Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Women...

...& JS Mill on Liberty


About Mary...

• 27th April 1759 - 10th September 1797
• 18th Century British writer, philosopher and feminist.
• Wrote novels, treatise, travel narrative, A history of the French Revolution, conduct book & children's book.
  
• Best known for her vindication - arguing that women are not naturally inferior to men - only appear to be because they lack education.
• Shouls be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
• Her life has recieved more attention than her writing because of her unconventional relationships.
• Married William Godwin.
• Died at 38, 10 days after the birth of her second daughter.
• When she died William Godwin published her memoir and they were scandalous - ruining her reputation for a century.
• Today she is known as one of the founding philosophers of feminism.
  

A Vindication of the Rights of Women...

• Believes in the immortality of the soul
• Power of improvement - Every individual is a world in itself.
• Nature of reason is the same in all
• Women only created to see through a 'gross medium' and to take things on trust.
• Women have adopted same sentiments as men, for example, flowers being given.
• Generalising ideas - drawing conclusions from individual observations - deserves the name of knowledge.
• Merely just to observe would be the common sense of life.
• This power has denied women and insisted to be inconsistent with their sexual character - let men prove this and I shall grant that only women exist for men.
• The power of generalising ideas is not common with men or women.
• Women always seen as 'slaves' - preventing the process of 'reason' - which is caused by narrowness of mind - the civil governments have created obstacles to prevent cultivation of the female understanding.
• Pleasure is the business of womens life - weak.
• Women have chosen to be short-lived Queens rather than obtain pleasures in equality.
• Compared to birds stuck in a cage - only focusing on their looks.
• Louis 14th - women are always on the watch to please.
• Women are degraded by recieving attentions that men think are 'manly'.
  
• Anger when seeing a man shut a door when a woman could of done it.
• We do not hear of women who claim respect for their abilities.
  

• The vidication in 1792 is responding to educational and political theorists who believed women should not have an education.
• Mary argues that women should have an education to equalise their position in society.
• Women are essential because they educate children
• Broad attack against sexual double standards and to indict men for encouraging women to indulge in excessive emotion.
• Equality between sexes including morality.
• Mary's statements have made it difficult to classify her as a modern feminist - particularly because the word and it's concept were not available to her.
• Written against the background of the French Revolution (1789-1799)
• In responce to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord's 'Rapport sur l'instruction publique' 1791 - which was recommendations for the national system of education. He believed public education 'suited men' and women should be educated from home.
• Extension of Wollstonecraft's 'Rights of Men'
• The Rights of Women engages not only in specific events in Britain and France but also larger questions raised by political philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jaques Rousseau.
• 'Sensibility' - women more emotional than men.
• Women were too fragile to think clearly.
• Society would degenerate because women are the educators of children.
• Women and men are equal in the eyes of God.
• Wollstonecraft calls on men to initiate the social and political changes as women are too uneducated to do so.
• Addressed to the middle class (most natual state) Attacking the wealthy - same arguments against women.
• "A time of great social and political upheaval throughout Europe and America" Political reform movements.

John Wilkes on Liberty...

• Journalist and advocate in civil liberties.
• Essay on women - dirtiest poem in the English language.
• Appearance - crossed, squinty eyes - a jutting lower jaw that exposed some stunningly awful lisp.
• A colourful life - forced into exile numerous times, Mayor of London and a member of Parliament, elected 3 times from prison.
• Private life was notorious, countless mistresses, buried in in debt, duels.
• The lower class - the mobs in London loved him and so did the Americans.
• He put forward the firt bill ever proposing universal male suffrage in 1775.
• Set up The Briton - Wilkes the North Briton.
• The North Briton - attack on the government and the Scottish cabal - crowded with scandal, rumours and insults.
• Described Lord Egrement "a weak, passionate and insolent secretary of State" and secretary of the treasury Martin was "the most treacherous, selfish, mean, abject, low-lived and dirty fellow that ever wriggled himself into secretaryship".
• Could not prove he was the autor of North Briton.
• Issue 45 - called the King a liar - General warrant issued - Wilkes arrested - named the crime but not who they were arresting.
  
• Wilkes sued the government for invasion of privacy and for false arrest. It was unheard of for privately sueing the government.
• Arrested again.
• Obscene poem was read aloud in the House of Commons - pandemonion - one MP fainted in shock - Lord Sandwich - Hellfire club.
• Fled to France - but was arrested on his return.
• Wilkes re won his seat from prison but the House voted Wikles incapable of being elected.
• City officers elected him alderman and Mayor of London soon after.
• Reporting of Parliament - uses protection of City of London against Westminster.