Monday, September 26, 2016
Mary Wollstonecraft : A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Mary Wollstoncraft's "A Vindication..." is quite interesting in how it lays out her argument. She seems hostile towards sensibility, calling it a "turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart" (pg. 104), which is very different from the other authors we've seen thus far. In fact, her entire introduction is about rejecting passive femininity and women pursuing--or being allowed to pursue--"more masculine and respectable" ways of conducting themselves (pg. 104). Her latter arguments about "cunning" versus "intellect" seem similar (pg, 105). It seems to me that she finds sensibility to be a type of cunning: an underhanded way of applying a woman's intellect to sway people to her cause, as opposed to the more direct and virtuous masculine way. She thus casts off sensibility as a more "feminine" way of arguing and instead uses a much more direct and dare I say logical approach. Rather than appealing to emotions, she calls upon other experts--both contemporary and classical--and presents her arguments as reasonable conclusions anyone who follows they steps she lays out could come to. Vindications thus acts not only as Wollstoncraft's argument, but also her example of how women should be allowed to conduct themselves.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Something that perplexes me about your argument is that you referred to the use of sensibility as "underhanded cunning" (to paraphrase your words), and that you said that with a more negative leaning. I'm not disagreeing with your statement as I do think that's how Wollstonecraft portrays sensibility-- it just raises a question on me as to WHY that is that she does that. To go further, I understand that intellect and sensible cunning are different things, but cunning does have to do with intellect to some degree. So, why would it be viewed as more negative than strict intellect rendered by education? (Once again I'm not trying to refute your argument here at all.) it seems a little strange to me that that's the case, but also fitting for the Romantic era in terms of gender and education reforms.
ReplyDelete