private spheres. The defence of the value of female independence—in the work by Wollstonecraft—went associated to the exercise of the civic and domestic responsibilities of women. They should be independent from men in order to develop those ‘natural affections’ (Rousseau talked about) and which made of them good mothers and wives. They should take the use of reason, moral autonomy and the necessary instruction to carry them out successfully.

These ideas demand us to question which kind of independency the author was referring to and how she expected to combine domestic tasks with the accomplishment of independency. The only possible exit to her possible contradiction appears when we understand that Wollstonecraft presented two models of citizenship sexually differentiated but complementary.

The sexes seemed to contribute to the civic welfare from their respective roles. Let us remember that, just like she narrates in chapter IX from Rights of Woman, according to Wollstonecraft, few women can have mental autonomy since they have been educated to be completely dependent on their husbands.

In order to launch into the public sphere, female citizens had to find the way to combine their domestic duties with their professional ones: but Wollstonecraft (explicitly) did not perceive

such a problem yet. Her works constitute a clear reflection of the contradictions which involved the aspiration to equality within patriarchal citizenship. If the basic objective of this author was that of assuring female independence, then she did not find the way to turn women away from their roles as mothers and household carers. From there that she ratifies in chapter VIII that if we make of women rational and free beings, we will turn them into good wives and mothers. She considered that way women were sure to enter into civil society consisted in the dominion of the small domestic society since public virtues are born, in the case of women, from private virtues.

In relation to these beliefs, Barbara Taylor (2003) has distinguished three possible models of citizenship in Wollstonecraft’s discourse: “[…] The Rights of Woman puts in their stead of the model female citizen: well-instructed, independent-minded, and drawn from the middle rather than the upper ranks […]” (p.218). On the one hand, she highlights that Rights of Woman consists on a defense that women should belong to the same class of citizens to that of men. On the other hand, she considers that it is possible that, on the contrary, Wollstonecraft tries to identify a specially feminist kind of citizenship. And, last but not least she takes into account that, probably, Rights of Woman constitute a defense on the idea that, in order to be good citizens, women should be emancipated and independent so that political distinction according to sex were deleted. Taylor’s conclusion could be summarized as follows: “The quality she values most, independence […] has sometimes conflicting meanings” (p.220).

I consider that in order to understand Wollstonecraft, we have to start from the idea that her fundamental criticism goes against the educative and moral habits of the Bourgeoisie. That is what led Wollstonecraft to defend the peculiar duties of women in the domestic sphere, duties which, on the other side, the bourgeoisie women were delegating in wet nurses by depriving themselves from their basic responsibilities. At the same time, as kept by Taylor, to Wollstonecraft: “The only method of leading women to fulfil their peculiar duties […] is to free them from all restraint by allowing them to participate in the inherent rights of mankind” (p. 221).

Apart from their duties as wives and mothers in the domestic sphere, women had the common obligations to the rest of humanity. In order to be free and independent they had to pursue an equalitarian citizenship within the public sphere, their economic independence and engagement with public issues. But how could they achieve these aims so that they were

compatible with motherhood and other care functions? Wollstonecraft seems not to be able to find an intermediate model of citizenship which was accessible to both sexes. On the contrary, she presents her discourse to two complementary subjects and, at the same time, antagonistic like. The author was a victim possibly of a fundamental division between the public sphere and the domestic one. Even though she knew how to appreciate how difficult it was to combine typical female domestic tasks with those aimed at defending female independence, she was not able to warn of the difficulties it would involve to reconcile both objectives. The answer, just like Puleo (1993) asserts, had already been given by Olympe de Gouges who had said in 1791 in her Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne “J’offre un moyen invincible pour élever l'âme des femmes: c'est de les joindre à tous les exercices de l'homme”. (p. 162).

For its part, Rights of Woman also constitutes an unconditional defence on female independence and the rights of women in order to manage by themselves. Nonetheless, that idea does not go without problems: In which case was it possible to be an scholar, independent and self-sufficient at the same time as well as fulfilling all the household duties? Was it possible to take part in citizenship as a male and female at the same time? Wollstonecraft conceived marriage (her ideal of citizenship) as a cooperative associated based on reciprocity: both sexes contributed throughout the exercise of their complementary functions, to the civic welfare. Female obligations within the domestic sphere were similar to the male duties within the social civic public sphere.

Nevertheless, in previous writings, as pointed by Taylor (2003) Wollstonecraft seemed to take distance from this idealized vision of marriage by means of which she defends a more radical version of female independency, associated to an autonomous and self-sufficient existence within the social and economic frame: “Sobriety, self-restraint, dignity, chastity—modesty […] must be equally cultivated by both sexes” (p.222). She kept in mind the limitations and sufferings to women resulting from marriage through a contract of slavery and subordination. Most of the injustices she observed were related to the condition of dependency and subjection of married women. According to Taylor, in María, Or the Wrongs of Woman (1798), the optimist image of sexual unions between comrades, so typical of her first works, gives place to a raw description of marriage as a juridical and practical arrangement: “Marriage, Maria sums up, ‘had bastilled me for life” (p. 232).

Marriage was not seen as that ideal union anymore in which each sex would fulfill their respective citizenship-related duties, up to the point of turning to be a strong source of oppression and moral abuses. In fact, it was this kind of domination the one which should be avoided in order to aim at respecting female dignity. From this point of view, physical, economic and civic dependence on men were indispensable.

Maybe we should admit that Wollstonecraft’s main ingenuity resided on the fact of having thought that it was possible to conquer female autonomy and freedom without disrupting the fundaments of patriarchal citizenship. She believed that female citizens could be wise housekeepers. In other words, they could achieve to be mothers and citizens at the same time but independent from a civic and economic point of view. We may conclude, as Taylor did, that Wollstonecraft accomplished to raise the fundamental questions about the feminist demands of equality instead of contributing definite solutions.

In Wollstonecraft there would appear (and it is very well depicted in her novel Mary A Fiction, (1788) the two poles which Jane Austen labelled as pride and judgment, just like she entitles one of her first novels. One of the main topics in Mary A Fiction is that of female sensitivity and how women fight against social conventions and its ties.

It is about the conflict between judgment and sensitivity, between social interest and one’s subjectivity. But it was a two-edged weapon because, on the one hand, it allowed Wollstonecraft to justify her rebellion against conventionalisms and social hypocrisy. On the other hand, it made of her a hostage a result of some feelings classified as female. The character of Mary represents the revelry of a perfect lady against a world governed by prudence against sentimentalism. Mary waits for her personal vindication both in the moral field as in the sentimental one throughout her own suffering.

To Wollstonecraft there was no natural distinction between male abilities and functions and those of women. Therefore, natural or divine criteria of female subordination and inequalities among men and women was too arbitrary an idea, just as arbitrary as any kind of inequality resulting from class distinctions or privileges, so much criticized by the Enlightened rationalism. Wollstonecraft denied that virtue and reason were different depending on whether they were applied to men or women. Humanity could only reach the grade of perfection promised by the enlightened ethos if their great truths were authentically universal. To

Wollstonecraft, virtue and reason did not have neither gender nor class, since, if they had it, they would turn the Enlightened and universalist will in a kind of practical moral:

To render mankind more virtuous, and happier of course, both sexes must act from the same principle; […] to spread those enlightening principles, […] women must be allowed to found their virtue on knowledge which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same pursuits as men (p. 87).

According to Wollstonecraft, women have been mixing up the notion of virtue with that of reputation, since it is the male’s opinion that has taught them to be afraid. Nonetheless, such a concern for keeping themselves free of spots that does not make of women virtuous beings. It was about unmasking social conventions preventing women from the active exercise of virtue and making of them accomplished teachers in the art of appearances. The issue of destiny in women was a serious identity problem and goes to a further level. It is a clash between the outer and the inner self throughout a mirror which gives back images in which the inner self and the outer one end up by merging and confusing their identities8.

A large portion of the argumentation by Wollstonecraft was focused on the necessity of pulling the female subject off a series of social corrupted relations impeding her personal growth and contribution to the social welfare. From this point of view, the autonomous and independent subject was a key point in her theory. Thus, she was unable to raise the possibility of any other kind of collective action on the part of women, by means of which she would define the concept of Modern Feminism afterwards. To her, social legislation was much less important than the individual development and, in this sense, she insisted much more on the concept of ‘independency’ than on that of ‘equality’. That is what Burdiel means when he says that: “[…] Habló, como ella decía, desde la postura del filósofo, del moralista, en un estado aparentemente ideal y desencarnado. Habló, a veces, a favor de su sexo, pero no habló nunca desde su sexo” (p. 67).

There is a great wish in Wollstonecraft, as affirmed in Vindications, of escaping the cheats of the dichotomy between the right to equality and the difference in respect to male models: “[…] I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society, […] For […] I

8 This kind of duality and internal fight is the same one reflected by Sylvia Plath in a poetical manner and analyzed in my book Sylvia vs. Plath: Internal Drama. 29

am firmly persuaded, the foundation of the weakness of character is ascribed to women […] (p. 34).

Such a wish of confusion among the sexes could be a kind of strategy or the only possible solution in order to escape the polarization between male and female stereotypes. Wollstonecraft says that virtue and reputation cannot be confused, nor the notion of ‘wish’ with that of ‘want towards the other’, since educated women such as Sophie would remain as prisoners of their beauty, of some charms simulating innocence and chastity. That way, if all women were like Sophie, they would get lost once missed their charms. Chastity would turn into the true value, the cover letter of women in their conquest of the male and the greatest symptom of their dependency. And all this could lead us to a world of appearances in which everything consisted on pretending to be innocent, without actually being so. Love and virtue would turn into appearance because what is thought about a woman is as important as what she really is, just like Wollstonecraft expresses in Rights of Woman by referring to Rousseau: “Opinion is the grave of virtue among the men; but its throne among women” (p. 67).

5.6.-Education as a tool of amendment

We have to draw from the premise that there were training guides (as it would be a mistake to call them education guides) for women in Wollstonecraft’s days consisting on guiding ladies on how to route their coquetry better and on how to achieve absolute subjection. Sensuality was the only virtue and means to have men dominated.

By following the line of thought by Poullain de la Barre in De l´éducation des dames, Wollstonecraft will devote several years of her short life to reflect about the differentiated education imparted to boys and girls, about the dismal consequences this fact has on women. The fundamental aspect of Rights of Woman is also consists on education and socialization, in spite of being introduced as a work of political debate.

Wollstonecraft, as Poullain did before in time, claims for one single education for both sexes inasmuch as the two of them are owners of reason, which if good used will lead them towards virtue. That is to say, a single nature and hence, a single reason, one virtue and one education. That is why, she denies the existence of the specific virtues of one sex and affirms that the notion of truth should be the same both to men and women.

Our author will criticize behavioural guidelines for women which were written both by Catholic clergymen and protestant pastors. To her, sentimental education by means of which 18th century women were trained “[…] has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish nobler ambition […]” (p. 5).

The topic of education, key element both for the French and English Enlightenment, will be the key element of Rights of Women. Mary faces a female pedagogy deeply marked by an extremely misogynist and patriarchal kind of thought and practice. It is a completely contradictory idea in the realm of such a century as it is the 18th century, with an unlimited faith in culture and reason as the motor shaft of social and individual progress. The Enlightenment holds that education decreases the inequalities among talents and that is why it becomes in one of the main engines for gender equality. Mary, as well as the circle of radicals she was linked to, assumes that those principles find in education a paramount tool towards the individual and collective reform. They denounce an educative system which considers women as fragile and useless beings and ask for an education helping them to reinforce their disposition. Rousseau’s idea on the fact that society corrupts the individual is answered by Wollstonecraft with the nuance that it is by means of education and socialization that women have been educated towards inequality while the aim has been that of domesticating them.

Her thesis on the socially and culturally constructed arbitrary nature of the essential and functional differences among the sexes (as Beauvoir would manifest later in time) will lead her to see in the Former Regime education a kind of dangerous and immoral tool of men in order to oppress women. For this reason she will claim an education oriented to fulfil the moral content of such rational forgotten beings: women.

To Wollstonecraft, only the good sense of humanity could put an end to the situation of female subjection but there are still some slight reservations in respect to her contradictions when she says that the objective of education should be: “[…] to prepare women to become chaste wives and sensible mothers […]” (p. 45).

Wollstonecraft gives much importance to an equalitarian and free kind of education to boys and girls of all social classes. And even though she will make reference to some activities addressed to girls over 9, she does not agree that they exclusively do sewing labours. She keeps that scholarship should be mixed since men and women should be educated following

the same model. She claims for a same kind of education based on reason to men and women and insists on the possibility to build up a moral personality overcoming ignorance. Education and autonomy are two key aspects in the work of this Enlightened moralist. The debate on whether women have a rational ability or not is also useful to Wollstonecraft to introduce the central theme of her work, which is not other than that of the education of women:

[…] dismissing these fanciful theories, and considering woman as a whole, let it be what it will, instead of a part of man, the inquiry is, whether she has reason or not […] probably, been led by viewing education in a false light; not considering it as the first step to form a being advancing gradually toward perfection. (pp. 27-28)

Wollstonecraft accepted Rousseau’s opinions on male education but she found his views on women depressing and painful like. He thought that education should prepare women for her future as good wives. To this, Wollstonecraft will answer that the objective of education is that of achieving human beings to forge their character as human beings independently of the sex they belong to. If Rousseau keeps that in L´Émile women’s education is oriented towards pleasure, Wollstonecraft defends that wives should be their husbands’ rational partners. She claims that some women are stupid and superficial like and they are labelled of ‘toys’ but she says that it is not due to an innate deficiency but because men have denied them the access to education.

Against Rousseaunian pedagogy, Wollstonecraft bets for a female education which does not predestine women from their early life. She rather advocates for a kind of liberal education betting for women’s ability to acquire moral autonomy without being condemned to depend on men. Moreover, this kind of education should not be elitist like nor addressed to the aristocratic classes. Instead, Wollstonecraft will make a special allusion to the English middle class:

I wish also to steer clear of an error, which many respectable writers have fallen into; for the instruction which has hitherto been addressed to women, has rather been applicable to LADIES […] but, addressing my sex in a firmer tone, I pay particular attention to those in the middle class, because they appear to be in the most natural state. (p. 6)

To Wollstonecraft the kind of education women have traditionally received has been addressed to foster their inferiority and turn them into the object of desire of men by boosting 32

their aesthetical and superficial values over their moral and intellectual ones. That is, according to her, the origin of the state of female inferiority and the deficient kind of education she receives from birth. Thus, she says:

If […] it can be fairly deduced from the present conduct of the sex […] that the instruction which women have received has only tended […] to render them significant objects of desire; […] if it can be proved, that in aiming to accomplish them, without cultivating their understandings, they are taken out of their sphere of duties, and made ridiculous and useless when the short lived bloom of beauty is over, I presume that RATIONAL men will excuse me for endeavoring to persuade them to become more masculine and respectable. (p. 7)

This will be the constant held throughout her work, Wollstonecraft’s efforts in order to convince every woman and also men of the necessity of a good quality education as a base for the acquisition of the virtue any person looks for. Wollstonecraft criticizes Rousseau because of potentiating this specific education addressed to women, instead of trying women acquire moral autonomy, understood as the ideal and the aim of education in the case of men. Mary realizes that these authors condemn women to a situation of social uselessness.

[…] that women, considered not only as moral, but rational creatures, ought to endeavor to acquire human virtues (or perfections) by the SAME means as men, instead of being educated like a fanciful kind of HALF being, one of Rousseau’s wild chimeras. (p. 21)

One of the messages which undeniably disturbs to Wollstonecraft is the one potentiating female beauty, while trying to make women internalize this message and knowing that the best thing for them is a sentimental kind of education. According to Wollstonecraft, this empowerment of female sensitivity weakens female rationality and coerces her education. In this sense, Wollstonecraft also attacks Rousseau’s educative ideal potentiating female sensitivity emotions needed for the domestic and familiar scope. Rousseau places Sophia over rationality and virtue. According to Wollstonecraft, this kind of bloated sensitivity undermines the mind and prevents us from the possibility to act as rational creatures:

[…] it would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion, that they were

created rather to feel that reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness. (p. 32)

Among the varied arguments used by Wollstonecraft in order to defend her thesis, there is an especially striking one which compares women to the poor (to whom education is also denied on the part of the aristocratic elites).

In the same strain have I heard men argue against instructing the poor; for many are the forms that aristocracy assumes: “Teach them to read and write,” say they, “and you take them out of the station assigned them by nature”. (p. 32)

Wollstonecraft is going to unfold herself as she does not want to accept a secondary role in history for her sex. That is why she is going to fight with all her means for more equality and a dignified life for women. The following paragraph perfectly summarizes the objective of the work by Wollstonecraft:

[…]; let us endeavor to strengthen our minds by reflection till our heads become a balance for our hearts: let us not confine all our thoughts […] to our lovers’ or husbands’ hearts […] (It is about) improving our minds, and preparing our affections for a more exalted state! (p. 46).

Wollstonecraft establishes that the fatal problem on gender inequality is based on the fact that girls, from their birth, are treated as fragile and feeble beings. It is in them that some supposed virtues are usually stressed, virtues which, to Wollstonecraft, are defects such as delicacy and appearances by turning them into compliant and useless beings. From the very beginning they are placed under the male bondage: hence, they grow up in this manner but they have not been born differently. They have been taught.

One of the ideas she exposes in Rights of Woman is that those women coming from enriched circles are educated with more difficulties, what could be surprising since they count on the suitable material means in order to have a good quality education if so they wish. But they are corrupted by richness, titles and property up to the point that they are not in a natural state which facilitates an education based on humility and humanity. In this sense, we may perceive the influence and not the critique by Rousseau.

In Wollstonecraft’s philosophy the role which education should play was clear: the differentiated roles, imposed within the familiar and domestic scope due to gender reasons, 34

should not suppose a basically different kind of education for men and women. If the aim of education is that of creating free beings, we can only label as rational or virtuous to a kind of being who does not obey to any other authority different from reason. Both genders must be educated following the same model since, if it is not like that, nations will not progress nor women will become into Enlightened citizens until they are free (by allowing them to earn their own livelihood), and independent from men.

Wollstonecraft requests that if it is ensured that women are intellectually inferior to men it should be proved by educating women with help of the same methods and contents. She only tolerates one difference among the sexes: the physical one. Everything else is the fruit of a wrong education which reduces women to servitude and to the most heinous privacy of rights. Wollstonecraft criticizes the subjected sensitivity by means of which women were created in order to feel things rather than to understand them, as all the female power rested on their feminine charms and weakness. Thus, she demanded the rights of that oppressed half part of humanity, excluded and left with neither voice nor vote.

Ultimately, Wollstonecraft defended that no kind of progress would be possible provided that patriarchal and aristocratic privileges were not brought to an end. To Wollstonecraft the important thing is that education leads to autonomy, economic independency and equality between men and women.

5.7.-Woman as a sexual object

Wollstonecraft lived in a period in which the rush of women to get married was something which was clearly expressed in her essay Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787). To Wollstonecraft education will be aimed at achieving a straight and firm temperament, insomuch as she affirms that “daughters spend too much time in dressing themselves”, that “the body hides the mind” and that “the dress should just garnish the person who wears it but never should it be a rival” (p. 55). There are many autobiographical data in this book: she experiments in her own flesh that love is not such a rational matter and that we cannot remove our passions. Love is a powerful enemy: “There is nothing worse to destruct internal peace than platonic relationships […] The heart is too much of a traitor” (p. 75). Due to that, she advices young women to be subdued: “passion should be rooted out or it will damage the mind as well as wane the respect to virtue” (p. 73).

It is in these first writings that Wollstonecraft clearly expresses that the objective of any woman is that of being a wife and a mother at the same time. Nonetheless, in other occasions she contradicts herself when, by approaching to the argumentations of the philosopher Emmanuel Kant, suggests us that women should understand that their true moral duties must go further than their own families and obligation should be over feelings, the Kantian categorical imperative: “universal benevolence is the first duty […] earthy pleasures will not fill the mind” (p. 76). All these ideas have resulted in other authors such as Celia Amorós (1985) having affirmed (without having contextualized this author enough) that Enlightened feminism by Wollstonecraft is of a Puritanism worthy of a convent of Clarisian nuns, excessively Puritan and moralizing like. Such assertions like these ones justify, even more a detailed analysis of her whole work.

In the novel Maria or The Wrongs of Woman (1792) Wollstonecraft highlights that women do have feelings and sexual rights as their male counterparts. But such feelings and sexual desires concealed and rejected according to the fulfillment of the rules of sophistication focused on keeping the yoke of patriarchy. In the preface she says that her aim is that of showing the misery and oppression beard by women, who are the result both of laws and social customs of the society of her days. She clarifies that she cannot imagine any other more painful kind of situation for such a sensitive woman than that of being forced to live tied to a man for life, having to renounce to so many things because of fear. She says that love has to be fed up with delicacy and that we should reject what she calls: “marital despotism of hearth and conduct” (p. 9) which ends up by downgrading the mind. These are the grievances suffered by the different types of women. Maria considered herself an “insulated being, from the misfortune of her birth, she despised and preyed on the society by which she had been oppressed, and loved not her fellow-creatures, because she had never been loved […] degraded was she let loose on the world” (p. 15) Wollstonecraft’s words expressed her female vindication: “The mind necessarily imprisoned in its own little tenement; and, fully occupied by keeping it in repair, has not time to rove abroad for improvement” (p. 48).

The quotation which more accurately expresses female inferiority is that in which the main character was disheartened because of living with her father’s lover who even dared to seduce her brother. She says: “By allowing women but one way of rising in the world, the fostering the libertinism of men, society makes monsters of them, and then their ignoble vices are brought forward as a proof of inferiority of intellect” (p. 72).

Maria does not stand her family household and she gets married with help of her uncle’s endowment. Nevertheless, she recognizes that her “haste to escape from a temporary dependence, […] had been caught in a trap, and caged for life” (pp. 76-77) and adds that “after spending some days with him alone, I have imagined myself the most stupid creature in the world” (p. 77). Her husband turned from indifference to rudeness and she abandons the conjugal bedroom: “personal intimacy without affection, seemed, to me the most degrading, as well as the most painful state in which a woman […] could be placed” (p. 78).

Maria (Wollstonecraft’s alter ego) says that “we cannot […] endeavor to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us” (p. 86). Moreover, Maria also points out the different treat a man receives in comparison to women when he separates of his wife and only has the obligation to provide her with livelihood: “A woman, on the contrary, resigning what is termed her natural protector […] is despised” (p. 90). She denounces again that having been “born a woman—and born to suffer, in endeavouring to repress my own emotions, I feel more acutely the various ills my sex are fated to bear” (p. 115).

To Wollstonecraft women are considered as sexual objects, as she continuously denounces in Rights of Woman. She does not only condemn female exploitation in sexual relationships but also as far as sexuality is concerned on a more general basis. According to our author, attraction between the sexes corrupts both of them. Sexual pleasure was to her something lustful to women, even in the realm of marriage.

“In order to fulfil the duties of life, and to be able to pursue the various employments which form the moral character, a master and mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other with passion” (Rights of Woman. p. 17).

Young women are educated to be ‘coquettish’—in the sense it is used in Rights of Woman— to be the most “precious toys” of men, as Wollstonecraft nicknames women in Mary, a Fiction. Chapter V from Rights of Woman, entitled «Animadversions on Some of The Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity Bordering on Contempt», examines some of the most popular prescriptions to the notion of sexual modesty so much offered to women: “[…] women ought to be weak and passive […]” (p. 40) She quotes Rousseau again and says that for him women depended on men both in virtue as in their necessities (p. 40). And all this had already been made clear when in chapter II she had strongly asserted that: “[…] her first wish

should be to make herself respectable, and not rely for all her happiness on a being subject to like infirmities with herself” (p. 16).

Femininity and behaviour of the character of Sophie from L’Émile by Rousseau is described as follows in Rights of Woman: “Her dress is extremely modest in appearance, and yet very coquettish in fact: your imagination” (p. 44). Such a kind of assertion—and Rights of Women is full of more instances like this above quoted—has led to some authors to label Wollstonecraft as a sexual Puritan. This author’s point of view on the notion of sex was very much influenced by the emerging Middle –class repressive ideas dealing with the need to keep female decency. But, in contrast to this aversion towards physical eroticism she captures in her first writings, there is also a remarkable emphasis on the idea of love as a key spiritual strength.

To Wollstonecraft both men and women fail to pursue a series of passions which lack of a suitable aim and, this way, she more satirically adds: “The habitual state of the affections always loses by their gratification. The imagination, which decks the object of our desires, is lost in fruition”. (p. 45). According to her, if we address erotic imagination exclusively towards mortal objects, then imagination goes corrupt. Yet, when imagination is addressed towards the sublime, it enlightens the soul and gives us a clear evidence of the existence of a religious immortality. There are many Platonic ideas here, as well as of the great heritage Wollstonecraft owes to Rousseau, since she did admire many things of him in spite of not agreeing with him in respect to women’s exclusion of the civic life. Wollstonecraft redirects us to La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) by Rousseau, in which the adulterous passion of two lovers turns into divine love and a promise of love after death.

Rousseau establishes in his writings about sexuality the famous distinction between two kinds of eroticism: physical love, based on sexual instinct, and moral love, based on fantasies with an ideal love object. Emile’s love towards Sophie is based on a passionate erotic idealization. Men create the women they want with help of their imagination. Women, on the contrary, as Rousseau suggests, must focus on the adoration of their husbands, inasmuch as female imagination should concentrate on a more banal kind of things such as dresses. Sophie’s concealed side suddenly appears in the text and then hides herself in her bedroom with Fénelon’s novel in her hands: “[…] Sophie aimait Télémaque et l´amait avec une passion dont rien ne put le guérir ». (L´Émile, p.586).There remains this new Sophie, lost in erotic fantasies

on a male hero, until her parents desperate and Rousseau himself—as author of this plot— intervenes in order to restore the original Sophie, a less imaginative kind of being.

Wollstonecraft was reading these fragments from L´Émile in the period in which she was involved in the writing of Mary, a Fiction. Even though in the preface of the novel she explicitly asserts that her model of female heroine was not Rousseau’s Sophie, it may not sound too implausible to suggest that the fictional Mary from the novel was the result of that female erotic imagination Rousseau makes reference to. Later on, in The Wrongs of Woman: or, Maria, a gothic tale of love and betrayal by means of which Wollstonecraft brings back to life the main character of her very first novel: Mary. As it is the case of her predecessor, Mary is very imaginative: impressed by her evil husband in a moonstruck asylum, she spends her time in a constant daydream until she casually meets with a sensitive and good-hearted man whose name was, again, Henry. Just like Mary had done before her, she begins to conceive him as an erotic object she projects in her inner sexual wants.

Men in general terms, as explained Wollstonecraft in 1792, are naturally rougher and grosser than women. According to Pennell (1985) referring to a letter in which Wollstonecraft addresses to Gilbert Imlay in 1794, she accuses him of lacking of the enough sensitivity to make out appetite from love: “I have found out that I have more mind than you[…] because I can […] find food for love in the same object much longer than you.” (p. 87). This letter suggests that women, or at least those women like Wollstonecraft, are much more in touch than men with their rational nature. It makes a direct refutation to the classical dichotomy between the male intelligible world vs the female sensitive one.

Also, in this sense and answering Burke, Wollstonecraft says in Rights of Women that women own and must overcome that weakness awarded to them and the path to do it is to fight in order to study, become educated and approach as much as possible to God and perfection, as well as denying their continuously seek for attendance. What Wollstonecraft is going to look for is that women reverence and fear God as the only means to get free and love themselves.

Just like Pennell (1985) quotes in another letter from Wollstonecraft to Imlay of 30th December 1794 in which she confesses to consider men as tyrant and how the weirdest thing in the world is to find a man with delicacy and feelings enough to govern over his own desires: “You know my opinion of men […] I think of them as systematic tyrants, and that is the rarest thing in the world to meet with a man with sufficient delicacy of feeling to govern

desire” (p. 92). The new Sophie vindicates a role of woman characterized by rationality and her own intellectual ability instead of the stereotypical female sentimentalism and subjection as a simple object of domination.

This new heroine—or model of woman as now defends Wollstonecraft—will only be understood if we contextualize it with the English bourgeois ideal of household of her days, which gives value to the notion of family and the role of the woman as instructor of the moral conscience of her children. Thus, marriage constituted the model of solidary, faithful and comprehensive love between husband and wife against the more disturbing French model, that of the ‘passionate love’. Puritanism prescribes the preservation, unfailingly, the good manners and the control of passionate outbursts. Women are expected to be worshippers of motherhood and concealment within the private sphere, by granting them the category of ‘moral superiority’ directly linked to their decency.

Our main thesis is that Mary Wollstonecraft did also take part—paradoxically—in this Puritan morality. In spite of her urge to dignify women by diverting them from sentimentalism as source of corruption, she fell as prey to her own self-control which forced her to reject sexual intercourse and passionate love. She herself interjected in her confrontation against the world and compromise to change it, since she was the product of Puritan morality, from which she tried to get away. Trapped in the logic of the decent woman of her days—giving priority to reason vs feeling—sacrificed female sexual enjoyment.

Wollstonecraft was so obsessed to discredit the idea of woman as a mere sexual object that she was a prey of her idea of decent woman and thus, in some of her passages, she came to deny the existence of sexual desire in women. She says that women are more caste than men and that, because of having a more perfected reasoning, they own more modesty. Even though Wollstonecraft thought that modesty had to be cultivated equally among both sexes, it is very closed in sexual matter and has that idea of marriage at the Puritan style, up to the point that in Rights of Women comes to say that the father and the mother of the family should not keep on loving passionately within marriage (p. 60).

Her attack on passionate love and sex would not only be heritage and influence of the Puritan morality, but also a hint indicating that she had met with one of the strongest points of the dilemma between femininity and masculinity, giving as a result to the cultural consideration of female innocence and decency. This way is expressed by Conger (1994):

Wollstonecraft was, on several occasions, trapped in the need to be a decent woman. She tried to fight against such a social set of shadows with help of reason and virtue. This would lead her to pay for the high and misleading price of the negation of female sexuality in an attempt to run to safety. (p. 81).

The dilemma which is present in her whole work (between judge and feeling, reason and passion as if she was a stoic woman) is something we also find in her life since, while she writes Rights of Woman the difficulties of women to reconcile virtue or reason with feelings and love, appears in her love affair with the Swiss painter Henry Fuseli, who haunted the circle of Johnson and who was married. When they met he was 47 and she 29. She professed him a platonic love so she had to fight against her reason and against her will. This will provoke a feeling of restlessness to her which was incremented because of the state of chastity she had been living with, as well as because of the opinion and social judgement she could suffer. We cannot negate that by knowing these autobiographical data our reading of Rights of Woman is much better understood as far as sexual disillusionment is concerned.

Later on, she met the American Gilbert Imlay in the radical circles she haunted in France. Being in the realm of a revolutionary France, a more relaxed Mary left away her rigid morality and it seems that she let her hair down and became the lover of that American. It shows that she achieved to link the imperatives of reason and passion. When this love ends, she reconsiders her feelings and passions and wants to get her identity back. She travels to Scandinavia and it is then that she writes one of her most precious books: Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark9 (1796). It consists of some letters which are like a replica of the most moralist landscapes of Rights of Woman, and, at the same time, the antithesis to the sentimentalism (understood as abnegation and suffering) we had seen in her first novel Mary A Fiction, where she vehemently affirmed that “Her understanding was strong and clear, when not clouded by her feelings; but she was too much the creature of impulse, and the slave of compassion” (p. 11). It was about a contradictory kind of sensitivity she was able of manifesting at long last: “[…] by her mother’s illness, her friend’s misfortunes, and her own unsettled mind. (p 13). And also, it was about an internal fight which turned out to be so much unbearable that yet adopting an apparent calm “when her husband […] would […] mention anything like love, […] she would […] wish that the earth would open and swallow her” (p. 63).

9 Hereinafter it will appear as The Letters. 41

In The Letters it seems that, for the first time, we have reached a possible reconciliation between reason and feeling. The kind of reason which appears in these letters stops being a mere receptor of objective truths and turns into an active and reflexive element impregnated of emotions of subjectivity. In these letters she includes descriptions of nature as a manifestation of her feelings. It is here that we discover to the Romantic Wollstonecraft. The Letters is, as Milagros Fernández Poza exhibits in her preparatory study which appears in the Spanish edition of this work: “un viaje en el que se nos muestra dos itinerarios” (p.39). There is one outer reality she describes in detail and another inner one which comes to us by means of the discovery of Nature in harmony with the necessities of our own sensitivity. Her cravings to break chains with the outer world were nothing else but an excuse to inquire in her own self. Her apparent model of independent woman encloses the pain of her absolute loneliness, as it was the case of the monster of the novel Frankenstein, who was curiously enough created by her own daughter, Mary Shelley. Our author searched, as pointed out by Fernández Poza “en una tierra de nadie, el descanso y la paz que su propio mundo le negaba” (p.34). And the truth is that she seems to find that idyllic vision, perfect moments which would end up sooner than later by dragging her again to unhappiness and restlessness. This feelings kept on provoking on her the contradiction between love and hate towards the man who had approached her to those places she describes passionately.

Her idealized individual I, had no other remedy than facing the you, the others. That is to say, she had to face the perfect model of society she used to dream of and which had never been found neither in her trip to France nor in those contradictory revolutionary ideas which failed to include women within the public scope. In her XIII letter she joins to the Rouseaunian ideas of progress as a synonym of perversion and corruption of men. Hence the necessity of a coming back to childhood, Nature and senses: “Whilst men have senses, whatever soothes them lends wings to devotion […] this acknowledgement is the most sublime homage we can pay to the Deity” (p. 68).

In her notion of eternity of the human soul she finally rises up to the concept of the Creator: “I cannot bear to think of being no more—of losing myself—[…] it appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist” (p. 42). The problem is that Mary also warns us about the dangers of the feelings of love towards what is beautiful, being it Nature or God, insomuch as women are thought to love what is imperfect and is able to confuse the passions towards a man such as Imlay, whom she will finally reject. These contradictions and dualities will lead her to try 42

to kill herself but also to marry the editor Godwin, in a time in which both of them had been going against the notion of marriage. But the truth is that they had no time enough to regret because, four months after their marriage, our author dies. Such a short and intense life which Burdiel perfectly summarizes in this sentence: “Wollstonecraft vivió debatiéndose entre las fluctuantes sombras de esos estereotipos en el momento mismo en que estaban consolidándose en su versión contemporánea.”(p. 93).

6.-NEOFEMINISM AS AN ENLIGHTENED HERITAGE

The Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Friedan retakes part of the spirit of Wollstonecraft trying to analyse why women, who during the II WW had buoyed economy and their families up, had now lost their rights. She did not understand why the idea that academic education could not be incompatible with women had come back again to people’s minds. If those women had reaped the fruits of the previous feminist movements, what was happening then? Why did they accept to lock themselves again at home with no other life project than that of becoming mothers and wives? “What gives the mystique its power? Why did women go home again?” (Friedan, p. 50).10

Friedan retakes Wollstonecraft’s idea of education as a basic element both for the access of women to the public scope and to the acquisition of equality in the same terms as men. This liberal feminist is aware of the power that education has to socialize men and women: “[…] I think that education, and only education, has saved and can continue to save […] women from the greater dangers of the feminine mystique” (The Feminine Mystique, p. 290). It was about overcoming the appearances of those disappointed women who were not happy with the feminine mystique. Women had to retake their life projects and make the most of their potential as human beings. In such a way, it was necessary to make them aware about the fact that they had accommodated themselves and accepted their subordination.

Friedan vindicates the heritage of the classic Enlightened feminists such as Wollstonecraft, the suffragists as well as Seneca Falls: “[…] the first Woman’s Rights Convention […] as woman’s grievances against man” (The Feminine Mystique, p. 63). That is why she devotes

10 In the 1950s women (with the right to vote and education opportunities) must be redirected home and it was intended that they accepted the traditional role division making women to renounce to the exercise of their recently gained rights. Males who had come back from war were claiming for their old jobs. So now the concept of ‘domestic role’ must be reinvented as a worthy occupation. Thus, female magazines of those days brought the model of a free, on the move woman who chose to stay at home because she was competent enough to take her home as if it was such a thing as an entrepreneurial task. 43

chapter IV of The Feminine Mystique to vindicate that theoretical heritage as a mental ability enabling all human beings, leaving the notion of sex apart, to give shape to an idea or a project.

She reminds us that her main thesis is based on the fact that"[…] the problem for women […] is not sexual but a problem of identity” (p. 58). Thus, she goes against the cultural limitations established to women during the Victorian period. She is describing a culture which “[…] does not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings” (p. 58). Therefore, women “[…] must learn to compete then, not as a woman, but as a human being” (p. 306)

The mystique is a beautiful lie pretending to reduce women to the domestic frame: “After the loneliness of war […] the frightening uncertainty, the cold immensity of the changing world, women as well as men sought the comforting reality of home and children” (p 146).

By keeping on with the line of thought inherited from Wollstonecraft, we find Kate Millet who also criticizes patriarchy and the androcentric perspective. She recognizes to be classified within the Enlightened tradition of Simone de Beauvoir, even though Sexual Politics differs from Le Deuxième Sexe because of its political rather than psychological approach. Kate analyzes the notion of patriarchy as a system of domination and defines the patriarchal government as an institution by means of which the half part of population (women) find themselves under the control of the other half (men): “[…] however, a sexual revolution would bring the institution of patriarchy to an end, abolishing both the ideology of male supremacy, and the traditional socialization by which it is upheld […]” (p. 62).

Kate Millet sees colonization within patriarchal socialization as an illegitimate manoeuvre of domination. That is why she retakes the critique to those Enlightened ideas which left women apart:

Since the Enlightenment, the West has undergone a number of cataclysmic changes: industrial, economic, and political revolution. But each appeared to operate, to a large extent, without much visible or direct reference to one half of humanity (p. 64).

In this sense, and in the same page, she makes reference to Wollstonecraft: “Out of this intellectual milieu came Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the

first document asserting the full humanity of women and insisting upon its recognition” (p.65).

Millet points out that it is men who own all the springs of power since they do not only control the ideology of the system: sciences, the arts, religion or philosophy, but also the industry, the economy, the army or the government. She adds that the 20th century kind of family, with its differentiated roles for men and women, plays an important role in the reproduction and imitation of these gendered components of the system for future generations. This way it could be said that the patriarchal system produces gender. In the penultimate paragraph of her book she says: “For to actually change the quality of life is to transform personality, and this cannot be done without freeing humanity from the tyranny of sexual- social category and conformity to sexual stereotype, as well as abolishing racial caste and economic class” (p. 363).

7.-CONCLUSION

Our tour through the lights and shadows of the Enlightened Period has brought us to the right to state conclusively that there is a deep contradiction between the objectives of rationalization, the fight against prejudices, the access to autonomy and, on the other hand, between the legitimization of sex inequality and the exclusion of women from the public scope. The Enlightenment does not fulfil its promises: reason is not ‘the universal reason’ as such, since women are excluded from it.

The above analysed feminist theories prove that the social constructions from patriarchal societies are translated into cultural patrons which reproduce sexual stereotypes and reinforce sex-based hierarchies, giving priority to men. The weight of the patriarchal culture, as Beauvoir would label it, keeps on generating power relationships of men over women.

With globalization we are witnessing the crisis of the patriarchal kind of family, as well as the emergence of new family models. At last the Rousseaunian patriarchal pact is collapsed and new ways of thinking as well as new social scenarios are created. We have to reflect about the role and the social space this new world offers to that other half of humanity forgotten during the Enlightenment (that is to say, women). The old conservative discourse is being masked under the wings of most of the mass media. Women keep on being invisible beings and have become in the red pencil of economists, in the supporting stick of many homes which have

been cut with social help. It is true that women are becoming more and more immersed within the labour market but with the same conditions of invisibility.

And the worst thing is that patriarchal ideology has modelled our unconscious (as denounced by Betty Friedan), up to the point that the representation of women we depict in our minds— about we and our role in society—is nothing but our own assumption of patriarchal watchwords. Prohibition is not needed anymore since it is enough with a closure of eyes against mass media stereotypes. We are conscious of the remains of patriarchal oppression in our society. Hence, we assume a reflexive attitude which is supported by the analysis we have made on the Enlightened feminism as a linking point in the fight for our rights.

Nonetheless, there is no need to vindicate that women should be treated as if they were men because, that way, we will be continue insisting on the value of difference. What we have to demand, just like Condorcet does, is simpler: that all people are treated in equal terms because over the notion of gender is that of the species.

The strong changes which are taking place nowadays, such as migratory flows (provoked by misery and wars) fundamentalisms or the so called feminization of poverty, call for a dialogue among women at a global level. Freedom must be, as defended by Wollstonecraft, a universal issue. It has been too many years since we overcame that aspect mentioned by Beauvoir: that women were not independent subjects. We do not dream through the dreams of men anymore. We have our own poetry. Now we do not only give birth or nurture others but we also create. It is the end of totalitarian regimes based on cultural exclusion. The alarm light, switched on by Wollstonecraft about the social discrimination of women as the oppressed class, has been spread out, in such a manner, that her dream to see the ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity propagated is becoming a reality. Her spirit of brave and compromised woman is still present.

We may keep in our minds that sentence by Wollstonecraft included in her essay Thoughts on the Education of Daughters when she says that “the greatest deception we could ever come through is that our main wishes come true” (p. 84). Hence the necessity and the incentive to keep on taking part in the fight for the achievement of true equality, not only concerning women but the whole humankind, and all this under the common roof of a real globalization.

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ANNEX I: CONCEPTUAL MAPS

With the aim to facilitate the understanding about my thesis on the Enlightened feminism, we hereby attach some conceptual maps with the purpose to show, from a series of coherent and logical structures, the main and secondary ideas. Thus, these connections are aimed at showing the connection of all the above exposed in our research, both about Wollstonecraft herself and about the antecedents and later in time feminist influences.

‘COHERENT’ ENLIGHTENMENT French Revolution incoherences

FEMINIST IDEAS

We have achieved legal but not legal rights

Reading and analyzing Rights of Woman

nowadays might be very suitable

INTRODUCTION.-

Subjected to a patriarchal domination structure

Her inabilities are underlined according to models created WOMAN

by men N

Bringing to light her situation

She is the result of her Wollstonecraft education

ENLIGHTENED FEMINISM

Social and cultural Notion of gender construction

Social contract Beauvoir

Pact of subjection to the male

PATRIARCHAL IDEOLOGY

Woman = Culture Man

Private scope Public scope

Feelings Reason

Women are excluded from the Enlightened vindications

Objective

To disarticulate the ideology of the different and complementary nature of the sexes

JUSTIFICATION

Secondary role Home Women throughout history Shadow of men

Domestic and reproductive tasks

Equality in the theory Inequality in the practice

To develop a rereading of the Enlightened Period and its posterior influence in the consecution of gender equality

Objective of my MA Dissertation

ANTECEDENTS

THE CLASSICS Plato Even though women is an inferior

being, her education should answer to (Republic) the creation of ‘the perfect State’

Aristotle

Subjection of woman

(Politics)

15th c. 15th Christine de Pizan bons sens Ability to reason

(La cité des dames)

17th c.17th RATIONALISM Descartes Fight against Clear and prejudices different ideas (The Discourse on the

Method) Truth

Poullain de la Barre ‘The Precious Notion of merit Movement’ (De l’education des dames)

Wars Origin of housework gender-division

Freedom= equality

EMPIRISM Defence of 17th c.17th Separation of powers John Locke individual rights (Montesquieu)

Olympe de Gouges Women are born free and in equality of rights to (Declaration of the Rights of those men

18th c. ENLIGHTENMENT18th Woman and the Female Citizen).

Heir of the Glorious Revolut. (1688) Richard Price

Wollstonecraft’s tutor.

Marquis de He defends the political involvement of

Condorcet women. The cause of differences is in education

Preambles

WOLLSTONECRAFT

French Revol. Life

Industrial Revol.

Rationalist Enlightened thought not Influences Critique universalized to women

-Puritanism vs radicalism Rousseau. Chapter. V L´Émile

-Enlightened rationalism vs Romantic subjectivity Prejuicios de la dominación patriarcal

-Reason vs passion

Contradictions in

Wollstonecraft B. Friedan Women have interiorized their own subjection

Breaking up with the distinctions Education

among the sexes as a result of social conventions

Exercise of reason

Virtue

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION

Why have I chosen this author?

Enlightened rebel

Education as a socializing and equalitarian element

Analysis of her contradictions

She ends up being prey of everything she tried to fight against

-Puritanism

-Tradition

- Subjection consent

A Vindication of the Rights of Men

French Revolution Burke

Defence of tradition and monarchies

-Idea of progress

-Civil and religious freedom

-Society without privileges

-Defense of equality

-Republican ideology

Common sense Autonomous ability to judge and reason without letting ourselves be influenced by prejudices

Personal merit is valued and not heritage

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Complaint of the situation of She vindicates her ability to Non choose her own destiny women -

discriminatory education

Defence of gender equality

Exclusion of reason Fight against prejudices

Critique to Rousseau’s Exclusion of socio- political rights Chapter V from L’Émile

Imposition of the domestic Incapacitates woman,

nature of woman making her superficial

Prey of senses Right

She overrides her Duty Reason reason

Virtue

Feminism of the difference

Wollstonecraft Social construction

Simone de Beavoir

To recover lost dignity

Wollstonecraft says that Vindicate the essence of the women’s destiny relies on feminine against patriarchal children upbringing abuses

Contradiction and duality

Wollstonecraft vs. Rousseau

Admiration Indignation

Universal Pact of subjetion Suffragism

Scopes

Public Private

Man Woman

Pre-social state State of pure nature

Sexual pact As something natural Social pact

Monopoly of reason Permanent state of childhood

L’Émile (Book V) Sophie

Free Dependent, chaste, modest and subjected to Wollstonecraft’s her husband Rousseau justifies a sex critique: Enlightened differentiated education ideals must also be Woman is as rationally which for Wollstonecraft expanded to women endowed as man should be equalitarian

They cloud reason PREJUDICES Legitimation of power (men)

The bon sens as an unmasking of prejudices

Equality of rights Autonomous ability to judge

EDUCATION

Training guides Reduces inequalities

Gender-mixed Tool of (Wollstonecraft) oppression

Liberal education Autonomous use of Sentimental E education reason

(Rousseau)

Progress and social equality

EDUCATION

Liberation from REASON Virtue Moral beings traditional habits

Independence of Equality of rights woman

Unmasking of prejudices Intellectual Economic

Citizenship Problem of identity in Duty women Wife and mother

Progress Virtue = reputation Wollstonecraft does not

Giving priority to reason (actually) break up over feelings and sacrifices with the public/ private sexual femininity division

Puritanism. Sex is something lascivious. It understands love Domestic society Civil society as a spiritual force

Religion

Faith in Wollstonecraft

Rousseau

Feminism with nuances

Running away from earthy objects

PHASES Concept of piety

Against the carnal and Thoughts on the Education of Daughter refinements

Religion turns to be her A Short Resistence in Sweden own creation Maria

Religion is the only thing Mary a Fiction

which makes life bearable

Rights of Woman Rational religious Erotic illusion becomes into feelings an everlasting truth

Material achievements Freedom Reason

Spiritual objects Virtue

Love to God is like a rational product

Heritage Wollstonecraftof against the patriarc Fight against prejudices The subjection of women. J. S. Mill

Education Marriage (social Slavery of construction) woman

Tool for female Contradictions Complementarity of emancipation the sexes

Public/private sphere

Public expression of Suffragism Margaret Fuller

h her thesis al fundaments of reason

Against the feminism of the Simone de Beauvoir Gender is conditioned by difference culture

Education as a means to have Access to the public sphere and equality Betty Friedan

The relation between the sexes is a Kate Millet power-based kind of relation: Patriarchy

ANNEX II: FROM `VINDICATIONS´ TO HER CONFLICTIVE ADMIRATION AND INDIGNATION TOWARDS ROUSSEAU

The relationship between Wollstonecraft and Rousseau is going to be divided in equal parts between admiration and indignation. As a convinced Rousseaunian, her admiration will turn into deception and indignation when she realized that Rousseau himself, so visionary as he was and rightful in other facets, placed women within the private life in order to talk about their destiny bounded to a pact of subjection to men. I have put myself on Wollstonecraft’s shoes and have imagined what she would have argued against Rousseau’s patriarchal affirmations. What I basically did was to paraphrase her words to imagine her answers and to face, in the purest Socratic style, both Wollstonecraft’s and Rousseau’s texts.

Socratic dialogue: Wollstonecraft vs Rousseau

ADMIRATION AND INDIGNATION

-Roussau, as a defender of universal -Critique to a Rousseau who relegates women suffrage and of human rights and to the private and domestic scope with the aim democracy to safeguard traditional customs for the -Men are born free and equal common benefit -He recognizes that reason is unable to -To Rousseau women are not subjects but achieve social equality objects as a result of a social and sexual pact -Wollstonecraft will not accept that the natures of men and women are different because they are in differentiated states of a presumed State of Nature -Reason must reveal what is hidden behind -To Wollstonecraft, Rousseau’s analysis is not appearances coherent inasmuch as sexual inequality is not denounced because of being considered as something natural

CONFRONTATIONS: An imaginative Socratic dialogue between both authors

To Rousseau there are two states of nature: Wollstonecraft asks Rousseau why in his male nature as a founder of the public hypothesis of the state of nature women space (men as rightful citizens) vs female appear already concluded. The sexual nature as founder of the private space. contract separates women from their state of nature. “Disgusted with artificial manners and virtues, the citizen of Geneva, instead of properly sifting the subject, threw away the sheet with the chaff, without waiting to inquire whether the evils, which his ardent soul turned from indignantly, were the consequence of civilization, or the vestiges of barbarism.” (p.9 Rights of Woman).

-Rousseau justifies, as if basing himself on -Wollstonecraft will criticize this dialectical the Hegelian dialectics, the difference necessity when denouncing that the supremacy between the public scope (the freedom and of males went with the fact that Sophie (as an equality Emilio has the right to) and the ideal of the perfect subjected woman) learned private one (the subjection of women to suffer, to undergo injustices and the through marital contracts such as that of grievances made by men. Sophie). […] faite pour obéir à un être aussi “[…] women cannot, by force, be imparfait que l´homme souvent si confined to domestic concerns; for they plein de vices, et toujours si plein will however ignorant, intermeddle de défauts, elle doit apprendre de with more weighty affairs […]” (p.5 bonne heure à souffrir même Rights of Woman) l´injustice et à supporter les torts d´un mari sans se plaindre ; The alleged morality of Rousseaunian reason is (Rousseau, 2009, p. 534). broken up when analyzing the subjection of

[…] Soutenir vaguement que les women as a natural fact. deux sexes sont égaux, et que leurs When applied to women, every notion of devoir son les mêmes, cést se freedom and equality lose any liberating perdre en déclamations vaines, content and acquire a new sense: that of cést ne rien tant quón ne répondra oppression. pas à cela. (Rousseau, 2009, p. 521)

Il nímporte donc pas seulement We perceive huge differences between Emile que la femme soit fidèle, mais and Sophie. Their nature and posterior social quélle soit jugée telle par son projection are essentially different since mari, par ses proches, par tout le women will not only have to be respectable but monde, il importe quélle soit also to pretend to be so. modeste […] quélle porte aux Wollstonecraft will answer Rousseau that his yeux dáutres, comme en sa propre defense of the supposed inferiority of women is conscience. (Rousseau, 2009, p nothing but the result of irrational traditions 521) (the same traditions which Rousseau, paradoxically, wanted to fight against): “I declare against all power built on prejudices, however hoary” (Rights of Woman: p. 51).

-Rousseau legitimizes the pact of Wollstonecraft questions the male monopoly of subjection of women in the private scope : reason in defense of female reason. She intends […] parce que la dépendance étant un état that women own power over themselves and naturel aux femmes, les filles se sentent take part in political and moral issues. She faites pour obéir. (Rousseau, 2009, p. 533) impugns the state of ignorance women are still subjected to and goes against sexist conventionalisms. Wollstonecraft will talk about gender as a construction of rules encroaching women. Thus, I imagine that she would have directly addressed to Rousseau saying something like this: ‘Dear Rousseau, the concept of nature and

the social projection of Emile and Sophie are radically opposed: one of them, Emile, will receive a kind of education which makes him to develop his moral autonomy, whereas Sophie’s education will be addressed to her dependency and subjection to man’.

-To Rousseau, woman must limit herself -Wollstonecraft will say (1762) that it is clear to a correct exercise of her functions enough that Rousseau contradicts himself with no excess at all, so that she does to when affirming that he is not the responsible of end up by usurping the natural rights of Sophie’s destiny, forgetting that he is man: conditioning her from the very moment in La femme vaut mieux comme which he designs his educative ideal in such a femme et moins comme homme ; pronounced manner. She is making reference partout où elle fait valoir ses droits, to this text from Rousseau’s Book V, extracted elle a lávantage : partout où elle from L’Émile: veut usurper les nôtres, elle reste au- Au lieu donc de destiner dès lénfance dessous de nous (Rousseau, 2009, une épouse à mon Émile, jái attendu pp : 524-525). de connaître celle qui lui convient. Ce nést point moi qui fais cette destination, cést la nature ; mon affaire est de trouver le choix quélle a fait. ( p. 589). In Rights of Woman Wollstonecraft will say that Sophie, the Rousseaunian character, “is, undoubtedly, a captivating one, though it appears to me grossly unnatural” (p. 14). Sophie is an ideal of woman who inhabits Rousseau’s dreams but who lacks of historical reality. To Wollstonecraft Sophie is the most highly refined symbol of the patriarchal dream of domestic woman: “but the artificial structure

has been raised with so much ingenuity, that it seems necessary to attack it in a more circumstantial manner, and make the application myself” (p. 39) To our author Rousseau’s main mistake was his obsession for analyzing the habits of women in such a way that he ends up by justifying that they were innate or natural faculties. Rousseau does not have into account that from the very moment of our birth our likes are socially controlled and that such socialization addresses girls towards coquetry and artifice

Education

The basis of Rousseau’s educative model “In short, they were made women, is that men and women are biologically almost from their very birth, and equal beings but that their nature is compliments were listened to instead of rational. Therefore, their ulterior social instruction. This weakening the mind projection is completely different and Nature was supposed to have acted like need of a separate education, specific of a step-mother, when she formed this every sex: after-thought of creation” (p.41). Dès quúne fois il est démontré que l´homme et la femme ne sont ni ne doivent être constitués de même, de caractère ni te tempérament, il sénsuit quíls ne doivent pas avoir la même éducation. ( p. 523)

-Women are inferior to men and that is -Wollstonecraft proposes a new definition of their virtues too: virtue looking for an Enlightened sense. If […] Ainsi toute l´éducation des reason was something universal, virtue and its femmes doit être relative aux moral expression, as Aristotle would say,

hommes. Leur plaire, leur être should also reach any individual. It should not utiles, se faire aimer et honorer be founded on particular interests or on social déux les-élever jeunes, les soigner utilities but on a same kind of reason for every grands, les conseiller, les consoler, sex. Reason and virtue are the two poles the leur rendre la vie agréable et book Rights of Woman relies on: douce : voilà les devoirs des Let us, my dear contemporaries, arise femmes dans tous les temps, et ce above such narrow prejudices! If quón doit leur apprendre dès leur wisdom is desirable on its own account, enfance. ( p. 526) if virtue, to deserve the name, must be founded on knowledge; let endeavour to strengthen our minds by reflection, till our heads become a balance for our hearts” (p. 46). Moreover, Rousseau makes it very clear Wollstonecraft conceives virtue in a Kantian that this established hierarchical order sense, as the autonomy of reason. To our should, on no account, be inverted, since author virtue can reach any individual it would be a mistake for Sophie’s willingly to practice it. (women’s) education: « Cultiver dans les “[…] all Rousseau’s errors in femmes les qualités de l´homme, et reasoning arose from sensibility […] négliger celles qui leur sont propres, nature carried him toward the other sex cést donc visiblement travailler à leur with such eager fondness, that he son préjudice » ( p. 525). became lascivious. […] He then sought for solitude, not to sleep with the man of nature; or calmly investigate the causes of things […] but merely to indulge his feelings.” (p. 46)

Only the bon sens can transform the educative conceptions of her century and put an end to female subjection, just like expressed in Rights of Woman: “I now appeal from the reveries of fancy and refined licentiousness to the

good sense of mankind, whether, if the object of education be to prepare women to become chaste wives and sensible mothers […] be the one best calculated to produce those ends?” (p. 45) -Rousseau defends that the inferiority of Wollstonecraft will say that such inferiority of women is a natural matter women is not a natural matter at all but the fruit of a historical treat women have received on the part of men: “But avoiding, as I have hitherto done, any direct comparison of the two sexes […] I shall only insist, that men have increased that inferiority till women are almost sunk below the standard of rational creatures.” (p. 19)

-Rousseau will insist on the idea that -Our author will completely deny accepting such subjection of women is something the subjection of women to men as Rousseau irreversible: had defended, since, according to her, such « Les filles doivent être vigilantes subjection is something irrational and anti- et laborieuses; ce n´est pas tout : natural. That is how she expresses it: elles doivent être gênées de bonne “[…] when men contend for their heure. Ce malheur, si c´en est un freedom, and to be allowed to judge for pour elles, est inséparable de leur themselves, respecting their own sexe […] » (p. 532) happiness, it be not inconsistent and « Hors d´état d´être juges elles- unjust to subjugate women, even mêmes, elles doivent recevoir la though you firmly believe that you are décision des pères et des maris acting in the manner best calculated to comme celle de l´Église. »( p. 545) promote their happiness? Who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift of reason?”

(p. 4) One of the main pillars of Rights of Woman will be the effort Wollstonecraft makes to prove, against Rousseau’s opinion and the main part of Enlightened scholars, that women were equally endowed with an innate and undeniable rational ability: “But if women are to be excluded, without having a voice, from a participation of the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to Ward off the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want reason […]” (p. 5)

-Sophie, as a mother and wife, will be -Wollstonecraft will answer her that if she the transmitter of piety and other had to follow the educative instructions of necessary values to keep the morality of Sophie she would have to begin by stopping the State. her writing activity and that she would lose all the power over herself, apart from social conventions.