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Small, Smooth, and Soulless Woman:
Wollstonecraft’s Vindication and Burke’s Beautiful
When Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication on the Rights of Woman in 1792, she was
living in a period of social insurrection. The American Revolution had ended in 1783, the French
Republic formed in 1792 and brought with it the equity-minded Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
the Citizen, and the Reign of Terror had not yet begun. She was impassioned with the defense of
equality for women, and employed a sound critique of 18th century gender roles exemplified in Edmund
Burke’s 1757 work entitled A Philosophical Enquiry in to the Origin of our Ideas of the sublime and
Beautiful. At the center of Burke’s argument was the belief that “the beauty of women is considerably
owing to their weakness, or delicacy, and is even enhanced by their timidity, a quality of mind
analogous to it” (106). Wollstonecraft, fighting this construction of feminine subordination as desirable,
believed that “men have increased that inferiority till women are almost sunk below the standard of
rational creatures” (54). Appealing with a doctrine of sensibility dictating that morality must stem from
the exercise of one’s own reason, Wollstonecraft argued that women’s constant subordination (a
necessary quality in Burke’s characterization of the beautiful) led them to become immoral and ignorant
creatures not capable of sustaining the virtue that would be necessary for their immortal souls.
Each author’s perception of the female sex is intricately related to their definition of love. Burke
states that “the object…of this mixed passion which we call love, is the beauty of the sex” (Burke 39).
His definition of love is simply an appreciation for beauty and a desire for to the “possession of certain
objects” (Burke 83). Wollstonecraft argues against this simplistic notion, noting that one must show
their beloved “that the heart, rather than the senses, is moved” (126). When one merely has a love for the
beauty of another, she believes that “love becomes a selfish personal gratification that soon degrades the
character” (Wollstonecraft 126). Wollstonecraft’s stance as a Romantic insists that there be some
modicum of respect between a man and a woman because “love and esteem are very distinct things”
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(84). When women are denied ‘esteem’ by their husbands, they are made ignorant and subservient:
“tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark, because the
former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing” (Wollstonecraft 42). In order for women to exist as
more than a ‘play-thing’, respect for their status as humans is necessary in addition to love.
Burke seems to agree that love and esteem are not the same, and so he assigns ‘love’ to the
feminine beauty and ‘admiration’ (or esteem) to the masculine sublime: “there is a wide difference
between admiration and love…we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us” (Burke
103). Burke’s distinction requires that women cannot be admired because they do not have the power to
force submission. Instead, they must admire the men who can force their submission and happily accept
a problematic power dynamic labelled as ‘love.’
Wollstonecraft points out that if women only need to be beautiful to excite love, then they
become nothing beyond unwitting objects for men to control at their leisure:
Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little
knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience,
and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of
man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their
lives. (36)
Wollstonecraft is highly interested in the social construction of what ‘natural’ femininity means,
and so she invokes the idea that women are raised from “infancy” to believe in these gender roles in a
way that doesn’t allow them to see the world any differently from what the man constructs it to be. The
“human weakness” she references can be directly linked to one of Burke’s descriptions of what is
perfect: “this quality, where it is highest in the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of
weakness and imperfection…beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty” (100). This portrayal
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of ‘distressed beauty’ being the most desirable kind lends credibility to Wollstonecraft’s nearly-satirical
use of the word “cunning” to describe a woman’s ability to manipulate by pretending weakness.
Wollstonecraft next lists “softness of temper” as a feminine quality, reflected in Burke’s statement that
“those which engage our hearts… are the softer virtues; easiness of temper, compassion, kindness and
liberality; though certainly those latter are of less immediate and momentous concern to society, and of
less dignity. But it is for that reason that they are so amiable” (Burke 100). His description of a soft
temper is extremely diminutive, suggesting that women must necessarily be less important and less
dignified in order to be beautiful. This is a huge problem for Wollstonecraft in her crusade for female
equality because it presents a cultural standard practice of subordination.
Wollstonecraft goes on to italicize in the phrase “outward obedience” to emphasize the
alarmingly-standard practice of females falsely portraying themselves in order to please men. Finally,
she cites a “puerile kind of propriety”, selecting the word ‘puerile’ to show how childish she believes the
constant female attention to decorum to be. Burke addresses this ‘puerile propriety’ as necessary, for
beauty is a “social quality” in his mind and must require constant attention to one’s manners (39). He
says that “the manners give a certain determination to the countenance, which being observed to
correspond pretty regularly with them, is capable of joining the effect of certain agreeable qualities of
the mind to those of the body” (107).
But Wollstonecraft cannot accept the idea that women should constantly cater to their
appearance and manners because she believes it retracts from their ability to think and deal with more
serious issues. She states that women “acquire manners before morals, and a knowledge of life before
they have, from reflection, any acquaintance with the grand ideal outline of human nature” (41). In
Wollstonecraft’s mind, women’s education constantly focuses on the corporeal and the senses, and fails
to teach them any ability to reason or think for themselves: “the passions thus pampered, whilst the
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judgment is left unformed, what can be expected to ensue?—Undoubtedly, a mixture of madness and
folly” (83). The disordered and incomplete education of women naturally proceeds into “madness and
folly” for Wollstonecraft, a state in which women are not only obedient, but also ignorant and frivolous.
Women’s lack of rational education is a huge problem for Wollstonecraft, who believes that
emotions exist so “that man by struggling with them might attain a degree of knowledge denied to the
brutes” and that “consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness must be
estimated by the degree of reason, virtue, and knowledge, that distinguish the individual” (28). But
Burke finds these exact intellectual qualities to detract from the beauty of women, saying that “those
virtues which cause admiration, and are of the sublime kind, produce terror rather than love. Such as
fortitude, justice, wisdom, and the like. Never was any man amiable by force of these qualities” (100).
Wollstonecraft is livid at this, unhappy that “the behavior of the whole sex should be modulated to
please fools, or men” (124). In the demand that women be beautiful and follow empty-headed
conventions of propriety and coquettishness, Wollstonecraft believes that the humanity of women is
sacrificed: “I discern not a trace of the human character, neither reason nor passion in this domestic
drudge, whose being is absorbed in that of a tyrant’s” (122).
All of Wollstonecraft’s arguments against social conventions that rob women of intellectual
challenge and rationality come down to one statement: “without knowledge there can be no morality!”
(85). Because men like Burke desire that women be attractive, easily-controlled objects, women’s
immortal souls and capacity to act ethically are put at risk. Wollstonecraft sums this up with a religious
reference to sin: “if men eat of the tree of knowledge, women will come in for a taste; but, from the
imperfect cultivation which their understandings now receive, they only attain a knowledge of evil”
(37). In light of women’s trained inability to distinguish good from evil, Wollstonecraft is forced to ask
whether or not women can truly be humans with souls: “what childish expressions, and how
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insignificant is the being—can it be an immortal one?” (36). She believes, that under these conditions,
women must be essentially reduced to animals or children. And Burke confirms this suspicion when he
speaks of loving women and loving animals as essentially the same thing: “when other animals give us a
sense of joy and pleasure in beholding them, (and there are many that do so) they inspire us with
sentiments of tenderness and affection towards their persons” (39). The only distinguishing factor
between a love for women and animals is the lust that men may experience for women. Wollstonecraft
gives a stinging summary of what this means for women:
Women are every where in this deplorable state; for, in order to preserve their innocence, as
ignorance is courteously termed, truth is hidden from them, and they are made to assume an
artificial character before their faculties have acquired any strength. Taught from their infancy
that beauty is a woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt
cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. (64)
Wollstonecraft likens women to slaves, or perhaps birds, inside of cages. They exist only to be
gazed upon and to be amiable companions when desired. Women are raised to be unintelligent and are
manipulated by men to gain false characters that will be pleasing for men to interact with. Left with little
besides their vanity and desire to please, women must simply ‘adorn’ their metaphorical prisons and
never know what lies beyond the cage.
Burke states that “those persons who creep into the hearts of most people…are never persons of
shining qualities, nor strong virtues. It is rather the soft green of the soul on which we rest our eyes, that
are fatigued with beholding more glaring objects” (101). He, and many of the men of the 18th century,
are almost wholly concerned with training women to be submissive and pleasing. This expectation
includes a demand that women are small, smooth, delicate, weak, and have a non-angular ‘variety in the
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direction of the parts’ (107). Wollstonecraft responds to these diminutive traits of desirability by
encouraging women to exercise their minds and bodies into robustness, and asking that female education
be reformed so that women’s immortal souls are not at risk or wallowing in evil. The implication that
women must give up their humanness to be desirable is incredibly problematic for Wollstonecraft, and
so she takes advantage of her historical moment of ideological revolution in order to introduce important
and powerful ideas into the cultural discourse of her age.