speaking of advanced thinking in the distant past

[iverglas]

Mary Wollstonecraft. I know there is at least one other fan around here.

I don't claim to have read all of Vindication of the Rights of Women. Although I'm thinking that somebody needs to "translate" it into modern language (I wonder whether it's been done), and maybe I'll make that my retirement project.

Chap. IV. Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman Is Reduced by Various Causes.

This is somebody who would be seen as radical by today's standards, and who just got it all, patriarchy and the whole ball of wax.

The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge. Merely to observe, without endeavouring to account for any thing, may (in a very incomplete manner) serve as the common sense of life; but where is the store laid up that is to clothe the soul when it leaves the body?

This power has not only been denied to women; but writers have insisted that it is inconsistent, with a few exceptions, with their sexual character. Let men prove this, and I shall grant that woman only exists for man. I must, however, previously remark, that the power of generalizing ideas, to any great extent, is not very common amongst men or women. But this exercise is the true cultivation of the understanding; and every thing conspires to render the cultivation of the understanding more difficult in the female than the male world.

I am naturally led by this assertion to the main subject of the present chapter, and shall now attempt to point out some of the causes that degrade the sex, and prevent women from generalizing their observations.

I shall not go back to the remote annals of antiquity to trace the history of woman; it is sufficient to allow that she has always been either a slave, or a despot, and to remark, that each of these situations equally retards the progress of reason. The grand source of female folly and vice has ever appeared to me to arise from narrowness of mind; and the very constitution of civil governments has put almost insuperable obstacles in the way to prevent the cultivation of the female understanding:—yet virtue can be built on no other foundation! The same obstacles are thrown in the way of the rich, and the same consequences ensue.

... Ah! why do women, I write with affectionate solicitude, condescend to receive a degree of attention and respect from strangers, different from that reciprocation of civility which the dictates of humanity and the politeness of civilization authorise between man and man? And, why do they not discover, when 'in the noon of beauty's power,' that they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect, till they are led to resign, or not assume, their natural prerogatives? Confined then in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch. It is true they are provided with food and raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin; but health, liberty, and virtue, are given in exchange. But, where, amongst mankind has been found sufficient strength of mind to enable a being to resign these adventitious prerogatives; one who, rising with the calm dignity of reason above opinion, dared to be proud of the privileges inherent in man? And it is vain to expect it whilst hereditary power chokes the affections and nips reason in the bud.

Although, of course, she wasn't being truly intersectional, since women of other classes didn't suffer from quite the same disabilities as those. (She might be talking about Ann Romney, though!)



edited because I always mistype/never proofread my subject lines ...

[tishaLA]

1. Not to hijack the thread, but if you like Wollstonecraft, you should read

Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" (also known as "The Great Law-Suit&quot . She was one of the American Transcendentalists and hobnobbed with Emerson, Hawthorne, et al--in fact, in surveys of 19th Century literature, she's often unfortunately overlooked. But she deserves to have people reading her.

She also did some incredible writing in Italy, where she covered the Italian revolution in the 1840s.

[iverglas]

2. ah, but Mary Wolstonecraft was born in 1759 ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft

-- and only lived to 1797, surviving a couple of suicide attempts in between. Those suicide episodes put me in mind of ... what's her name ... By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Smart ... here we are, Elizabeth Smart. Strong, smart, talented women who hitch their wagons to artsy men who are total shits, and ruin their lives over them.

Margaret Fuller, yes, I certainly didn't know of her, probably both because of lack of public/academic attention to her and because of my not being a USAmerican (I'm not much up on Emerson etc., either).

Fuller was an advocate of women's rights and, in particular, women's education and the right to employment.

She was certainly continuing on from Wollstonecraft on the education angle.

Her father taught Fuller to read and write at the age of three and a half, shortly after the couple's second daughter, Julia Adelaide, died at the age of fourteen months. He offered her an education as rigorous as any boy's at the time and forbade her from reading the typical feminine fare of the time, such as etiquette books and sentimental novels.

Ah, yes, the influence of fathers on daughters.

I see Fuller was active in another social justice cause I keep meaning to mention: prison reform. I worked with the Elizabeth Fry Society when I was in law school: Fry was a prison reform advocate in England, and E. Fry is the counterpart of the John Howard Society here for men. I need to start a thread on that.

But now I have to go figure out what Transcendantalism was ...