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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects
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Dedication-IntroductionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Dedication Summary: “To M. Talleyrand-Perigord, Late Bishop of Autun.”
Wollstonecraft opens by dedicating her treatise to M. Talleyrand-Perigord. After having read his pamphlet on education in France, Wollstonecraft is attempting to change his opinion regarding female education. She states that she is not writing for herself, nor even for her sex, but for “the whole human race” (1), and claims that she is motivated primarily by the desire to uphold morality and virtue in society.
From here, Wollstonecraft begins by arguing that in France there is far less respect for virtue, manners, and morality than elsewhere. She attributes this indecency to the “social intercourse which has long subsisted between the sexes” (2) and to the lack of education for women. Wollstonecraft says that by furnishing woman with both equitable rights and education, it would not only prepare her to “become the companion of man” (3), but would also ensure that she understands why she ought to be virtuous, that she knows what her domestic and civic duties are, that she is patriotic and thus able to raise patriotic children, and can take a “civil interest” (3) in mankind.
Wollstonecraft believes that her treatise provides conclusive evidence that to make the human body and mind “more perfect” (3), there should be greater chastity, a thing that will only be achieved when women are not simply “idolized” (3) by men, but are respected for their intelligence, rather than their beauty.
Challenging Talleyrand-Perigord’s pamphlet, Wollstonecraft states that if—as Talleyrand-Perigord argues—men are to be allowed freedom and rights, then it is “inconsistent” (4) to deny women their own freedom, and renders men nothing more than “tyrants” (4). Furthermore, by denying women freedom, and thus enslaving them, it only morally degrades men further precisely because such an act lacks both virtue and morality: “They [women] may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject defendant” (4).
By not attending to female freedom and education, Wollstonecraft suggests that women—in a bid to attain agency and understanding on their own behalf—will only develop “cunning tricks” (4) and will use immoral means—such as vanity, sexual desire, and gossip—to achieve these ends. However, if women were afforded an education and “legitimate rights” (5), they might contribute to civic and domestic life in a moral and legitimate manner—with the use of their intelligence and reason, rather than duplicity and seduction—and it would render marriage a more sacred and equitable partnership.
Introduction Summary
Wollstonecraft opens by describing the “melancholy emotions” (6) triggered in her when she considers the state of women’s minds. She describes them as “weak and wretched” (6) and goes on to compare them to flowers which, having been planted in soil which is too fertile, only bloom once before fading “long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity” (6). Essentially, women are only valued for their appearance and once their beauty has “bloomed,” their worth is then negligible. She blames this on “a false system of education” (6) that only teaches women to be objects of sexual desire and love instead of nurturing their intelligence and reason, which would enable them “to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect” (6) even after their beauty has faded. Wollstonecraft goes so far as to argue that women “are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species” (6) by men.
So far, Wollstonecraft is trying to show that any deficiency or inferiority in women’s minds is due to insufficient education; however, she does concede that, physically, men remain superior to women. Even so, she asserts that this physical inferiority does not give men the right to make women even more inferior.
Here, Wollstonecraft turns to address the difference between so-called “masculine ideals”—intelligence, virtue, respect—and so-called “feminine ideals”—softness, sentimentality and prettiness. For Wollstonecraft, it is the difference between these two ideals that ensures that women remain “the weaker vessel” (8); even while women are just as able as men to practice these “masculine ideals,” they have never been afforded the opportunity nor the education to acquire them:
I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt (8).
Having established the foundation of her argument, Wollstonecraft explains that she will be writing in the plainest terms, having erased flowery language from her work in order to communicate her argument in the most simple and direct manner.
Dedication-Introduction Analysis
As her title indicates, Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is, at its core, a piece of rhetoric that argues vehemently for women to be treated as the equals of men and to be given a proper education. She hopes to convince her readers—both men and women alike—that the only reason why women are considered inferior (superficial, simple-minded, inept in anything outside of the domestic) is because of social structures that enforce these differences and an unequal education system that means women remain intellectually and morally inferior to men.
Wollstonecraft’s “Dedication” is slightly different in both tone and form to the other sections as she is specifically addressing M. Talleyrand-Perigord, rather than society at-large, and is responding to a pamphlet in which he argues for a better education system for men, but makes no reference to the education of women.
As a result, Wollstonecraft capitulates to a patriarchal and misogynistic perception of women—as cunning and manipulative creatures—which she then appropriates to argue for women to be educated to the same level as men. According to Wollstonecraft, if women were taught to be rational and intelligent beings, they would instinctively conduct themselves in a more virtuous and moral manner, understanding why they should and shouldn’t do certain things.
Such a patronizing presentation of women may seem, to our eyes, reductive and derogatory, and in no way advancing the rights and treatment of women. However, Wollstonecraft was writing at a time vastly different from our own: women would not gain the vote for more than 100 years and the only women to work would have been the poor, and this only through necessity. Moreover, Wollstonecraft is using patriarchal notions of femininity and marriage to advance her arguments, seeing it as the most effective way to gain advancement for her cause. She claims, in the Dedication, that educating women would lead to better marriages, an outcome which—in the eyes of men—could only serve the advancement of society: “And, now that more equitable laws are forming your citizens, marriage may become more sacred: your young men may choose wives from motives of affection, and your maidens allow love to root out vanity” (5).
Moving to the Introduction, Wollstonecraft’s tone shifts as she addresses a wider audience—even at times speaking specifically to “my own sex” (8) and growing more passionate and emphatic in her prose. She uses exclamation points more frequently and employs direct, modal phrases such as “I will,” “I aim,” and “I shall” to indicate her intentions for the rest of the text.
Wollstonecraft uses the Introduction to draw out the differences between the sexes, presenting women as weak, simple-minded, vain, and pitiful. Indeed, in one of the more emphatic passages, Wollstonecraft dwells descriptively on the ineptitude of women, calling them “a frivolous sex” (9), “animals” (9), “children” (9), “weak beings” (9), “insignificant objects of desire” (9), and “mere propagators of fools” (9). This surfeit of derogatory descriptions illustrates just how low a regard Wollstonecraft holds for her sex, a persuasive tool she uses to argue that the present state of women is a result of socially-enforced ideas regarding femininity and the inadequate education of women, rather than any inherent intellectual or moral deficiency. By illustrating just how inept women are, Wollstonecraft is simultaneously showing just how much society has failed them.
Ultimately, Wollstonecraft uses the Introduction both to lay out her principle argument for the work—that women are only morally inferior because they have been treated as though they are—and to call on women to conduct themselves in a more “masculine” manner, with reason, intelligence, and virtue.
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