ENLIGHTENMENT THINKERS AND GENDER Mary Wollstonecraft and Hannah

ENLIGHTENMENT THINKERS AND GENDER. Mary Wollstonecraft (and Hannah More).

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. ◦ 1816 Swiss Alps. ◦ Competition: Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. ◦ Socialism: ◦ The monster represents working class. ◦ Doctor – middle class profession playing God. ◦ Promethean figure - thirst for power. ◦ Gender: ◦ Female author, ◦ Dr Frankenstein gave life to monster – procreation a female role. ◦ Dr abandons responsibility to monster as men abandon lovers/illegitimate children. ◦ Fitting themes for the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759 -97 ◦ From middling classes. ◦ 1783: MW and 2 sisters faced with prospect of having to support selves. ◦ Options: governesses, lady’s companion or est. school. ◦ Eventually managed to support herself in London as a woman of letters. ◦ Unhappy experiences as governess influenced Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787).

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. ◦ Template for Vindication of Rights of Women. ◦ Schools make women frivolous not virtuous. ◦ Parents should develop a child’s capacity for reason. ◦ Education was a training in morality and self control. ◦ Forwards popular idea that education makes women better wives.

Mary (1787) ◦ Influenced by Rousseau’s Emile – natural upbringing. ◦ Female protagonist self-educated and forced into matrimony. ◦ Mary falls for invalid but remains true to husband. ◦ Death is only way to gain freedom. ◦ Cultivate virtue and reason at price of personal happiness. ◦ Uses Christian idea of rewards in next life to justify sacrifice.

Richard Price ◦ In 1789 Dr. Richard Price, a Unitarian minister preached a largely innocuous sermon "On the Love of Country. " ◦ Commemorating Glorious Revolution of 1688 where William of Orange defeated Catholic King James II. ◦ Congratulated French National Assembly, for opening new possibilities for religious and civil freedom ◦ Price spoke of being a citizen of the world with the rights that citizenship implied. ◦ Argued for doctrine of ‘perfectability’ – that world can be made better through human effort. Justified social reform.

Burke’s Response: ◦ Responded with Reflections on Revolution in France. ◦ Overthrow of authority in France would bring chaos and disorder. Denied Price's assertions of natural rights and doctrine of perfectability. ◦ Viewed himself as moderate. Argued Reflections had gradualist reform agenda. ◦ Reform in France should recognise Europe was already improving. ◦ Praised reforming institutions eg Church, arts, commerce and the landed gentry. ◦ Veiled criticism of dissenters and radicals in Britain. ◦ Provoked backlash of publications.

Wollstonecraft defends Price… ◦ A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). ◦ Presented Burke as former reformer, grown old and confused, basically a good man but one corrupted by the English establishment. ◦ Argued for rights of civil and religious liberty. Aristocracy displaced in France was decadent. ◦ Criticized Burke's sympathy for women of the displaced aristocracy in France – particularly his eulogising of Marie Antoinette – as selective, ignoring the many more thousands of women who suffered under the old regime ◦ Attacks Burke’s defence of Property. ◦ Gains notoriety by taking on establishment figure.

Lover no. 1 Henry Fuseli… ◦ Married Swiss Painter. ◦ Platonic love affair? ◦ Mary dislikes his attitudes on gender… ‘the epoch of eunuchs was ever the epoch of viragoes’ ◦ Writes Vindication of Rights of Woman to re-educate and impress him. ◦ She unsuccessfully proposed to live with Fuseli and his wife, he ended their connection and she went to France to recover from rejection.

Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) ◦ Tension between passion and virtue enhances puritanical aspect of work. ◦ Not arguing for sexual equality. Agrees with Rousseau that freedom will lead to excess like slave uprising in St Dominique in 1791. ◦ God gave all humans reason to cultivate virtue. ◦ Virtue must be freely chosen not forced on women through obedience. ◦ Women not naturally cunning, role forced on the by powerlessness. ◦ Love: ‘a destructive fantasy’.

Themes: Education ◦ Without education only option is to marry which makes marriage ‘legalised prostitution’. ◦ Pursuit of reason would subdue female passions. Educated women have ‘purity of mind’. ◦ Attacked earlier writers, e. g. Rousseau, who suggested girls’ interests be subordinated to boys and not able to attain same levels of virtue. ◦ Women corrupted by expectation that they would be governed by their feelings, their vanity, their pursuit of accomplishments to attract men. ◦ Right kind of education could transform the female character. ◦ Advocates mixed gender education (Mary Astell) leads to early marriage and stops male debauchery.

Themes: Rights ◦ Ground breaking: Links gender issues with politics. (WLM: The personal is political!) ◦ Without political rights women in perpetual childhood. ◦ Female voice needed in politics/active citizenship. ◦ Gender equality benefits whole of society. ◦ Women can lead way in moral regeneration of society: 'make women rational creatures and free citizens and they will quickly become good wives and mothers’. ◦ Optimistic Tone: ‘Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all was right originally; a crowd of authors that all is now right; and I, that all will be right’.

Reception of Vindication ◦ Mixed: applauded by radical and hated by conservatives. ◦ After her death it was forgotten until WWII due to scandal that erupted after her death. ◦ Now described as: ◦ ‘feminist declaration of independence’ (Miriam Brody) ◦ ‘first feminist manifesto’ ◦ ‘cry for help’ of womankind. ◦ ‘cornerstone of feminist thought’ (Harriet Jump) ◦ Links politics and gender, self-confident assertion of equality, radical nature of ideas, pre-empts developments in 19 th and 20 th centuries.

Wollstonecraft post-Vindication ◦ Finds herself trapped in Terror - changes ideas on revolution. ◦ Betrayed by lover no. 2. Gilbert Imlay, an American adventurer who awakens her sexuality. ◦ He leaves her a single mother and she tries to commit suicide twice. ◦ Travels to Scandinavia to recover and write Letters from Sweden, leaving 16 month old daughter behind. ◦ Final novel Wrongs of Woman or Maria (1798) much more pessimistic. ◦ Returns to London and marries lover no. 3 William Godwin when 3 months pregnant with Mary Shelley. ◦ Dies 10 days after giving birth. ◦ Godwin left to bring up daughter and inadvertently ruins her reputation with biography.

Hannah More, 1745 -1833 ◦ Born in Bristol and educated in a largely female environment. ◦ Ran a boarding school with her sisters. ◦ Failed engagement gave financial freedom to write. ◦ Had literary talent which took her to London. ◦ Active member of Elizabeth Monatgu’s bluestocking salon. ◦ Wrote Essays on Various Subjects, Principally Designed for Young Ladies, published anonymously in 1777. ◦ Her definitive work on female education: Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (2 vols. , 1799). ◦ Novel Coelebs, in Search of a Wife (1809).

‘Mother of Victorianism’ (A. Stott) ◦ Abolitionist, philanthropist, and Christian Moralist. ◦ She characterised conservative reaction to French Revolution. ◦ Conservative views on education often contrasted to Wollstonecraft radicalism. ◦ Disliked Wollstonecraft’s desire (in later years) for gender equality and power. ◦ Like Wollstonecraft, believes women by 'labouring to reform themselves’ can ‘reform the world’. ◦ A (middle class) woman’s chief profession should be philanthropy, some presence in public sphere but very limiting. ◦ Best-selling author left inheritance of £ 30, 000.

Conclusion: Wollstonecraft – Liberal or Radical? ◦ More consolidates radical reputation of Wollstonecraft. Ironically she owes much to Rousseau's radical ideas. ◦ Barbara Taylor has argued that Wollstonecraft’s work is not part of the liberal tradition rather it is an exploration of the 'distinction of sex' and its implications for women's experience. ◦ Places Wollstonecraft within 'the utopian wing of eighteenth-century progressivism. ◦ However, some argue her agenda is typically Liberal: education, civil rights, an opportunity to compete for access to occupations, political representation ◦ Rational education is important : 1) to transform female identity, 2) it is a right, 3) a proper education prepares women for their role as citizens. ◦ She associates freedom with the deployment of the rational will.

TENSIONS: LIBERAL/RADICAL, VIRTUE/PASSION, RESPECTABILITY/FREEDOM, INDEPENDENCE/MARRIAGE, PESSIMISM/OPTIMISM, MOTHERHOOD/CAREER REALITY/IDEALISM.