This was a challenging book to read. I've wanted to read this book for a long time but I found Wollstonecraft's sentences quite difficult to comprehend. They are wordy, somewhat stilted (Romantic), vague, even obscure at times (to a 21st century eye), speaking too much in euphemistic exalted generalities rather than plain specifics.
An example, writing about education:
[...] it is the multitude, with moderate abilities, who call for instruction, and catch the colour of the atmosphere they breathe. This respectable concourse, I contend, men and women, should not have their sensations heightened in the hot-bed of luxurious indolence, at the expense of their understanding; for, unless there be a ballast of understanding, they will never become either virtuous or free: an aristocracy, founded on property, or sterling talents, will ever sweep before it, the alternately timid, and ferocious, slaves of feeling."
When she speaks about the lot of women at the time, I fully agree with her opinion about many of the "feminine" traits and how wrong they are: vapours, interest in superficial things, emphasizing traits such as frailty, delicacy, weakness, timidity, [simulated] disinterest in food - and then the really negative ones such as pettiness, tyranny, petulance etc.
In her chapter on "The State of Degradation to Which Woman is reduced" she refers to a comment from Rousseau to "Educate women like men and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us. MW replied that "This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves." She asks whether women are fulfilling their potential or whether they were "born only to procreate and rot."
I wrote my essay on a quote of Hume's about reason being the slave of passion. MW comments that "The mass of mankind are rather the slaves of their appetites than of their passions". Same thing, according to Hume.
Despite my critique of Wollstonecraft's writing style, I am still awed by the mere fact of her - that in the 1700s, with so many barriers in her way (in every woman's way), she was able to obtain an education and then to support herself in a world far more restrictive and judgemental than today. Reading both about her life and her writing itself, I get a taste of the building excitement people must have felt who travelled in these intellectual circles, which were discussing and challenging the status quo. Having the books for this course arranged chronologically has giving me a tantalizing, albeit superficial, glimpse into how the world I live in today (with all its changes and challenges) has evolved from the world 2000 years ago.
My awe of Wollstonecraft's achievements doesn't mean she was a perfect being. She had her prejudices, her biases, some snobbery. She writes about "Modesty! Sacred offspring of sensibility and reason! - true delicacy of mind!" - note all the exclamation marks… I blame Romanticism. She is very scathing about prostitutes and doesn't seem to have any empathy for their situation and their limited options, the rigours of their lives.
Her book is quite broad-ranging:
The Rights and Duties of Mankind
The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed
Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman is Reduced by Various Causes
Animadversions on Some Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity Bordering on Contempt
Modesty-Comprehensively Considered and not as a Sexual Virtue
Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the importance of a Good Reputation
...The Pernicious Effects [from] Unnatural Distinctions [...] in Society
Parental Affection
Duty to Parents
On National Education
She was a strong proponent of a good education for women, one akin to what boys received rather than just needlecraft and housekeeping +/- painting and piano. I do have to wonder what she would have thought of where women are today. Far more options and fewer restrictions but by no means equality - and I'm sure much of Western society and culture would have horrified her. Overall though I think she would have been pleased that progress has been made.
No comments:
Post a Comment