Elsie Godin

Return to ENGL 335B, British Romantic Literature.

Class Summary 03.08.2011

Elsie Godin

Richard Polwhele, Hannah More and Mary Wollstonecraft

This week opened with the introduction to the Canonball project but more importantly opened up the Rights of Woman segment in the class, which looked at Richard Polwhele, Hannah More and Mary Wollstonecraft with an emphasis on the Wollstonecraft selections. The class was asked to examine the chosen works for whether or not the assigned readings were progressive in nature and what differences or similarities the texts shared. At the conclusion of the class it was decided that Wollstonecraft’s works exhibited the greatest amount of exigency in that while women have progressed in a way Wollstonecraft would be pleased with, there are still pitfalls in the equality that authors like Wollstonecraft would have liked to seen eradicated.

During small group discussion Wollstonecraft’s Thoughts on the Education of Daughters and portions of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman were chiefly discussed with Vindication leading much of the focus of the conversation. A general consensus of the group was that Wollstonecraft’s writing style often lead to reiteration of certain topics so that instead of proving her overall thesis, her writing for Vindication sounded repetitious instead of illustrative of her point. Some of these reoccurring themes that the small grouped discussed was the apparent need for women to be outwardly obedient, that “[women] are told from infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning… outward obedience… will obtain for them the protection of man,” and that the forced obedience to masculine power removes the “cunning” from woman’s repertoire (380). The small group also talked about the role of virtue in Wollstonecraft’s Vindication and that women are either depicted as very moral or useless.

Wollstonecraft uses virtue as a tool for the promotion of women's education and that the majority of writers who have contributed literature on “the subject of female education… have contributed to render women more artificial, weak characters, than they would otherwise have been,” meaning that women’s education has been dominated by how many accomplishments a woman can achieve versus her actually becoming educated as a man would (381). Wollstonecraft argues that by fully educating women they may attain a more virtuous state, creating the idea that virtue and knowledge are synonymous. The reasoning behind Wollstonecraft’s use of virtue as a tool to create examples of why women needed to be educated was that it was a qualifying tactic so as not to seem extremist.

During the large group discussion the idea of Wollstonecraft using qualifiers in Vindication was also spread to her argument that women not only needed to be educated but also maintain their motherly duties to the home. Specifically the quote, “the woman who strengthens her body and exercises her mind [through education] will, by managing her family and practicing various virtues, become the friend, and not the humble dependent of her husband,” was brought up and is used by Wollstonecraft as a way to lessen the blow of blaming the masculine system as the reason behind the perceived faults of women (385). This particular quote also brought the large group discussion to the topic of modern perceptions of women and that women are still struggling with Wollstonecraft’s ideas. Women can become educated and are just as equal as men but there are still societal pressures—social norms really—that women have to not only educated themselves but marry early, have children early, and possess a job all while still caring for the home.

This next lead the large group discussion to Wollstonecraft’s concept of beauty and whether or not she would be happy for women’s progression. Wollstonecraft affirms that for as long as women are trapped by beauty they will never reach the educated virtue that is sought after. In modern times both men and women are able to both be educated and luxuriate in hedonistic desires but, as Wollstonecraft has said, it is still a trapping of society. Wollstonecraft would be, decidedly against, the sexualization of young girls and the onslaught of mass media which is a cyclical form of reaffirming social norms. So while there have been many leaps forward—women now have the ability to achieve PhDs and beyond—there are still issues in present day that Wollstonecraft was fighting against. Present day jobs which are dominated by women—teachers, nurses, psychiatry—are all positions that still have a nurturing quality about them and still resemble the tradition roles that Vindication was fighting against.

While much of Mary Wollstonecraft’s writings may seem repetitive in the point that she tries to make clear many of the overarching themes that Wollstonecraft presents are still relevant today. Education as a means to attain another value, such as virtue, the renouncement of beauty in order to bypass superficiality and the right to be equal amongst all people are still present day issues. The concerns of Wollstonecraft’s day may appear to have been conquered but in reality new challenges have arisen that are still being fought.

Words: 829

--Elsiemg 00:45, 15 March 2011 (UTC) Elsie M Godin