Mary Wollstonecraft and the Womens Movement free essay sample

The importance of woman from almost zero was increasing through the time, but my aim is to present how was it in the this particular century. As the following women started fighting about their rights and more and more people started care about that. Plenty of writers were defending the rights of woman and it was also their purpose to make their lives better and easier. Women did not want to have more power over the men, they were fighting about having equal rights and being treated as human beings not as a slaves or objects. During this hard period for women, they started creating a movements, which can be called nowadays feminist movements, but in the eighteenth century this word did not exist. It all started in late eighteenth century and was continued also over the next centuries. Next I would like to present the writers and followers of Mary Wollstonecrafts ideas and also comment on her purpose, did she accomplished what she was going to achieve. We will write a custom essay sample on Mary Wollstonecraft and the Womens Movement or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page There was a great deal of people who agreed with Wollstonecraft in her position and claims, they took an example of her and her works but as well as of her personal life. I would like to present some of these authors which took the inspiration from Wollstonecrafts publications and wrote on the same subject commenting on her writing and following her ideas At the end of the assignment I want to conclude and compare the changing of the society and Mary Wollstonecrafts impact on the process of changing of the rights of women and peoples efforts about them. 2. Mary Wollstonecraft Feminist writer and intellectual Mary Wollstonecraft was born in Spitalfields in London on April 27, 1759. She was the second child in the numerous family, having older brother and five younger siblings. Mary did not have any proper education, only her brother Edward, was to receive a formal education, after all he became a lawyer. Her paternal grandfather was a successful master weaver who left a sizeable legacy, but her father, Edward John, mismanaged his share of the inheritance. He was abusive and spent his fortune on a series of unsuccessful ventures in farming. The family was in financially poor condition. Her father was also aggressive man and alcoholic, because of what he became violent towards his wife. Mary needed to find some way of gaining money. In 1778 she was engaged as a companion to a Mrs Dawson and lived at Bath. She returned home to nurse her mother in the latter part of 1781. After this event Wollstonecraft decided to start her own livelihood. Considering Wollstonecrafts lack of proper education, her gender and poor family background, only occupations she could get was a ladys companion, a schoolteacher, and a governess. Even though she was a young woman, she was intelligent person who had known Bible and some of the writings of Shakespeare and Milton. She owed the ability of reading and writing to the friendship with the clergyman and his wife. In 1783 Mary helped her sister with the marriage problems and the labour. They run away hiding from Elizas husband and had left behind the new born child, which died next year. In 1784 the two sisters had already been planning to establish a school with Fanny Blood. Marys other sister, Everina, joined in the project a little later. In 1785 Wollstonecraft went on a trip to Lisbon, where her friend Fanny was living and she was expecting her first child. On board the ship, Mary met a man suffering from consumption; she nursed him for a fortnight, the length of the journey. This experience is related in her first novel Mary, a Fiction (1788). She gained a very unfavourable opinion of Portuguese life and society, which seemed to her ruled by irrationality and superstitions. Marys brief stay in Portugal was unhappy one, for both Fanny and her baby died shortly after the delivery. When she returned to England, Wollstonecraft found her school in a bad financial condition. It was not providing any income, only brought worries. Only Joseph Johnsons advance on her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: with Reflections on Female Conduct in the more important Duties of Life (1787) helped her with financial difficulties. Following the collapse of her school, Wollstonecraft had to find another occupation. She became a governess to the family of Lord Kings borough for a brief and unsatisfactory period. She travelled to Ireland, where she completed Mary, A Fiction. On her return to London, Joseph Johnson rescued her once again by giving her a literary employment. In 1787 she also began, but never completed, The Cave of Fancy. A Tale. The same year, she wrote Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations, calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness (1788); it was released in two editions (1791 and 1796), the last one with illustrations by William Blake. In spite of the lack of education she had a great talent for translating and reviewing. She was working with many authors, including Leibniz and Kant. She translated for example works like Jacques Neckers Of the Importance of Religious Opinions (1788), Rev. C. G. Salzmanns Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children (1790), and Madame de Cambons Young Grandison (1790). In each case, the texts she produced were almost as if her own, not just because she was in agreement with their original authors, but because she more or less re-wrote them. Wollstonecraft wrote also for the â€Å"Analytical Review†, with her publisher, Joseph Johnson. She was involved with this publication either as a reviewer or as editorial assistant. Besides novels, Wollstonecraft reviewed poetry, travel accounts, educational works, collected sermons, biographies, natural histories, and essays and treatises on subjects such as Shakespeare, happiness, theology, music, architecture and the awfulness of solitary confinement. Until the end of 1789, she was writing mostly about morality and aesthetics. In her own next publication she criticised Burke and his Reflections on the Revolution in France writing a pamphlet entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). The work was published anonymously, but at the end of the same year bore its authors name and marked a turning point in her career; it established her a political writer. In September 1791, Wollstonecraft began A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects which elaborated a number of points made in the previous â€Å"Vindication†, namely, that in most cases, marriage was nothing but a property relation, and that the education women received ensured that they could not meet the expectations society had of them and almost certainly guaranteed them an unhappy life. In December 1792, she travelled to France where she met Gilbert Imlay, an American merchant and writer. As British subjects were increasingly at risk under the Terror, Wollstonecraft passed as Imlays wife so she would not have to be in danger. They never married. Imlay was probably the source of Wollstonecrafts unhappiness, it was not happy relationship, because he rejected her. Most of all, her love of Imlay brought Wollstonecraft to the realisation that the passions are not so easily brought to heel by reason. Wollstonecraft had a daughter by Imlay. She was born in 1794 and named Fanny, after Wollstonecrafts friend, Fanny Blood. A year after Fannys birth, Wollstonecraft twice attempted suicide in 1795. She broke with Imlay finally in 1796. In April of the same year, she renewed her acquaintance with William Godwin and they became lovers that summer. They were to marry at St Pancras church in March 1797. On the 30th August, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, future author of Frankenstein and wife of Shelley, was born. 3. Position of woman in society The eighteenth century was the rough time for women. They were subordinate to the men, had lots of obligations, but not so many choices. The men were the main voice in the family, they got the best education, they were the only politicians, and they had great control over women. Some writers compare the position of woman as a slave. They were only objects, treated as a simple genre, addition for men. Women had no rights, they could not vote, earning less than men, they were always depend on the men. Women were completely controlled by the men in all their lives. First, by their fathers, brothers and male relatives and finally, after marriage, by their husbands. Their purpose in life is to find a husband, reproduce and then spend the rest of their lives serving him. If a woman were to decide to remain single, she would be excluded from the community. When a women was married, all of her inheritance would belong to her husband. Her husband had rights to everything a woman had, including her body. Marriage for these women was a lifetime commitment. Women were not so often allowed to have a divorce and until 1891 if a woman attempted to flee an unhappy marriage, she could be punished for that. We cannot talk generally about women, because they were not all equal. Women were divided into three different classes: Women of the upper class, women of the lower-working class, and women from the poorest families. The divisions of the classes were very distinct, and although none of the women in any of the classes had much power, there were differences in the daily life, family life and working life. The worst off of all of the women were the underclass women. These women had a different lifestyle than the others. They did not have the good hygienic condition. Deprived of any form of education and good jobs some women even resorted to prostitution to make a living for themselves when there was no other alternative. The majority of the women belonged in the lower-working class category. With little or no inheritance to look forward to, some women began working between the ages of 8 and 12. Some of the jobs that were available to them were: domestic service, agricultural labourers, seamstress, washer women, and serving the wealthy residents. These women were expected to fulfil three roles: â€Å"mother, housekeeper, and worker†. The most prestigious of the classes for British women was upper class. These women were immediately distinguished by their strict clothes and were only the representative of fashion and sublime. These women often had some sort of inheritance passed down to them from their fathers, so they were often courted by men of high standing who wished to increase their own wealth. Even though women were not yet allowed to attend college, these women sometimes received a general education consisting of reading, writing, and arithmetic. In such cases, a woman might decide to take a position as a governess or a lady’s companion. . a. Womens movement and 3. b. Changes in society The fight of the rights of women has is beginning in the late 18th century. The first person who led the action and had been partly responsible for creating such movement for womens right was Mary Wollstonecraft. Her words: â€Å"If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop? † could be an evidence to this statement. She could be named as a precursor of the feminist movement. The term â€Å"feminist† is used here with the modern meaning, because feminism was created a century later, but it can be used as a metaphor of the states during these years. As a start point the creation of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman could be taken. It is not the exactly same rights women were fighting of in the nineteenth century. Wollstonecraft in her beliefs was pointing that women needed proper formal education, but what did it mean? She emphasized the importance of the â€Å"natural rights†,which was for woman to be a good wife, mother and teacher. Wollstonecraft wanted to give more education to the young girls, because she defended the ideals that these girls would be in future raising their children, so they should know how to do that and should be well prepared for her future duties, such as being a good friend with the man, good mother and leader for her children. According to her words: â€Å"( ) Make women rational creatures and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives, and mothers; that isif men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers. † Women should be educated in order to provide the education to their offspring. Also she demanded equality of the genres, she thought children should be co-educated: boys together with girls. The other fighters in the 18th century, in the defending the rights of women, were as following: Jeremy Bentham and his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1781); Olympe the Gouges with Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Female Citizen (1789); Marquis de Condorcet For the Admission to the Rights for Citizenship for Women (1790); Catherine Macaulay, the historian and Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, the poet. All of them, including later John Stuart Mill and The subjection of Women (1869), were the defenders of the human rights. Bentham spoke for a complete equality between sexes including the right to vote and to participate in the government, and opposed the strongly different sexual moral standards to women and men. De Gouges in her â€Å"Declaration† criticised the other Declaration of the Rights of the Men and of the Citizen from 1789, which was about the rights of man but excluded woman. She almost rewrote this document, changing the concept of man into a woman; she wrote that woman is free and equal in her rights to man. De Condorcet was a classical liberal politician, leading the French revolutionary and a republican; he was also defender of human rights, including equality of sexes and abolition of slavery. Macaulay, who was an English historian, was arguing that the weakness of women is caused by wrong educational system. In the other part of Europe, Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht was fighting for the education for woman and she also did not support friendship with man, because, as she was claiming, it led to marriage and full obedience. The later fighters of womens rights had slightly different purposes; in the early nineteenth century the aim for achieve was for women to be able to divorce, before that time it was not possible. Woman wanted to keep their children after divorce; in the 1839 there was a law which allowed woman to take the children under age seven, the century before, after leaving her husband, woman had to abandoned her children. In the 1870 the law about the right for having the property was established; women had right to keep the money they had earned. But still this laws looked perfectly on the paper, but in reality it was not such successful. In the late nineteenth century the most important subject of fighting for woman was right to vote. In the 1869 English philosopher and political theorist John Stuart Mill published a book: The Subjection of Women, in which he compares the position of woman to the slave: â€Å"( )Meanwhile the wife is the actual bond servant of her husband: no less so, as far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called. She vows a livelong obedience to him at the altar, and is held to it all through her life by law. † He protest about the lack of rights for women and he argued that women should be given the right to vote. He wanted also change the word â€Å"man† to a â€Å"person† in the second â€Å"Reform Bill† of 1867, but this action was not successful at all. Another important figure from the eighteenth century was Millicent Fawcett, the English early feminist, who was fighting for women to have the vote and also she was concentrated on having opportunity to higher education for women. She was very active in her efforts and she became the president of the â€Å"National Union of Womens Suffrage Societies†, the organisation which was fighting for the right to vote by women. She was supporting Mills views and opinions. The very important person from this time was also Emmeline Pankhurst, political activist and the leader of suffragette movement. She was widely criticized for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognized as a crucial element in achieving womens right to vote in Britain. In 1898 she founded â€Å"Women Social and Political Union† which was organisation dedicated to â€Å"deeds not words†. Despite the huge endeavour and political activity the right to vote was allowed for women over the age of 30, but it was set up in the 1918 and her organisation was transformed into the â€Å"Womens Party†. 4. Mary Wollstonecraft – her impact on future writers Mary Wollstonecraft, her personal life and works, were an inspiration for many writers on the subject of the rights of women. Her husband William Godwin after her death, wrote a book Memoirs of the Author of The Rights of Woman (1798) which is telling the story of Wollstonecrafts private life, associated her name with sexual freedom and notoriety. In the conservative climate of the 1790s, and in the reaction against French revolutionary ideas, Mary Wollstonecrafts life, and her later challenge to sexuality, provided a weapon against feminist ideas and writing throughout the following century. One conservative clergyman, Richard Polwhele published the satirical poem, The Unsexd Females (1798), in which he described Wollstonecraft as ripe for every species of licentiousness. Nineteenth-century feminists found it hard to appeal to Wollstonecraft, with this lasting reputation, as their predecessor, although this emphasis on the Wollstonecraft of the late 1790s in many ways misrepresented the original intentions of the writer of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Scholar Virginia Sapiro said that few read Wollstonecrafts works during the nineteenth century as her attackers implied or stated that no self-respecting woman would read her work. One of those few was Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who read Rights of Woman at the age of 12, and rote a poem Aurora Leigh which reflected Wollstonecrafts perspective on education. Another was Lucretia Mott, a Quaker minister and activist against slavery. Another who read Wollstonecraft was George Eliot, a writer of reviews, articles, novels, and translations. In 1855, she devoted an essay to the roles and rights of women, comparing Wollstonecraft with an American critic and activist; Margaret Fuller. In the twentieth century, with the growing importance of the feminist movement, and especially in the sixties of the twentieth century, scholars ignored the Wollstonecrafts private life and proclaimed her as the first English feminist. She came to be read principally within the context of the history of the womens movement. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, however, a growing number of commentators have looked at A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in its historical and intellectual context, the authors like Gary Kelly and Virginia Sapiro were focusingon the Wollstonecrafts thoughts ans also other ideas like sensibility, economics and political theory. This has led to renewed interest in her other political writings, including her Letters Written During A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Wollstonecraft is thus no longer seen as just a scandalous literary figure, but as a moral and political thinker whose works present an argument about the change of the society where men and women are equal and can live in harmony and happiness together. 5. Conclusion As a conclusion of my assignment I think I managed to prove my objectives made in the introduction to the text. I think that I described well the most influential woman in the eighteenth century, and showed her point of view to the topic of the womans right. I presented also a description of her short, but very active and productive, life and her attitude which is helpful to understand her efforts. The brief description of her works and different arrangements are useful to notice that she was the important character during her lifetime. I wanted to prove that Mary Wollstonecraft was the â€Å"advocate of womens rights† and a precursor of feminist movements; I think I achieved my purpose in this part of the assignment. I depicted the changing role of women throughout the century, from the non-important, objects, without any deep reason of existence, beside being mothers and wives, to the opportunity to vote and receive formal education, which occurred much later, but the actions by the first people who were active in these subjects, led to that conclusions. In that part I presented the few of the eighteenth and nineteenth century writers and thinkers, who had an impact on the process of creating the basic rights for women, like having their own property or freedom. In my work I showed some of the creators and followers of womens movement in the eighteenth century and later, including the British personalities as well as these from other countries. Some of them, were inspired by the Wollstonecraft itself or by her few publications. They followed her ideas or criticised them, but the fact that her life and works made people create and think in the particular way is very essential. In my opinion I completed all of my thoughts I wanted to achieve, starting with the biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, through the role of women in 18th century, creating the feminist movements and presenting the important people of that time who had impact the changes in womens rights and were influenced by Wollstonecraft. 6. References Wollstonecraft, M. 1792). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: J. Johnson (Chapter 3,12) Retrieved from: http://oll. libertyfund. org/index. php? option=com_staticxtamp;staticfile =show. php%3Ftitle=126amp;Itemid=27 Nixon, E. (1971) Mary Wollstonecraft her life and times. London: J. M. Dent Tomaselli, Sylvana Mary Wollstonecraft, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta(ed. ), Retrieved from: http://plato. stanford. edu/archives/win2012/entries/wollstonecra ft/ Mill, J. S. The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXI Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, (1984), (ed. ) Robson, Introduction by Collini (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,. (Chapter II) Retrieved from: oll. libertyfund. org/title/255/21689 Sweet, W. (2003) Philosophical theory and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. University of Ottawa Press. p. 10. Retrieved from: http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Women%27s_rights