# Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885)/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI.
VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN.
The Vindication of the Rights of Women is the work on which Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin's fame as an author rests. It is more than probable that, but for it, her other writings would long since have been forgotten. In it she speaks the first word in behalf of female emancipation. Her book is the forerunner of a movement which, whatever may be its results, will always be ranked as one of the most important of the nineteenth century. Many of her propositions are, to the present advocates of the cause, foregone conclusions. Hers was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, to prepare the way. What she had to do was to awaken mankind to the knowledge that women are human beings, and then to insist that they should be given the opportunity to assert themselves as such, and that their sex should become a secondary consideration. It would have been useless for her to analyze their rights in detail until she had established the premises upon which their claims must rest. It is true she contends for their political emancipation. "I really think," she writes, "that women ought to have ​representatives instead of being arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of Government." And she also maintains their ability for the practice of many professions, especially of medicine. But this she says, as it were, in parenthesis. These necessary reforms cannot be even begun until the equality of the sexes as human beings is proved beyond a doubt. The object of the Vindication is to demonstrate this equality, and to point out the preliminary measures by which it may be secured.
Women, it is said, are not so strong physically as men. True; but this does not imply that they have no strength whatsoever. Because they are weak relatively, it does not follow that they should be made so absolutely. The sedentary life to which they are condemned weakens them, and then their weakness is accepted as an inherent, instead of an artificial, quality.
The truth is, were girls allowed the same freedom in the choice of amusements as boys, they would manifest an equal fondness for out-of-door sports, to the neglect of dolls and frivolous pastimes. But it is denied to them. Directors of their education have, as a rule, been blind adherents to the doctrine that whatever is is right, and hence have argued that, because women have always been brought up in a certain way, they should continue to be so trained.
The worst of it is that the artificial delicacy of constitution thus produced is the cause of a corresponding weakness of mind; and women are in actual fact fair defects in creation, as they have been called. And yet, after having been unfitted for action, they are expected to be competent to take charge of a family. The woman who is well-disposed, and whose husband is a ​sensible man, may act with propriety so long as he is alive to direct her. But if he were to die how could she alone educate her children and manage her household with discretion?
Mary, after having given the picture of woman as she is now, describes her as she ought to be. This description is worth quoting; but not because it contains any originality of thought or charm of expression. It is interesting as showing exactly what the first sower of the seeds of female enfranchisement expected to reap for her harvest. People who are frightened by a name are apt to suppose that women who defend their rights would have the world filled with uninspired Joans of Arc, and unrefined Portias. Those who judge Mary Wollstonecraft by her conduct, without inquiring into her motives or reading her book, might conclude that what she desired was the destruction of family ties and, consequently, of moral order. Therefore, in justice to her, the purity of her ideals of feminine perfection and her respect for the sanctity of domestic life should be clearly established.
From the primal source of their wrongs—that is, the undue importance attached to the sexual character—Mary next explains that minor causes have arisen to prevent women from realizing this ideal. The narrowness of mind engendered by their vicious education hinders them from looking beyond the interests of the present. They consider immediate rather than remote effects, and prefer to be "short-lived queens than to labour to attain the sober pleasures that arise from equality." Then, again, the desire to be loved or respected for something, which is instinctive in all human beings, is gratified in women by the homage paid to charms ​born of indolence. They thus, like the rich, lose the stimulus to exertion which this desire gives to men of the middle class, and which is one of the chief factors in the development of rational creatures. A man with a profession struggles to succeed in it. A woman struggles to marry advantageously. With the former, pleasure is a relaxation; with the latter, it is the main purpose of life. Therefore, while the man is forced to forget himself in his work, the woman's attention is more and more concentrated upon her own person. The great evil of this self-culture is that the emotions are developed instead of the intellect. Women become a prey to what is delicately called sensibility. They feel and do not reason, and, depending upon men for protection and advice, the only effort they make is to give their weakness a graceful covering. They require, in the end, support even in the most trifling circumstances. Their fears are perhaps pretty and attractive to men, but they reduce them to such a degree of imbecility that they will start "from the frown of an old cow or the jump of a mouse," and a rat becomes a serious danger. These fair, fragile creatures are the objects of Mary Wollstonecraft's deepest contempt, and she gives a good wholesome prescription for their cure, which, despite modern co-education and Women Conventions, female doctors and lawyers, might still be more generally adopted to great advantage.
The chapter on Paternal Affection introduces an important section of the treatise. It is not enough for a reformer to pull down. He must build up as well, or at least lay the foundation-stone of a new structure. The missionary does not only tell the heathen that his religion is false, but he instructs him in the ​new one which is to take its place. The scientist, besides maintaining that old theories are exploded, explains to the student new facts which have superseded them. Mary, after demonstrating the viciousness of existing educational systems, suggests wherein they may be improved, so that women, their understandings trained and developed, may have the chance to show what they really are.
Family duties necessarily precede those of society. As the "formation of the mind must be begun very early, and the temper, in particular, requires the most judicious attention," a child's training should be undertaken, not from the time it is sent to school, but almost from the moment of its birth. Therefore a few words as to the relations between parents and children are an indispensable introduction to the larger subject of education, properly so called, which prepares the young for social life.
Father and mother are rightful protectors of their child, and should accept the charge of it, instead of hiring a substitute for this purpose. It is not even enough for them to be regulated in this matter by the dictates of natural affection. They must be guided by reason. Parents have a right to expect their children throughout their lives to pay them due respect, give heed to their advice, and take care of them should illness or old age make it impossible for them to do this for themselves; but they should never desire to subjugate their sons and daughters to their own will, after they have arrived at years of discretion and can answer for their actions. To obey a parent, "only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason." These remarks ​are particularly applicable to girls, who "from various causes are more kept down by their parents, in every sense of the word, than boys," though in the case of the latter there is still room for improvement.
The first step in solving the great problem of education—and here both sexes are referred to—is to decide whether it should be public or private. The objections to private education are serious. It is not good for children to be too much in the society of men and women; for they then "acquire that kind of premature manhood which stops the growth of every vigorous power of mind or body." By growing accustomed to have their questions answered by older people instead of being obliged to seek the answers for themselves, as they are forced to do when thrown with other children, they do not learn how to think for themselves. The very groundwork of self-reliance is thus destroyed. "Besides, in youth the seeds of every affection should be sown, and the respectful regard which is felt for a parent is very different from the social affections that are to constitute the happiness of life as it advances." "Frank ingenuousness" can only be attained by young people being frequently in society where they dare to speak what they think. To know how to live with their equals when they are grown up, children must learn to associate with them when they are young.
The evils which result from the boarding-school system are almost as great as those of private education. The tyranny established among the boys is demoralizing, while the acquiescence to the forms of religion demanded of them, encourages hypocrisy. Children who live away from home are unfitted for ​domestic life. "Public education of every denomination should be directed to form citizens, but if you wish to make good citizens, you must first exercise the affections of a son and a brother." Home-training on the one hand, and boarding-schools on the other, being equally vicious, the only way out of the difficulty is to combine the two systems, retaining what is best in each, and doing away with what is evil. This combination could be obtained by the establishment of national day-schools.
They must be supported by Government, because the school-master who is dependent upon the parents of children committed to his charge, necessarily caters to them. In schools for the upper classes, where the number of pupils is small and select, he spends his energies in giving them a show of knowledge wherewith they may startle friends and relations into admiration of his superior system. In common schools, where the charges are small, he is forced, in order to support himself, to multiply the number of pupils until it is impossible for him to do any one of them justice. But if education were a national affair, school-masters would be responsible to a board of directors, whose interest would be given to the children collectively and not individually, while the number of pupils to be received would be strictly regulated.
To perfect national schools the sexes must be educated together. By this means only can they be prepared for their after relations to each other, women thus becoming enlightened citizens and rational companions for men. The experiment of co-education is at all events worth making. Even should it fail, women would not be injured thereby, "for it is not in the ​power of man to render them more insignificant than they are at present."
Mary is very practical in this branch of her subject, and suggests an admirable educational scheme. In her levelling of rank among the young, she shows the influence of Plato; in her hint as to the possibility of uniting play and study in elementary education, she anticipates Froebel.
A plainness of speech, amounting in some places to coarseness, and a deeply religious tone, are to many modern readers the most curious features of the book. A just estimate of it could not be formed if these two facts were overlooked. A century ago men and women were much more straightforward in their speech than we are to-day. They were not squeamish. In real life Amelias listened to raillery from Squire Westerns not a whit more refined than Fielding's good country gentleman. Therefore, when it came to serious discussions for moral purposes, there was little reason for writers to be timid. It was impossible for Mary to avoid certain subjects not usually spoken of in polite conversation. Had she done so, she would but have half stated her case. She was not to be deterred because she was a woman. Such mock-modesty would at once have undermined her arguments. According to her own theories, there was no reason why she should not think and speak as unhesitatingly as men, when her sex was as vitally interested as theirs. And therefore, with her characteristic consistency, she did so.
Even more remarkable than this boldness of expression is the strong vein of piety running through her arguments. Religion was to her as important as it was to a Wesley or a Bishop Watts. The equality of man, ​in her eyes, would have been of small importance had it not been instituted by man's Creator. It is because there is a God, and because the soul is immortal, that men and women must exercise their reason. Otherwise, they might, like animals, yield to the rule of their instincts and emotions. If women were without souls, they would, notwithstanding their intellects, have no rights to vindicate. But, though sincerely pious, she despised the meaningless forms of religion as much as she did social conventionalities, and was as free in denouncing them. The clergy, who from custom cling to old rites and ceremonies, were, in her opinion, "indolent slugs, who guard, by liming it over, the snug place which they consider in the light of an hereditary estate," and "idle vermin who two or three times a day perform, in the most slovenly manner, a service which they think useless, but call their duty." She believed in the spirit, but not in the letter of the law.
Even the warmest admirers of Mary Wollstonecraft must admit that the faults of the Vindication of the Rights of Women are many. Criticised from a literary stand-point, they exceed its merits. Perfection of style was not, it is true, the aim of the writer, as she at once explains in her Introduction. She there says, that being animated by a far greater end than that of fine writing,—
. . . I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style. I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; for wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments than to dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which, coming from the head, never reach the heart. I shall be employed about things, not words! and, anxious to render my sex ​more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversation.
Yet she errs principally from the fault she determines to avoid, as the very sentence in which she announces this determination proves. Despite her sincerity, she is affected, and her arguments are often weakened by meretricious forms of expression. No one can for a moment doubt that her feelings are real, but neither can the turgidity and bombast of her language be denied. She borrows, unconsciously perhaps, the "flowery diction" which she so heartily condemns.
She is too ready to moralize, and her moralizing degenerates unfortunately often into commonplace platitudes. She is even at times disagreeably pompous and authoritative, and preaches rather than argues. This was due partly to a then prevailing tendency in literature. Every writer—essayist, poet, and novelist—preached in those days.
Great as are these faults, they are more than counterbalanced by the merits of the book. All the flowers of rhetoric cannot conceal its genuineness. As is always the case with the work of honest writers, it commands respect even from those who disapprove of its doctrine and criticise its style. Despite its moralizing it is strong with the strength born of an earnest purpose. It was written neither for money nor for amusement, too often the inspiration of book-making. The one she had not time to seek; the other she could have obtained with more certainty by translating for Mr. Johnson, or by contributing to the Analytical Review. She wrote it because she thought it her duty to do so, ​and hence its vigour and eloquence. All her pompous platitudes cannot conceal the earnestness of her denunciation of shams. The Rights of Women is an outcry against them. The age was an artificial one: ladies played at being shepherdesses, and men wept over dead donkeys. Sensibility was a cultivated virtue, and philanthropy a pastime. The excess of sentimentalism had given rise to the other extreme of naturalism. In France the reaction against arbitrary laws, empty forms, and the unjust privileges of rank, led to the French Revolution. In England its outcome was a Wesley in religious speculation, a Wilkes in political action, and a Godwin and a Paine in social and political theorizing. But those who were most eager to uphold reason as a guide to the conduct of men, had nothing to say in behalf of women.
Mary's enthusiasm did not make her blind; she knew that women were wronged by the existing state of affairs; but she did not for this reason believe that they must be removed to a new sphere of action. She defended their rights, not to unfit them for duties assigned them by natural and social necessities, but that they might fulfil them the better. She eloquently denied their inferiority to men, not that they might claim superiority, but simply that they might show themselves to be the equals of the other sex. Woman was to fight for liberty that she might in deed and in truth be worthy to have her children and her husband rise up and call her blessed!