Jean-Jacques Wollstonecraft's A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

This analysis endeavours to understand a bundle of quotes extracted from the work of Wollstonecraft, particularly her theories within “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”. Firstly, we will primarily deal with Wollstonecraft’s relationship with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and her vehement critique of his views on education and women in general. The second paragraph will attempt to contextualise her views per the historical and cultural events occurring around the time of writing, and debate whether Wollstonecraft’s theories were ‘male-orientated’ to compensate for her audience, or if through socialisation she genuinely believed women to be the imperfect ones, and that is was the responsibility of men to educate and validate their presence.

Firstly,

Rousseau detailed how class inequality was a social construct; arguing that the founder of civil society was “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought of himself as saying ‘this is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him” (Rousseau, 1755). Rather than being a natural part of human life, class inequality can be argued to be artificial – a product of social conditions and socialisation. However, the main issue that Wollstonecraft takes with Rousseau’s approach is that he sees gender inequality as natural; this seems frankly illogical and at odds with his other views on various social inequalities. Rousseau argues that women are purely made to be the playthings and teachers of man, which is noticeable in his portrayal of the character Sophie, the wife of Emile (Emile, Or On Education, 1764). Wollstonecraft addresses this with an air of disappointment, having agreed with Rousseau on many his previous theories. “The tyranny of man” she reflects upon is more commonly known in contemporary theories as the patriarchy, and by-and-large most feminist theorists agree that it is the source of gender inequality and female oppression, both historically and in the modern day. However, the more interesting part of this quote is how Wollstonecraft refers to the product of this

To elaborate, it suggests that men are the virtuous ones – and that, by proxy, women are not. It claims men to be the saintly guide of the feminist revolution proposed, and suggests that women are incapable of realising their suffering and subjugation on their own. Of course this view is problematic (especially to those who are interested in a more intersectional feminism), but when looked at in its original context, it becomes even more fascinating.

Wollstonecraft is considered, in many cases, to be the first feminist, but rather should be considered the first liberal feminist. There are two options as to why, frequently throughout her texts, she pities and occasionally vilifies women; either that, through socialisation into the rather patriarchal middle class life of the 1700s, she genuinely believed herself to be one of the only middle class women aware of her own suffering and have a desperate need to change it; or, as this analysis will henceforth assume, that she dulled down her more feminist ideas to compensate for her generally male