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269 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1792
A king is always a king – and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex, ever stand between them and rational converse.
patience, docility, good-humour, and flexibility; virtues incompatible with any vigorous exertion of intellect.
In the most trifling dangers they cling to their support, with parasitical tenacity, piteously demanding succour; and their natural protector extends his arms, or lifts up his voice, to guard the lovely trembler – from what? Perhaps the frown of an old cow, or the jump of a mouse; a rat, would be a serious danger.
So ludicrous, in fact, do these ceremonies appear to me, that I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude, to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.
How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry […] ?
the regal homage which [women] receive is so intoxicating, that till the manners of the times are changed, and formed on more reasonable principles, it may be impossible to convince them that the illegitimate power, which they obtain, by degrading themselves, is a curse…
Her children have her love, and her brightest hopes are beyond the grave, where her imagination often strays. […] The task of her life thus fulfilled, she calmly waits for the sleep of death.
I particularly object to the lover-like phrases of pumped up passion, which are every where interspersed [in Fordyce's sermons]. If women be ever allowed to walk without leading-strings, why must they be cajoled into virtue by artful flattery and sexual compliments? Speak to them the language of truth and soberness, and away with the lullaby strains of condescending endearment! Let them be taught to respect themselves as rational creatures, and not led to have a passion for their own insipid persons. It moves my gall to hear a preacher descanting on dress and needle-work; and still more, to hear him address the British fair, the fairest of the fair, as if they had only feelings.
To carry the remark still further, if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps, created, were treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. It is true, they could not then with equal propriety be termed the sweet flowers that smile in the walk of man; but they would be more respectable members of society, and discharge the important duties of life by the light of their own reason. 'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.
The only solid foundation for morality appears to be the character of the supreme Being; the harmony of which arises from a balance of attributes;—and, to speak with reverence, one attribute seems to imply the necessity of another. He must be just, because he is wise, he must be good, because he is omnipotent.
Women, I allow, may have different duties to fulfil; but they are human duties, and the principles that should regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same.Sound familiar? The quote I started my review of Beauvoir's The Second Sex with runs in a similarly powerful vein, and is why I am, for the first time, rounding my half star up instead of down. When it comes to this work, one must mercilessly separate the wheat from the chaff if the aim is Wollstonecraft's spirit and not her letter, but what remains is a svelte and shining sword of a spine that can be run through even her own obstinate instances of bad faith. To ancient works that offer me this ironclad potential of self-reflexivity, I will give the full benefit of my attention. The phrases "ahead of the times", "represented the times", "behind the times", etc, etc, mean nothing to me, for it was not too long ago when the closest semblance to humanity was a heap of atoms squirming in the muck and the lightning. Our species will not survive long enough to merit me wasting my time on grading morality on a curve.
[M]oss-covered opinions assume the disproportioned form of prejudices, when they are indolently adopted only because age has given them venerable aspect, though the reason on which they were built ceases to be a reason, or cannot be traced. Why are we to love prejudices, merely because they are prejudices?A true mark of a thinker is how receptive they are to you taking bits and pieces of their thought and applying them wholesale to other realms of their own insight. Out of context? Hardly. I'm not talking some eclectic mathematical formula transposed warts and all into some tenet of Hindu philosophy out of some misguided effort to propagate yet another Orientalizing confabulation. In the quote above, Wollstonecraft treats with prejudice in its entirety, so it would only be fitting to apply to this statement to each and every instance of her own displays of this misbegotten stagnation of critical thinking. That's the problem with using the entirety of humanity in order to prove an ethical point, you see. When you say all, you better mean all, else what are you doing opening your mouth in the first place.
On what ground can religion or morality rest when justice is thus set as defiance?Before Wollstonecraft gifted me with the useful terms of defiance and vain-glory, I characterized my honing of morality on the general public as seeing who got angry and for what reasons. I'd do the same with her if I got the chance, for people inclined towards cisnormativity, heteronormativity, slut-shaming, islamophobia, Sew Work Exclusionary Radical Feminism (Swerf), white feminism, classism, ableism, and probably a great deal of others I missed would have a field day with this work. If I questioned her about these and this and those, which instances would she suppress as defiance? If I poked holes in her trend of immortal souls and biz by pointing out that, yes, they are women as well, how high would her vain-glory raise its genocidal head? I have no use for people who'd prefer it if I were exterminated. The subtlety of some is merely a survival mechanism; all they need is a conflagration for the seeds to sprout.
He wished to crush Carthage, not to save Rome, but to promote its vain-glory; and, in general, it is to similar principles that humanity is sacrificed, for genuine duties support each other.
Parents often love their children in the most brutal manner, and sacrifice every relative duty to promote their advancement in the world.—To promote, such is the perversity of unprincipled prejudices, the future welfare of the very beings whose present existence they imbitter by the most despotic stretch of power.One aspect of Wollstonecraft's treatise that I didn't expect and very much appreciate is her taking on the subject of pedagogy, especially in the realms of paternity and maternity. Children take on all sorts of roles in this world of mine: economic strip mine, free labor, emotional chew toy, blow up doll, cultural bridge, translator of the foreign/modern/the times they are a-changin', child, human being, perpetrators of matricide and/or patricide. I don't give a fuck what reasons you have/had/will have for bringing life into this world. I really don't. Barring some exigencies like the genocidal attitude governments have for certain ethnic populations, the way you raise your child is the way you will be convicted. If you're not willing to make the effort to earn the rights you think you have to the autonomy of your offspring regardless if they're gay, trans, disabled, female, young, not financially independent by eighteen, not on whatever is your definition of the right "track", any surprise on your part at what follows is obscene. Nothing more, nothing less.
For man and woman, truth, if I understand the meaning of the word, must be the same; yet the fanciful female character, so prettily drawn by poets and novelists, demanding the sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue becomes a relative idea, having no other foundation than utility, and of that utility men pretend arbitrarily to judge, shaping it to their own convenience.Wollstonecraft misappropriates the word "slave" a lot, especially in light of The Book of Night Women, and what useful analyses she has to make of the white middle to upper class have to be put on the rack before they're applicable anywhere else, but she's got some valuable things to say about various holisms of morality, justice, and psychology shaped by any variation of tyranny. I'm just glad I didn't get to this before class thrust it upon me, cause the relation between the effort it takes one to sieve through prose and the amount one is bowled over by it in the process is a direct one, and I wouldn't have done myself or anyone else favors by cutting Wollstonecraft's words any slack. The 1790's are dead and gone, people. Let's not pull an anti-vacc on a less biological yet equally powerful front, mmkay?
Let the husband beware of trusting too implicitly to this servile obedience; for if his wife can with winning sweetness caress him when angry, and when she ought to be angry, unless contempt had stifled a natural effervescence, she may do the same after parting with a lover.
[T]hose who can see pain unmoved, will soon learn to inflict it.
Dio ha creato tutto secondo giustizia; ma l'uomo ha fatto il possibile per guastare l'opera.