A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects

In this chapter, Wollstonecraft consecutively examines and critiques a number of contemporary writers and their views regarding female character and education. The chapter is made up of five sections that focus, in turn, on a specific writer or group of writers.

Rousseau and his writings are the focus of Section 1. In particular, Wollstonecraft discusses Rousseau’s work Emile, or On Education, a text that documents the upbringing and education of Emile and his fiancée, Sophie. Wollstonecraft quotes extensively from Rousseau’s writing in order to illustrate his belief that the sole purpose of woman is to “please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young, and take care of us when grown up” (84).

Rousseau states that the differences between the sexes is visible from an early age, where “boys love sports of noise and activity” (84), while girls “are fonder of things of show and ornament” (85). Wollstonecraft argues that such differences are not instinctive and fundamental, but simply “the effect of habit” (85). For years, girls and women have been raised and educated to be interested in such “feminine” interests. Furthermore, Rousseau also asserts “a state of dependence [upon men] being natural to [women]” (87), an argument Wollstonecraft firmly pushes back against by asking, “Considering the length of time that women have been dependent, is it surprising that some of them hug their chains, and fawn like the spaniel?” (87).

Rousseau believes that women do have certain advantages over men—such as their beauty and “ingenuity” (89)—which creates a system of mutual dependency, and so women should ensure to develop and cherish such advantages. However, Wollstonecraft attacks the fundamental basis of such an idea, stating that men and women should not aspire for dependency but rather should seek independence from one another, an equality which would allow them to enter into a mutual partnership. Similarly, although Rousseau encourages women to refine their feminine attributes, he simultaneously encourages women to “keep [their husbands] at some distance from your person” (94) in order to “maintain the authority in love” (94). In contradiction, Wollstonecraft states that such an education—one that encourages vanity and teasing—will not make “chaste wives and sensible mothers” (94) and instead encourages the opposite:

Will it be allowed that the surest way to make a wife chaste is to teach her to practice the wanton arts of a mistress, termed virtuous coquetry, by the sensualist who can no longer relish the artless charms of sincerity, or taste the pleasure arising from a tender intimacy, when confidence is unchecked by suspicion, and rendered interesting by sense? (94).

The second section of this chapter focuses on Sermons to Young Women (1766) written by the clergyman James Fordyce and circulated around churches and schools at the time. Like Rousseau, Fordyce reinforces many of the stereotypes regarding women and their frailty, saying that women “are timid and want to be defended” (98). Wollstonecraft critiques Fordyce for his “cold artificial feelings” (98) and his “lover-like phrases of pumped up passion” (99), and continues to disparage Fordyce for comparing woman to angels, stating that his comparison rests purely on their youth and beauty and “consequently, it is their passions, not their virtues, that procure them this homage” (99). She accuses him of being vain and superficial in his understanding and treatment of women. Furthermore, Wollstonecraft argues that Fordyce’s sermons are undifferentiating by seeking to group all women into “one character of yielding softness and gentle compliance” (100), and thus, according to Wollstonecraft, encouraging a woman to act as nothing more than a “house slave” (100).

The third section of this chapter turns to James Gregory’s work A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters (1761). Wollstonecraft first attacks Gregory’s idea regarding “decorum” (102), in which he argues that women should live by a strict set of rules. Wollstonecraft says that if women only follow rules, they have no reason to develop their own rationality and intelligence: “[W]hen the mind has been stored with useful knowledge, and strengthened by being employed, the regulation of the behavior may safely be left to its guidance” (102). If they are given an education, they will not require rules or “decorum,” as they will live like this on their own. Furthermore, Gregory states that women should conceal their true feelings from their husbands. Wollstonecraft objects to “this system of dissimulation” (103) Gregory encourages. Instead, Wollstonecraft encourages women to be truthful and honest and says that “it is far better to be often deceived than never to trust, to be disappointed in love than never to lose; to lose a husband’s fondness than forfeit his esteem” (105).

This chapter’s fourth section examines various works written by other women, including Hester Thrale Piozzi, Germaine de Stael, Madame de Genlis, Hester Chapone, and Catherine Macaulay. With the exception of Hester Chapone’s Letters on the Improvement of the Mind and Catherine Macaulay’s Letters on Education, Wollstonecraft critiques the other woman cited for arguing “in the same track as men” (106) and “[adopting] the sentiments that brutalize them” (106). Primarily, she criticizes these women for stating that the sole purpose of women—as Rousseau, Fordyce, and Gregory similarly argue—is to “gain and keep the heart of man” (106). She cites both Macaulay and Chapone as women who, like her, call for the betterment of women through a rational and more equal education.

The fifth and final section examines Lord Chesterfield’s Letters, a series of published correspondence in which he instructs his son on various topics. Wollstonecraft’s main objection to these Letters is that they preach a set of rules or “precepts” (112) for young people to follow. Wollstonecraft states that if young people merely learn to follow rules, they are only learning to acquire “blind obedience” (112), “instead of preparing young people to encounter the evils of life with dignity and to acquire wisdom and virtue by the exercise of their own faculties” (112). Wollstonecraft also examines and questions the purpose of education: is its purpose the “immortality of the soul” (114), or simply “to secure ease and prosperity on earth” (114)? If the latter, then learning to follow a set of rules is the correct path; however, if it is the former—as Wollstonecraft believes—then young people must learn the difference between good and evil by way of experience and by “[feeling] as men feel before we can judge of their feelings” (117). They must learn for themselves, rather than following a set of rules blindly.