A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was first printed in 1792 by Joseph Johnson in London. Later that same year, it was reprinted in England and published in the United States and France. Fashionable responses ranged from distress to laughter to keenness.
The treatise was indeed shocking and revolutionary, and while some forward thinkers embraced and even tried to adopt its principles, the most famous conservatives of the day, such as Horace Walpole and Hannah More, considered it hazardous to social order.
Conversely, though, more than a few well-known humanists highly praised the book, and the American advocates of “Republican Motherhood” echoed Wollstonecraft’s case that mothers of able citizens needed to be educated in order to parent well.
The book was printed in 1796 for the last time for almost 50 years. William Godwin, Wollstoneaaft’s widower, produced the in famous Memoirs of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1798. Godwin revealed close details of his wife’s emotional and sexual behaviour.
Soon the world knew that she had lovers, bore an illicit child, and attempted suicide. This information clouded the public’s opinion of Wollstonecraft, and as said by Janet Todd in “Mary Wollstonecraft: A ‘Speculative and Dissenting Spirit,” she became “enormously loathed as a ‘prostitute’ and ‘unsexed female.”
In a delicate yet also detrimental way, Godwin reinforced the gender roles his wife had railed against, claiming the voice of reason for himself, while attributing a highly passionate sensibility to Wollstonecraft.
Public outcry was intense. Wollstonecraft was denounced as a monster and a prostitute. Karen Green writes in ‘For Wollstonecraft (Obituary)’: “Like other women thinkers, her works have languished in relative obscurity for want of … institutional support.”
Victorian feminists tried to space themselves from Wollstonecraft as a consequence of her immoral personal life. Dr. Barbara Caine, in ‘Victorian Feminism and the Ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft’, tells readers that while Mary’s work went unacknowledged, her life “served as a constant and sometimes unwelcome reminder of the ways in which personal rebellion and feminist commitment were connected” in the traditional mind.
Because Victorian feminists, desperately seeking the vote, were rarely wealthy or high wage earners, they could not afford to alienate male mentors. It was crucial to their struggle to uphold the image of a female voter who would be sober, chaste, nurturing, and unthreatening.
It is generally accepted that the Vindication of the Rights of Woman is firstly dedicated to the French Minister of Education known by Talleyrand, in response to the public education’s system in revolutionary France, she says “I dedicate this volume to you, to induce you to reconsider the suject, and maturely weigh what I have adveanced respecting the rights of woman and national education”. Wolistonecraft here is interested to find ways in which she could develop the more availed subjects for girl’s education. Therefore, the most important part in the Vindication is devoted to national education.
In obvious terms, the writer is agitating for educational rights as the first question in her book. In the same document, Mary Wollstonecraft is described as a reformist rather than radical because she does not focus on pedagogy details, she is more directed to the students and their perspectives, and her complete devotion is to create a synchronization between students in learning practices.
The same idea is included in her Vindication: In order to open their faculties they should be excited to think for themselves; and this can only be done by mixing a number of children together, and making them jointly pursue the same objects.
Mary states her views of educational system to critic the teachers in the first degree, she describes them as “pedantic tyrants”, because of their unresppnsible attitudes toward teaching. She thinks also that school is a place where children grow intellectually and physically.
She summarizes the image of school in her vision saying, “boys and girls, the rich and poor, should meet together “. In other words, children should wear a uniform, moreover, her vindications instate that classes should not be longer than one hour at the time, ,“for at this age they should not be confined to any sedentary employment for more than an hour at a time.”
Mary puts her emphasis on educational system to enable individuals obtain their strength and emancipation from learning that create a certain relationship and interaction between children and their parents as the first step to the education.
Mary, the first feminist in the early modern time, dared to disagree with the most important political personalities. She was a real struggler feminist who did not write for academic or upper-class audiences, but for the large public. Feminist activism diverted her life to one that is more dynamic and unique in comparison with other women writers of her time.
At the very beginning, her arguments were enjoyed by women and a small audience, and as point of interest, a few of her conduct books were published. Mary Waters highlighted in her book ‘British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism’ that women writers had to apologize in their prefaces “… on the grounds of financial need for the transgressive immodesty of going public… “(86), she mainly, pointed the difficulties that faced Mary Wollstonecraft and others through writing in public sphere, in other words, women had to endure negative reactions if they dared of something out of their authority.
Despite all, Mary took a great risk in order to super induce her name in public sphere as a literary reviewer. Captivatingly, Mary wrote her vindication to state the inequalities that she primarily faced in the unhappy environment, in this light she said – “A great proportion of the misery that wanders, in hideous forms, around the world, is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents… “, according to what she said previously, she wanted to escape from her reality to the idealism she proposed to live in.
Additionally, at that period, Mary’s relationships were countable, she had a permanent and professional nexus with the publisher Joseph Johnson whom she described as both the “father and brother” for her. Her relationship with Johnson gave her a new strength to work more, in connection with this, Mary Warters wrote “ Wolistonecraft’s work for Johnson […] was central to her own intellectual growth; everything that she read and wrote contributed to her fund of knowledge and her cognitive training, laying the groundwork for the books for which she is best remembered”.
Johnson the father also advanced her money, because she had no other source of income.
In her ‘A Vindication of The Rights of Woman’, Mary believed that women were not created frail by nature, and society was the initial responsible for women’s backwardness, so they had no right to blame women in every unreasonable behaviour she did. She asserted what has been said in, “the weakness and sensuality attributed to a certain class of women in eighteenth-century Europe are not part of their biological nature but the inevitable results of their education and social conditioning” (ibid).
Moreover, Mary Wollstonecraft as a staunch feminist was extremely confident in woman’s abilities, she said also “Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect than emancipated…”.
The strong personality and faithfulness of the writer is usually felt in his/her words and this is what Mary Wollstonecraft genuinely emphasized in her major documents.
- Goodreads rating – 3.90
- REVIEW – Pritam Chattopadhyay