MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
by
Felix Theonugraha
B.A., University of California Berkeley, 2002
M.Div, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2006
A Paper
Submitted to Dr. James Moore
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for ES 9415
Readings in History of Education
at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Deerfield, IL
January 2012
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an early champion of women’s right. She
contended that women and men ought to be educated alike, that an educated women will be able
to better fulfill her roles in society, and that many of the social norms women were told to follow
were actually demeaning and perpetuate women’s subjugated position in society.
Mary Wollstonecraft was born to a family whose father squandered the family’s
finances through risky ventures, and ruled the house through physical terror. Therefore, the
majority of her education did not take place in the home or through formal schooling (Cohen
2004, 586), but through acquaintances. One of these acquaintances, Joseph Johnson, introduced
her to a network of friends that included Tom Paine, William Blake, and William Godwin
(Palmer 2001, 70). Through her interactions with this network, her philosophies were
developed. Toward the end of her life, Mary Wollstonecraft was married to William Godwin and
passed away after giving birth to her daughter. Wollstonecraft’s most famous work was
Vindication of the Rights of Women, written in 1792. The argument of this work is considered
below.
Wollstonecraft (1792) argued that men and women ought to be educated alike
because of their common humanity and rationality. Men’s insistence to classify females as
women allow men to “make them alluring mistresses rather(sic) than rational wives” (7). If this
is the case, Wollstonecraft asked, then how can men expect women to be the partner that men
wants women to be? Moreover, Wollstonecraft argued that even if men tries their hardest to
limit women to the domestic realm, women “will, however ignorant, intermeddle with more
weighty affairs, neglecting private duties only to disturb, by cunning tricks, the orderly plan of
reason which rise above their comprehension” (5). Thus, if men truly want society to function
according to its’ proper order, then women must be educated.
Wollstonecraft also argued that while men certainly enjoy superior physicality to
women, women still have the mental capacity for rational thoughts just as men do. In fact,
Wollstonecraft insisted on treating her fellow women as “rational creatures, instead of flattering
their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood” (9).
Moreover, Wollstonecraft contended that if society is to improve continually, then the education
of women is of high importance. She states, “Would men…be content with rational
fellowship…they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more
faithful wives, more reasonable mothers—in a word, better citizen” (150).
Wollstonecraft also suggested that when women persist to engage in activities
that men expect women to do, such as “soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of
sentiment, and refinement of taste” (9), women are only perpetuating their status as a “fanciful
kind of half being” (39). As such, women will only attract the fondness of men, instead of the
friendship and affection of men. Moreover, by appearing weak, rather than eliciting men’s
protective nature, Wollstonecraft argues that these behaviors only encourage men to further
tyrannize women (24). Thus, Wollstonecraft urges her fellow women to engage fully their
rational faculty so as to be able to attain a love that is built on intimacy, friendship, and pure
affection.
Wollstonecraft’s treatise on leaves a significant legacy for the education for
female education. According to Palmer (2001), Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Virginia Woolf, and Simone de Beauvoir are among the women who have acknowledged
Wollstonecraft as being instrumental in their own development. Moreover, Wollstonecraft’s
idea that not only should women be educated, but that they should be educated along with men,
became the standard for education by the nineteenth and twentieth century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cohen, Michele. 2004. “Gender and ‘method’ in eighteenth century English Education. History
of Education, vol. 33, no. 5, September. 585-595.
Palmer, Joy A. 2001. Fifty Major Thinkers: From Confucius to Dewey. New York, NY:
Routledge Publishing.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1792. A Vindication of the Rights of Women, ed. Carol H. Poston. New
York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company