Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman

            In Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft asserts that the primary problem with education is that it is denied to women.  This has been done, according to her, because men have decided to consider women only as objects of attraction, not as human beings capable of reason.  If they were considered to be the latter, they would need the education afforded to men.  If they received that education, they would be fit for both of their roles: citizens and wives/mothers.  Because they haven’t received it, they have only been able to become what society has shaped them into: silly people only concerned with fashion and lapdogs.

            Vindication,  though it is most obviously a response to Rousseau, is a reconsideration of Kant’s and Plato’s ideas in that it pushes readers to think about the purpose of reason, the place of morality, and the end goal(s) of education.  While I think the piece definitely had its limitations (which Jane Roland Martin highlighted in the afterword), I found myself agreeing with a lot of what Wollstonecraft proposed, and I could definitely see how these issues are pertinent to education and feminist concerns today.

            I appreciate the importance that Wollstonecraft placed on socialization.  While I don’t agree that a woman who’s concerned with appearances can’t also be brilliant, I think that we’re still, as a society, trying figure out how we understand the connection between what we think of as femininity, and intellect. American women are still primarily encouraged to be beautiful objects before they are encouraged to be smart and independent, if for no other reason than it gives them more impetus to buy things that will make them appear beautiful.  And even though traditional marriage is being challenged every moment, I still think there’s overwhelming pressure on women to be wives and mothers as a testament to their “true” womanhood. Even the most successful, famous women (heterosexual or not) aren’t considered “complete” until they have a partner and kids. Wollstonecraft talked about women’s illegitimate, or “false”, power: their ability to use feminine wiles to attract men. She contended that for as long as women thought of that power as their main source of power, they’d be victims of patriarchy. To not give up the power of feminine beauty and embrace the power that comes with being considered a rational human being, to Wollstonecraft, was a true sign of lacking intellectual capacity. To some extent, I agree with her, especially when we think about women in this country who, not more than sixty years ago, were urged to go to college to find a husband, not to pursue a degree that would be used for work outside of the home, and thus led lives that they considered unfulfilling.  But I also think that a complete rejection of feminine attributes isn’t necessary for women to be taken seriously.  Although I’m alive now, and in Wollstonecraft’s time, there wasn’t the “middle ground” that we have today (which Roland also takes up).

I can’t help thinking about this in light of celebrity culture, though.  We still celebrate silly women who don’t (appear to) think about anything important.  We pay them lots of money to do this, and we even let kids emulate them. And they have lapdogs…