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Trans-Saharan trade
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The Trans-Saharan Trade route was a trade route that traveled across the Sahara desert. This trade route traveled across the Sahel, the North African coast, Europe and the Levant. These trade routes have always been popular for people, even prior to the kingdoms of the Western and Central Sudan. At their height (8th century until the 17th century) they served as a cultural highway for the different peoples and tribes along the trade route; and still serve the people today. Not only culture and goods, but religion was traded along this network. These interactions with traders and merchants helped spread Islam to the Western African States and the Sahara.
The Trans Saharan trade network is the first real example of people using camels to cross the desert. The merchants would travel in caravans with hundreds, even up to tens of thousands of camels in the caravan. These camels would have to be prepared for months before the journey, grazing and fattening themselves up. Travel across the desert was extremely dangerous, requiring the trip to be well planned ahead of time. By traveling to different oasis’s the caravan is able to have enough water to survive the journey.
The Sahara once had a very different environment. In Libya and Algeria, from at least 7000 BC, there was pastoralism, herding of sheep and goats, large settlements and pottery. Cattle were introduced to the Central Sahara (Ahaggar) from 4000 to 3500 BC. Remarkable rock paintings (dated 3500 to 2500 BC), in places which are currently very dry, portray vegetation and animal presence rather different from modern expectations.[1]
As a desert, Sahara is now a hostile expanse that separates the Mediterranean economy from the economy of the Niger basin. As Fernand Braudel points out that crossing such a zone (especially without mechanized transport) is worthwhile only when exceptional circumstances cause the expected gain to outweigh the cost and danger.[2]
Trade, beginning around 300 CE,[citation needed] was conducted by caravans of camels. According to Ibn Battuta, the explorer who accompanied one of the caravans, the average size per caravan was 1,000 camels; some caravans were as large as 12,000.[3][4] The caravans would be guided by highly paid Berbers who knew the desert and could ensure safe passage from their fellow desert nomads. The survival of a caravan was precarious and would rely on careful coordination. Runners would be sent ahead to oases so that water could be shipped out to the caravan when it was still several days away, as the caravans could not easily carry enough with them to make the full journey. In the middle of the 14th century Ibn Battuta crossed the desert from Sijilmasa via the salt mines at Taghaza to the oasis of Oualata. A guide was sent ahead and water was brought on a journey of four days from Oualata to meet the caravan.[5]
Contents
[hide]
1 Early trans-Saharan trade
2 Introduction of the camel
3 Trans-Saharan trade in the Middle Ages
4 Decline of trans-Saharan trade
5 The future of trans-Saharan trade
6 See also
7 References
7.1 Notes
8 Further reading
Early trans-Saharan trade[edit]
A building in Oualata, southeast Mauritania
The Bilma oasis in northeast Niger, with the Kaouar escarpment in the background
Ancient trade spanned the northeastern corner of the Sahara in the Naqadan era. Predynastic Egyptians in the Naqada I period traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the Western Desert to the west, and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean to the east. Many trading routes went from oasis to oasis to resupply on both food and water. These oases were very important.[6] They also imported obsidian from Ethiopia to shape blades and other objects.[7]
The overland route through the Wadi Hammamat from the Nile to the Red Sea was known as early as predynastic times;[8] drawings depicting Egyptian reed boats have been found along the path dating to 4000 BC.[9] Ancient cities dating to the First Dynasty of Egypt arose along both its Nile and Red Sea junctions,[8] testifying to the route's ancient popularity. It became a major route from Thebes to the Red Sea port of Elim, where travelers then moved on to either Asia, Arabia or the Horn of Africa.[8] Records exist documenting knowledge of the route among Senusret I, Seti, Ramesses IV and also, later, the Roman Empire, especially for mining.[10]
The Darb el-Arbain trade route, passing through Kharga in the south and Asyut in the north, was used from as early as the Old Kingdom for the transport and trade of gold, ivory, spices, wheat, animals and plants.[11] Later, Ancient Romans would protect the route by lining it with varied forts and small outposts, some guarding large settlements complete with cultivation.[12] Described by Herodotus as a road "traversed ... in forty days", it became by his time an important land route facilitating trade between Nubia and Egypt,[13] and subsequently became known as the Forty Days Road. From Kobbei, 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of al-Fashir, the route passed through the desert to Bir Natrum, another oasis and salt mine, to Wadi Howar before proceeding to Egypt.[14] The Darb el-Arbain trade route was the easternmost of the central routes.
The westernmost of the three central routes was the Ghadames Road, which ran from the Niger River at Gao north to Ghat and Ghadames before terminating at Tripoli. Next was the easiest of the three routes: the Garamantean Road, named after the former rulers of the land it passed through and also called the Bilma Trail. The Garamantean Road passed south of the desert near Murzuk before turning north to pass between the Alhaggar and Tibesti Mountains before reaching the oasis at Kawar. From Kawar, caravans would pass over the great sand dunes of Bilma, where rock salt was mined in great quantities for trade, before reaching the savanna north of Lake Chad. This was the shortest of the routes, and the primary exchanges were slaves and ivory from the south for salt.
The western routes were the Walata Road, from the Sénégal River, and the Taghaza Trail, from the Mali River, which had their northern termini at the great trading center of Sijilmasa, situated in Morocco just north of the desert.[14] The growth of the city of Aoudaghost, founded in the 5th century BCE, was stimulated by its position at the southern end of a trans Saharan trade route.[citation needed]
To the east, three ancient routes connected the south to the Mediterranean. The herdsmen of the Fezzan of Libya, known as the Garamantes, controlled these routes as early as 1500 BC. From their capital of Germa in the Wadi Ajal, the Garamantean Empire raided north to the sea and south into the Sahel. By the 4th century BC, the independent city-states of Phoenecia had expanded their control to the territory and routes once held by the Garamantes.[14] Shillington states that existing contact with the Mediterranean received added incentive with the growth of the port city of Carthage. Founded c. 800 BCE, Carthage became one terminus for West African gold, ivory, and slaves. West Africa received salt, cloth, beads, and metal goods. Shillington proceeds to identify this trade route as the source for West African iron smelting.[15] Trade continued into Roman times. Although there are Classical references to direct travel from the Mediterranean to West Africa (Daniels, p. 22f), most of this trade was conducted through middlemen, inhabiting the area and aware of passages through the drying lands.[16] The Legio III Augusta subsequently secured these routes on behalf of Rome by the 1st century AD, safeguarding the southern border of the empire for two and half centuries.[14]
Introduction of the camel[edit]
Modern-day camel caravan near the Ahaggar Mountains in the central Sahara, 2006
Herodotus had spoken of the Garamantes hunting the Ethiopian Troglodytes with their chariots; this account was associated with depictions of horses drawing chariots in contemporary cave art in southern Morocco and the Fezzan, giving origin to a theory that the Garamantes, or some other Saran people, had created chariot routes to provide Rome and Carthage with gold and ivory. However, it has been argued that no horse skeletons have been found dating from this early period in the region, and chariots would have been unlikely vehicles for trading purposes due to their small capacity.[17]
The earliest evidence for domesticated camels in the region dates from the 3rd century. Used by the Berber people, they enabled more regular contact across the entire width of the Sahara, but regular trade routes did not develop until the beginnings of the Islamic conversion of West Africa in the 7th and 8th centuries.[17] Two main trade routes developed. The first ran through the western desert from modern Morocco to the Niger Bend, the second from modern Tunisia to the Lake Chad area. These stretches were relatively short and had the essential network of occasional oases that established the routing as inexorably as pins in a map. Further east of the Fezzan with its trade route through the valley of Kaouar to Lake Chad, Libya was impassable due to its lack of oases and fierce sandstorms.[18] A route from the Niger Bend to Egypt was abandoned in the 10th century due to its dangers.[citation needed]
Trans-Saharan trade in the Middle Ages[edit]
See also: Trans-Saharan slave trade
The rise of the Ghana Empire, now called Mali, Senegal, and southern Mauritania, paralleled the increase in trans-Saharan trade. Mediterranean economies were short of gold but could supply salt, taken by places like the African salt mine of Taghaza, whereas West African countries like Wangara had plenty of gold but needed salt. The trans-Saharan slave trade was also important because large numbers of Africans were sent north, generally to serve as domestic servants or slave concubines.[19] The West African states imported highly trained slave soldiers. It has been estimated that from the 10th to the 19th century some 6,000 to 7,000 slaves were transported north each year.[20] Perhaps as many as nine million slaves were exported along the trans-Saharan caravan route.[21] Several trade routes became established, perhaps the most important terminating in Sijilmasa (Morocco) and Ifriqiya to the north. There, and in other North African cities, Berber traders had increased contact with Islam, encouraging conversions, and by the 8th century, Muslims were traveling to Ghana. Many in Ghana converted to Islam, and it is likely that the Empire's trade was privileged as a result. Around 1050, Ghana lost Aoudaghost to the Almoravids, but new goldmines around Bure reduced trade through the city, instead benefiting the Malinke of the south, who later founded the Mali Empire.
Saharan trade routes circa 1400, with the modern territory of Niger highlighted
Unlike Ghana, Mali was a Muslim kingdom since his foundation, and under it, the gold–salt trade continued. Other, less important trade goods were slaves, kola nuts from the south and slave beads and cowry shells from the north (for use as currency). It was under Mali that the great cities of the Niger bend—including Gao and Djenné—prospered, with Timbuktu in particular becoming known across Europe for its great wealth. Important trading centers in southern West Africa developed at the transitional zone between the forest and the savanna; examples include Begho and Bono Manso (in present-day Ghana) and Bondoukou (in present-day Côte d'Ivoire). Western trade routes continued to be important, with Ouadane, Oualata and Chinguetti being the major trade centres in what is now Mauritania, while the Tuareg towns of Assodé and later Agadez grew around a more easterly route in what is now Niger.
The eastern trans-Saharan route led to the development of the long lived Kanem-Bornu empire as well as the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires,centred on the Lake Chad area. This trade route was somewhat less efficient and only rose to great prominence when there was turmoil in the west such as during the Almohad conquests.
Decline of trans-Saharan trade[edit]
The Portuguese journeys around the West African coast opened up new avenues for trade between Europe and West Africa. By the early 16th century, European trading bases, the "Factories" established on the coast since 1445, and trade with the wealthier Europeans became of prime importance to West Africa. North Africa had declined in both political and economic importance, while the Saharan crossing remained long and treacherous. However, the major blow to trans-Saharan trade was the Battle of Tondibi of 1591–92. Morocco sent troops across the Sahara and attacked Timbuktu, Gao and some other important trading centres, destroying buildings and property and exiling prominent citizens. This disruption to trade led to a dramatic decline in the importance of these cities and the resulting animosity reduced trade considerably.
Although much reduced, trans-Saharan trade continued. But trade routes to the West African coast became increasingly easy, particularly after the French invasion of the Sahel in the 1890s and subsequent construction of railways to the interior. A railway line from Dakar to Algiers via the Niger bend was planned but never constructed. With the independence of nations in the region in the 1960s, the north–south routes were severed by national boundaries. National governments were hostile to Tuareg nationalism and so made few efforts to maintain or support trans-Saharan trade, and the Tuareg Rebellion of the 1990s and Algerian Civil War further disrupted routes, with many roads closed.
Azalai salt caravan from Agadez to Bilma, 1985
Traditional caravan routes are largely void of camels, but the shorter Azalai routes from Agadez to Bilma and Timbuktu to Taoudenni are still regularly—if lightly—used. Some members of the Tuareg still use the traditional trade routes, often traveling 2,400 km (1,500 mi) and six months out of every year by camel across the Sahara trading in salt carried from the desert interior to communities on the desert edges.[22]
The future of trans-Saharan trade[edit]
The African Union and African Development Bank support the Trans-Sahara Highway from Algiers to Lagos via Tamanrasset which aims to stimulate trans-Saharan trade. The route is paved except for a 200 km section in northern Niger, but border restrictions still hamper traffic. Only a few trucks carry trans-Saharan trade, particularly fuel and salt. Three other highways across the Sahara are proposed: for further details see Trans-African Highways. Building the highways is difficult because of sandstorms
See also[edit]
Trans-Sahara Highway
Neolithic Subpluvial
References[edit]
Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ Shillington, Kevin (1989, 1995). History of Africa, Second Edition. St. Martin's Press, New York. p. 32.
Jump up ^ Braudel, Fernand (1984). The Perspective of the World. (Vol III of Civilization and Capitalism). (Published in French in 1979).
Jump up ^ David Rouge, Saharan salt caravans ply ancient route, Reuters, 21 February 2007
Jump up ^ An African Pilgrim-King and a World-Traveler: Mansa Musa and Ibn Battuta
Jump up ^ Gibb, H.A.R.; Beckingham, C.F. trans. and eds. (1994). The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, A.D. 1325–1354 (Volume 4). London: Hakluyt Society. pp. 948–49. ISBN 978-0-904180-37-4. CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list (link)
Jump up ^ Shaw, Ian (2002). The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 61. ISBN 0-500-05074-0.
Jump up ^ Barbara G. Aston, James A. Harrell, Ian Shaw (2000). Paul T. Nicholson and Ian Shaw editors. "Stone", in Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, Cambridge, 5–77, pp. 46–47. Also note: Barbara G. Aston (1994). "Ancient Egyptian Stone Vessels", Studien zur Archäologie und Geschichte Altägyptens 5, Heidelberg, pp. 23–26. (See on-line posts: [1] and [2].)
^ Jump up to: a b c Please refer to Wadi Hammamat#Trade route.
Jump up ^ Please refer to Wadi Hammamat#Carvings.
Jump up ^ Please refer to Wadi Hammamat#Quarries and Wadi Hammamat#Common era.
Jump up ^ Jobbins, Jenny. "The 40 days' nightmare", in Al-Ahram, 13–19 November 2003, Issue No. 664. Published in Cairo, Egypt.
Jump up ^ Please refer to Kharga Oasis.
Jump up ^ Smith, Dr. Stuart Tyson. Nubia: History, University of California Santa Barbara, Department of Anthropology, <http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/stsmith/research/nubia_history.html>. Retrieved January 21, 2009.
^ Jump up to: a b c d Burr, J. Millard and Robert O. Collins, Darfur: The Long Road to Disaster, Markus Wiener Publishers: Princeton, 2006, ISBN 1-55876-405-4, pp. 6–7.
Jump up ^ Shillington (1995). p. 46.
Jump up ^ Daniels, Charles (1970). The Garamantes of Southern Libya. Oleander, North Harrow, Middlesex. p. 22.
^ Jump up to: a b Masonen, P: "Trans-Saharan Trade and the West African Discovery of the Mediterranean World. Archived 2013-05-28 at the Wayback Machine."
Jump up ^ Lewicki, T. (1994). "The Role of the Sahara and Saharians in Relationships between North and South". In UNESCO General History of Africa: Volume 3. University of California Press, ISBN 92-3-601709-6.
Jump up ^ Ibn Battuta's Trip: Part Twelve – Journey to West Africa (1351–1353) Archived 2010-06-09 at the Wayback Machine.
Jump up ^ Fage, J.D. A History of Africa. Routledge, 4th edition, 2001. pg. 256
Jump up ^ The impact of the slave trade on Africa
Jump up ^ National Geographic Channel (2001). Africa, Episode 2, "Desert Odyssey" (TV/Video). This episode follows a Tuareg tribe across the Sahara for six months by camel.
Further reading[edit]
Albert Adu Boahen, Britain, the Sahara and the Western Sudan 1788–1861. Oxford 1964
Edward William Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1995) ISBN 1-55876-091-1
Donald Harden, The Phoenicians, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971 (1962)
Kevin Shillington (eds), "Tuareg: Takedda and trans-Saharan trade" from the Encyclopaedia of African History, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004, ISBN 1-57958-245-1
B.H. Warmington, Carthage, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1964 (1960)
M'hammad Sabour and Knut S. Vikør (eds), Ethnic Encounter and Culture Change[permanent dead link], Bergen, 1997, [3] Google Cache Last Retrieved Jan.2005.
Ross, Eric (2011). "A historical geography of the trans-Saharan trade" (PDF). In Krätli, Graziano; Lydon, Ghislaine. The Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa. Leiden: Brill. pp. 1–34. ISBN 978-90-04-18742-9.
The Trans-Saharan Gold Trade 7th–14th Century from the Museum of Modern Art
Lagha Chegrouche\E, "Géopolitique transsaharienne de l'énergie", in Revue Géopolitique N°108, 2010
Lagha Chegrouche, "Géopolitique transsaharienne de l'énergie, le jeu et l'enjeu? in Revue de l'énergie, Etude, 2010
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Part of a series on trade routes
Amber Road
Hærvejen
Incense Route
Dvaravati–Kamboja route
King's Highway
Rome-India routes
Royal Road
Salt road
Siberian Route
Silk Road
Maritime Silk Road
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Tea Horse Road
Varangians to the Greeks
Via Maris
Triangular trade
Volga trade route
Trans-Saharan trade
Old Salt Route
Maritime republics
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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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Title page from the first American edition of Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), written by the 18th-century British proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th century who did not believe women should have an education. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.
Wollstonecraft was prompted to write the Rights of Woman after reading Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord's 1791 report to the French National Assembly, which stated that women should only receive a domestic education; she used her commentary on this specific event to launch a broad attack against sexual double standards and to indict men for encouraging women to indulge in excessive emotion. Wollstonecraft wrote the Rights of Woman hurriedly to respond directly to ongoing events; she intended to write a more thoughtful second volume but died before completing it.
While Wollstonecraft does call for equality between the sexes in particular areas of life, such as morality, she does not explicitly state that men and women are equal. Her ambiguous statements regarding the equality of the sexes have since made it difficult to classify Wollstonecraft as a modern feminist, particularly since the word and the concept were unavailable to her. Although it is commonly assumed now that the Rights of Woman was unfavourably received, this is a modern misconception based on the belief that Wollstonecraft was as reviled during her lifetime as she became after the publication of William Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798). The Rights of Woman was actually well received when it was first published in 1792. One biographer has called it "perhaps the most original book of [Wollstonecraft's] century".[1]
Contents
1 Historical context
2 Themes of writings
2.1 Rational education
2.2 Feminism writings
2.3 Sensibility
2.4 Republicanism
2.5 Class
3 Rhetoric and style
4 Revision
5 Reception and legacy
6 See also
7 Notes
8 Bibliography
8.1 Modern reprints
8.1.1 Contemporary reviews
8.2 Secondary sources
9 External links
Historical context[edit]
Talleyrand, by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was written against the tumultuous background of the French Revolution and the debates that it spawned in Britain. In a lively and sometimes vicious pamphlet war, now referred to as the Revolution controversy, British political commentators addressed topics ranging from representative government to human rights to the separation of church and state, many of these issues having been raised in France first. Wollstonecraft first entered this fray in 1790 with A Vindication of the Rights of Men, a response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).[2] In his Reflections, Burke criticized the view of many British thinkers and writers who had welcomed the early stages of the French revolution. While they saw the revolution as analogous to Britain's own Glorious Revolution in 1688, which had restricted the powers of the monarchy, Burke argued that the appropriate historical analogy was the English Civil War (1642–1651) in which Charles I had been executed in 1649. He viewed the French revolution as the violent overthrow of a legitimate government. In Reflections he argues that citizens do not have the right to revolt against their government because civilization is the result of social and political consensus; its traditions cannot be continually challenged—the result would be anarchy. One of the key arguments of Wollstonecraft's Rights of Men, published just six weeks after Burke's Reflections, is that rights cannot be based on tradition; rights, she argues, should be conferred because they are reasonable and just, regardless of their basis in tradition.[3]
When Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord presented his Rapport sur l'instruction publique (1791) to the National Assembly in France, Wollstonecraft was galvanized to respond.[4] In his recommendations for a national system of education, Talleyrand had written:
Let us bring up women, not to aspire to advantages which the Constitution denies them, but to know and appreciate those which it guarantees them . . . Men are destined to live on the stage of the world. A public education suits them: it early places before their eyes all the scenes of life: only the proportions are different. The paternal home is better for the education of women; they have less need to learn to deal with the interests of others, than to accustom themselves to a calm and secluded life.[5]
Olympe de Gouges
Wollstonecraft dedicated the Rights of Woman to Talleyrand: "Having read with great pleasure a pamphlet which you have lately published, I dedicate this volume to you; to induce you to reconsider the subject, and maturely weigh what I have advanced respecting the rights of woman and national education."[6] At the end of 1791, French feminist Olympe de Gouges had published her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, and the question of women's rights became central to political debates in both France and Britain.[2]
The Rights of Woman is an extension of Wollstonecraft's arguments in the Rights of Men. In the Rights of Men, as the title suggests, she is concerned with the rights of particular men (18th-century British men) while in the Rights of Woman, she is concerned with the rights afforded to "woman", an abstract category. She does not isolate her argument to 18th-century women or British women. The first chapter of the Rights of Woman addresses the issue of natural rights and asks who has those inalienable rights and on what grounds. She answers that since natural rights are given by God, for one segment of society to deny them to another segment is a sin.[7] The Rights of Woman thus engages not only specific events in France and in Britain but also larger questions being raised by political philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[8]
Themes of writings[edit]
Wollstonecraft did not employ the formal argumentation or logical prose style common to 18th-century philosophical writing when composing her own works. The Rights of Woman is a long essay that introduces all of its major topics in the opening chapters and then repeatedly returns to them, each time from a different point of view. It also adopts a hybrid tone that combines rational argument with the fervent rhetoric of sensibility.[9]
In the 18th century, sensibility was a physical phenomenon that came to be attached to a specific set of moral beliefs. Physicians and anatomists believed that the more sensitive people's nerves, the more emotionally affected they would be by their surroundings. Since women were thought to have keener nerves than men, it was also believed that women were more emotional than men.[10] The emotional excess associated with sensibility also theoretically produced an ethic of compassion: those with sensibility could easily sympathise with people in pain. Thus historians have credited the discourse of sensibility and those who promoted it with the increased humanitarian efforts, such as the movement to abolish the slave trade.[11] But sensibility also paralysed those who had too much of it; as scholar G. J. Barker-Benfield explains, "an innate refinement of nerves was also identifiable with greater suffering, with weakness, and a susceptibility to disorder".[10]
By the time Wollstonecraft was writing the Rights of Woman, sensibility had already been under sustained attack for a number of years.[12] Sensibility, which had initially promised to draw individuals together through sympathy, was now viewed as "profoundly separatist"; novels, plays, and poems that employed the language of sensibility asserted individual rights, sexual freedom, and unconventional familial relationships based only upon feeling.[13] Furthermore, as Janet Todd, another scholar of sensibility, argues, "to many in Britain the cult of sensibility seemed to have feminized the nation, given women undue prominence, and emasculated men."[14]
Rational education[edit]
One of Wollstonecraft's central arguments in the Rights of Woman is that women should be educated in a rational manner to give them the opportunity to contribute to society. In the 18th century, it was often assumed by both educational philosophers and conduct book writers, who wrote what one might think of as early self-help books,[15] that women were incapable of rational or abstract thought. Women, it was believed, were too susceptible to sensibility and too fragile to be able to think clearly. Wollstonecraft, along with other female reformers such as Catharine Macaulay and Hester Chapone, maintained that women were indeed capable of rational thought and deserved to be educated. She argued this point in her own conduct book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), in her children's book, Original Stories from Real Life (1788), as well as in the Rights of Woman.[16]
Stating in her preface that "my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if [woman] be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all", Wollstonecraft contends that society will degenerate without educated women, particularly because mothers are the primary educators of young children.[17] She attributes the problem of uneducated women to men and "a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who [consider] females rather as women than human creatures".[18] Women are capable of rationality; it only appears that they are not, because men have refused to educate them and encouraged them to be frivolous (Wollstonecraft describes silly women as "spaniels" and "toys"[19]).[20] While stressing it is of the same kind, she entertains the notion that women might not be able to attain the same degree of knowledge that men do.[21]
Wollstonecraft attacks conduct book writers such as James Fordyce and John Gregory as well as educational philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau who argue that a woman does not need a rational education. (Rousseau famously argues in Emile (1762) that women should be educated for the pleasure of men; Wollstonecraft, infuriated by this argument, attacks not only it but also Rousseau himself.[22]) Intent on illustrating the limitations that contemporary educational theory placed upon women, Wollstonecraft writes, "taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison",[23] implying that without this damaging ideology, which encourages young women to focus their attention on beauty and outward accomplishments, they could achieve much more. Wives could be the rational "companions" of their husbands and even pursue careers should they so choose: "women might certainly study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses. And midwifery, decency seems to allot to them . . . they might, also, study politics . . . Business of various kinds, they might likewise pursue."[24]
For Wollstonecraft, "the most perfect education" is "an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attach such habits of virtue as will render it independent."[25] In addition to her broad philosophical arguments, Wollstonecraft lays out a specific plan for national education to counter Talleyrand's. In Chapter 12, "On National Education," she proposes that children be sent to day schools as well as given some education at home "to inspire a love of home and domestic pleasures," and that such schools be free for children "five to nine years of age."[26] She also maintains that schooling should be co-educational, contending that men and women, whose marriages are "the cement of society," should be "educated after the same model."[27]
Feminism writings[edit]
The Debutante (1807) by Henry Fuseli; "Woman, the victim of male social conventions, is tied to the wall, made to sew and guarded by governesses. The picture reflects Mary Wollstonecraft's views in The Rights of Women [sic]".[28]
It is debatable to what extent the Rights of Woman is a feminist text; because the definitions of feminist vary, different scholars have come to different conclusions. Wollstonecraft would never have referred to her text as feminist because the words feminist and feminism were not coined until the 1890s.[29] Moreover, there was no feminist movement to speak of during Wollstonecraft's lifetime. In the introduction to her seminal work on Wollstonecraft's thought, Barbara Taylor writes:
Describing [Wollstonecraft's philosophy] as feminist is problematic, and I do it only after much consideration. The label is of course anachronistic . . . Treating Wollstonecraft's thought as an anticipation of nineteenth and twentieth-century feminist argument has meant sacrificing or distorting some of its key elements. Leading examples of this . . . have been the widespread neglect of her religious beliefs, and the misrepresentation of her as a bourgeois liberal, which together have resulted in the displacement of a religiously inspired utopian radicalism by a secular, class-partisan reformism as alien to Wollstonecraft's political project as her dream of a divinely promised age of universal happiness is to our own. Even more important however has been the imposition on Wollstonecraft of a heroic-individualist brand of politics utterly at odds with her own ethically driven case for women's emancipation. Wollstonecraft's leading ambition for women was that they should attain virtue, and it was to this end that she sought their liberation.[30]
In the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft does not make the claim for gender equality using the same arguments or the same language that late 19th- and 20th century feminists later would. For instance, rather than unequivocally stating that men and women are equal, Wollstonecraft contends that men and women are equal in the eyes of God, which means that they are both subject to the same moral law.[31] For Wollstonecraft, men and women are equal in the most important areas of life. While such an idea may not seem revolutionary to 21st-century readers, its implications were revolutionary during the 18th century. For example, it implied that both men and women—not just women—should be modest[32] and respect the sanctity of marriage.[33] Wollstonecraft's argument exposed the sexual double standard of the late 18th century and demanded that men adhere to the same virtues demanded of women.
However, Wollstonecraft's arguments for equality stand in contrast to her statements respecting the superiority of masculine strength and valour.[34] Wollstonecraft famously and ambiguously states:
Let it not be concluded, that I wish to invert the order of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue. I speak collectively of the whole sex; but I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple direction, as that there is a God.[35]
Moreover, Wollstonecraft calls on men, rather than women, to initiate the social and political changes she outlines in the Rights of Woman. Because women are uneducated, they cannot alter their own situation—men must come to their aid.[36] Wollstonecraft writes at the end of her chapter "Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society":
I then would fain convince reasonable men of the importance of some of my remarks; and prevail on them to weigh dispassionately the whole tenor of my observations. – I appeal to their understandings; and, as a fellow-creature, claim, in the name of my sex, some interest in their hearts. I entreat them to assist to emancipate their companion, to make her a help meet for them! Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers – in a word, better citizens.[37]
It is Wollstonecraft's last novel, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798), the fictionalized sequel to the Rights of Woman, that is usually considered her most radical feminist work.[38]
Sensibility[edit]
One of Wollstonecraft's most scathing criticisms in the Rights of Woman is against false and excessive sensibility, particularly in women. She argues that women who succumb to sensibility are "blown about by every momentary gust of feeling"; because these women are "the prey of their senses", they cannot think rationally.[39] In fact, not only do they do harm to themselves but they also do harm to all of civilization: these are not women who can refine civilization – these are women who will destroy it. But reason and feeling are not independent for Wollstonecraft; rather, she believes that they should inform each other. For Wollstonecraft, as for the important 18th-century philosopher David Hume, the passions underpin all reason.[40] This was a theme that she would return to throughout her career, but particularly in her novels Mary: A Fiction (1788) and Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman.
As part of her argument that women should not be overly influenced by their feelings, Wollstonecraft emphasises that they should not be constrained by or made slaves to their bodies or their sexual feelings.[41] This particular argument has led many modern feminists to suggest that Wollstonecraft intentionally avoids granting women any sexual desire. Cora Kaplan argues that the "negative and prescriptive assault on female sexuality" is a "leitmotif" of the Rights of Woman.[42] For example, Wollstonecraft advises her readers to "calmly let passion subside into friendship" in the ideal companionate marriage (that is, in the ideal of a love-based marriage that was developing at the time).[43] It would be better, she writes, when "two virtuous young people marry . . . if some circumstances checked their passion".[44] According to Wollstonecraft, "love and friendship cannot subsist in the same bosom".[44] As Mary Poovey explains, "Wollstonecraft betrays her fear that female desire might in fact court man's lascivious and degrading attentions, that the subordinate position women have been given might even be deserved. Until women can transcend their fleshly desires and fleshly forms, they will be hostage to the body."[45] If women are not interested in sexuality, they cannot be dominated by men. Wollstonecraft worries that women are consumed with "romantic wavering", that is, they are interested only in satisfying their lusts.[46] Because the Rights of Woman eliminates sexuality from a woman's life, Kaplan contends, it "expresses a violent antagonism to the sexual" while at the same time "exaggerat[ing] the importance of the sensual in the everyday life of women". Wollstonecraft was so determined to wipe sexuality from her picture of the ideal woman that she ended up foregrounding it by insisting upon its absence.[47] But as Kaplan and others have remarked, Wollstonecraft may have been forced to make this sacrifice: "it is important to remember that the notion of woman as politically enabled and independent [was] fatally linked [during the eighteenth century] to the unrestrained and vicious exercise of her sexuality."[48]
Republicanism[edit]
Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix (1833)
Claudia Johnson, a prominent Wollstonecraft scholar, has called the Rights of Woman "a republican manifesto".[49] Johnson contends that Wollstonecraft is hearkening back to the Commonwealth tradition of the 17th century and attempting to reestablish a republican ethos. In Wollstonecraft's version, there would be strong, but separate, masculine and feminine roles for citizens.[50] According to Johnson, Wollstonecraft "denounces the collapse of proper sexual distinction as the leading feature of her age, and as the grievous consequence of sentimentality itself. The problem undermining society in her view is feminized men".[51] If men feel free to adopt both the masculine position and the sentimental feminine position, she argues, women have no position open to them in society.[52] Johnson therefore sees Wollstonecraft as a critic, in both the Rights of Men and the Rights of Woman, of the "masculinization of sensitivity" in such works as Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.[53]
In the Rights of Woman Wollstonecraft adheres to a version of republicanism that includes a belief in the eventual overthrow of all titles, including the monarchy. She also briefly suggests that all men and women should be represented in government. But the bulk of her "political criticism," as Chris Jones, a Wollstonecraft scholar, explains, "is couched predominantly in terms of morality".[54] Her definition of virtue focuses on the individual's happiness rather than, for example, the good of the entire society.[54] This is reflected in her explanation of natural rights. Because rights ultimately proceed from God, Wollstonecraft maintains that there are duties, tied to those rights, incumbent upon each and every person. For Wollstonecraft, the individual is taught republicanism and benevolence within the family; domestic relations and familial ties are crucial to her understanding of social cohesion and patriotism.[55]
Class[edit]
In many ways the Rights of Woman is inflected by a bourgeois view of the world, as is its direct predecessor the Rights of Men. Wollstonecraft addresses her text to the middle class, which she calls the "most natural state". She also frequently praises modesty and industry, virtues which, at the time, were associated with the middle class.[56] From her position as a middle-class writer arguing for a middle-class ethos, Wollstonecraft also attacks the wealthy, criticizing them using the same arguments she employs against women. She points out the "false-refinement, immorality, and vanity" of the rich, calling them "weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and affections of their race, in a premature unnatural manner [who] undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society".[57]
But Wollstonecraft's criticisms of the wealthy do not necessarily reflect a concomitant sympathy for the poor. For her, the poor are fortunate because they will never be trapped by the snares of wealth: "Happy is it when people have the cares of life to struggle with; for these struggles prevent their becoming a prey to enervating vices, merely from idleness!"[58] Moreover, she contends that charity has only negative consequences because, as Jones puts it, she "sees it as sustaining an unequal society while giving the appearance of virtue to the rich".[59]
In her national plan for education, she retains class distinctions (with an exception for the intelligent), suggesting that: "After the age of nine, girls and boys, intended for domestic employments, or mechanical trades, ought to be removed to other schools, and receive instruction, in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual . . . The young people of superior abilities, or fortune, might now be taught, in another school, the dead and living languages, the elements of science, and continue the study of history and politics, on a more extensive scale, which would not exclude polite literature."[60]
Rhetoric and style[edit]
Rousseau's Emile (1762)
In attempting to navigate the cultural expectations of female writers and the generic conventions of political and philosophical discourse, Wollstonecraft, as she does throughout her oeuvre, constructs a unique blend of masculine and feminine styles in the Rights of Woman.[61] She uses the language of philosophy, referring to her work as a "treatise" with "arguments" and "principles".[61] However, Wollstonecraft also uses a personal tone, employing "I" and "you", dashes and exclamation marks, and autobiographical references to create a distinctly feminine voice in the text.[9] The Rights of Woman further hybridizes its genre by weaving together elements of the conduct book, the short essay, and the novel, genres often associated with women, while at the same time claiming that these genres could be used to discuss philosophical topics such as rights.[62]
Although Wollstonecraft argues against excessive sensibility, the rhetoric of the Rights of Woman is at times heated and attempts to provoke the reader. Many of the most emotional comments in the book are directed at Rousseau. For example, after excerpting a long passage from Emile (1762), Wollstonecraft pithily states, "I shall make no other comments on this ingenious passage, than just to observe, that it is the philosophy of lasciviousness."[63] A mere page later, after indicting Rousseau's plan for female education, she writes "I must relieve myself by drawing another picture."[64] These terse exclamations are meant to draw the reader to her side of the argument (it is assumed that the reader will agree with them). While she claims to write in a plain style so that her ideas will reach the broadest possible audience,[65] she actually combines the plain, rational language of the political treatise with the poetic, passionate language of sensibility to demonstrate that one can combine rationality and sensibility in the same self.[66] Wollstonecraft defends her positions not only with reasoned argument but also with ardent rhetoric.
In her efforts to vividly describe the condition of women within society, Wollstonecraft employs several different analogies.[67] She often compares women to slaves, arguing that their ignorance and powerlessness places them in that position. But at the same time, she also compares them to "capricious tyrants" who use cunning and deceit to manipulate the men around them. At one point, she reasons that a woman can become either a slave or tyrant, which she describes as two sides of the same coin.[68] Wollstonecraft also compares women to soldiers; like military men, they are valued only for their appearance and obedience. And like the rich, women's "softness" has "debased mankind".[69]
Revision[edit]
Wollstonecraft was forced to write the Rights of Woman hurriedly to respond to Talleyrand and ongoing events. Upon completing the work, she wrote to her friend William Roscoe: "I am dissatisfied with myself for not having done justice to the subject. – Do not suspect me of false modesty – I mean to say that had I allowed myself more time I could have written a better book, in every sense of the word . . . I intend to finish the next volume before I begin to print, for it is not pleasant to have the Devil coming for the conclusion of a sheet fore it is written."[70] When Wollstonecraft revised the Rights of Woman for the second edition, she took the opportunity not only to fix small spelling and grammar mistakes but also to bolster the feminist claims of her argument.[71] She changed some of her statements regarding female and male difference to reflect a greater equality between the sexes.[72]
Wollstonecraft never wrote the second part to the Rights of Woman, although William Godwin published her "Hints", which were "chiefly designed to have been incorporated in the second part of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman", in the posthumous collection of her works.[73] However, she did begin writing the novel Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, which most scholars consider a fictionalized sequel to the Rights of Woman. It was unfinished at her death and also included in the Posthumous Works published by Godwin.[74]
Reception and legacy[edit]
Part of a series on
Feminist philosophy
Major works
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
The Subjection of Women (1869)
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
The Second Sex (1949)
The Feminine Mystique (1963)
Sexual Politics (1969)
The Dialectic of Sex (1970)
Gyn/Ecology (1978)
Throwing Like a Girl (1980)
In a Different Voice (1982)
The Politics of Reality (1983)
The Creation of Patriarchy (1986)
The Sexual Contract (1988)
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989)
Gender Trouble (1990)
Black Feminist Thought (1990)
Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993)
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When it was first published in 1792, the Rights of Woman was reviewed favourably by the Analytical Review, the General Magazine, the Literary Magazine, New York Magazine, and the Monthly Review, although the assumption persists even today that Rights of Woman received hostile reviews.[75] It was almost immediately released in a second edition in 1792, several American editions appeared, and it was translated into French. Taylor writes that "it was an immediate success".[76] Moreover, other writers such as Mary Hays and Mary Robinson specifically alluded to Wollstonecraft's text in their own works. Hays cited the Rights of Woman in her novel Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796) and modelled her female characters after Wollstonecraft's ideal woman.[77]
Although female conservatives such as Hannah More excoriated Wollstonecraft personally, they actually shared many of the same values. As the scholar Anne Mellor has shown, both More and Wollstonecraft wanted a society founded on "Christian virtues of rational benevolence, honesty, personal virtue, the fulfillment of social duty, thrift, sobriety, and hard work".[78] During the early 1790s, many writers within British society were engaged in an intense debate regarding the position of women in society. For example, the respected poet and essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Wollstonecraft sparred back and forth; Barbauld published several poems responding to Wollstonecraft's work and Wollstonecraft commented on them in footnotes to the Rights of Woman.[79] The work also provoked outright hostility. The bluestocking Elizabeth Carter was unimpressed with the work.[80] Thomas Taylor, the Neoplatonist translator who had been a landlord to the Wollstonecraft family in the late 1770s, swiftly wrote a satire called A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes: if women have rights, why not animals too?[80]
After Wollstonecraft died in 1797, her husband William Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798). He revealed much about her private life that had previously not been known to the public: her illegitimate child, her love affairs, and her attempts at suicide. While Godwin believed he was portraying his wife with love, sincerity, and compassion, contemporary readers were shocked by Wollstonecraft's unorthodox lifestyle and she became a reviled figure. Richard Polwhele targeted her in particular in his anonymous long poem The Unsex'd Females (1798), a defensive reaction to women's literary self-assertion: Hannah More is Christ to Wollstonecraft's Satan. His poem was "well known" among the responses A Vindication.[81] One reviewer comments this "ingenious poem" with its "playful sallies of sarcastic wit" against "our modern ladies,"[82] though others found it "a tedious, lifeless piece of writing."[83] Critical responses largely fell along clear-cut political lines.
Wollstonecraft's ideas became associated with her life story and women writers felt that it was dangerous to mention her in their texts. Hays, who had previously been a close friend[84] and an outspoken advocate for Wollstonecraft and her Rights of Woman, for example, did not include her in the collection of Illustrious and Celebrated Women she published in 1803.[85] Maria Edgeworth specifically distances herself from Wollstonecraft in her novel Belinda (1802); she caricatures Wollstonecraft as a radical feminist in the character of Harriet Freke.[86] But, like Jane Austen, she does not reject Wollstonecraft's ideas. Both Edgeworth and Austen argue that women are crucial to the development of the nation; moreover, they portray women as rational beings who should choose companionate marriage.[87]
The negative views towards Wollstonecraft persisted for over a century. The Rights of Woman was not reprinted until the middle of the 19th century and it still retained an aura of ill-repute. George Eliot wrote "there is in some quarters a vague prejudice against the Rights of Woman as in some way or other a reprehensible book, but readers who go to it with this impression will be surprised to find it eminently serious, severely moral, and withal rather heavy".[88] The suffragist (i.e. moderate reformer, as opposed to suffragette) Millicent Garrett Fawcett wrote the introduction to the centenary edition of the Rights of Woman, cleansing the memory of Wollstonecraft and claiming her as the foremother of the struggle for the vote.[89] While the Rights of Woman may have paved the way for feminist arguments, 20th century feminists have tended to use Wollstonecraft's life story, rather than her texts, for inspiration;[90] her unorthodox lifestyle convinced them to try new "experiments in living", as Virginia Woolf termed it in her famous essay on Wollstonecraft.[91] However, there is some evidence that the Rights of Woman may be influencing current feminists. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist who is critical of Islam's dictates regarding women, cites the Rights of Woman in her autobiography Infidel, writing that she was "inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist thinker who told women they had the same ability to reason as men did and deserved the same rights".[92]
See also[edit]
Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ Sunstein, 3.
^ Jump up to: a b Macdonald and Scherf, "Introduction", 11–12.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 43–44.
Jump up ^ Kelly, 107; Sapiro, 26–27.
Jump up ^ Talleyrand, "Rapport sur l'instruction publique", reprinted in Vindications, 394–95.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 101.
Jump up ^ Taylor, 105–6; Kelly, 107.
Jump up ^ Sapiro, 182–84.
^ Jump up to: a b Kelly, 110.
^ Jump up to: a b Barker-Benfield, 9.
Jump up ^ Barker-Benfield, 224.
Jump up ^ Todd, Sensibility, 144.
Jump up ^ Todd, Sensibility, 136.
Jump up ^ Todd, Sensibility, 133.
Jump up ^ Batchelor, Jennie. "Conduct Book." The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14 May 2007.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 169ff; Kelly, 123; Taylor, 14–15; Sapiro, 27–28; 243–44.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 102; Sapiro, 154–55.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 109.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 144.
Jump up ^ Kelly, 124–26; Taylor, 234–37; Sapiro, 129–30.
Jump up ^ Tong, Rosemarie (2009). Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction (3 ed.). Westview Press (Perseus Books). p. 20. ISBN 978-0-8133-4375-4.
Jump up ^ Kelly, 126; Taylor, 14–15; Sapiro, 130–31.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 157.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 286; see also Kelly, 125–24; Taylor, 14–15.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 129.
Jump up ^ "Mary Wollstonecraft – on national education". Infed.org. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, Chapter 12; see also, Kelly, 124–25; 133–34; Sapiro, 237ff.
Jump up ^ Tomory, Peter. The Life and Art of Henry Fuseli. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972; p. 217. LCCN 72-77546.
Jump up ^ Feminist and feminism. Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 17 September 2007.
Jump up ^ Taylor, 12; see also, 55–57; see also Sapiro, 257–59.
Jump up ^ See, for example, Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 126, 146; Taylor, 105–106; 118–20.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 102 and 252.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 274.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 110; Sapiro, 120–21.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 135.
Jump up ^ Poovey, 79; Kelly, 135.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 288.
Jump up ^ Taylor, Chapter 9; Sapiro, 37; 149; 266.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 177.
Jump up ^ Jones, 46.
Jump up ^ See, for example, Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 259–60; Taylor, 116–17.
Jump up ^ Kaplan, "Wild Nights", 35.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 249.
^ Jump up to: a b Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 192.
Jump up ^ Poovey, 76.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 194.
Jump up ^ Kaplan, "Wild Nights", 41.
Jump up ^ Kaplan, "Wild Nights", 33; see also Taylor, 118–19; Taylor, 138ff.
Jump up ^ Johnson, 24.
Jump up ^ Johnson, 29; see also Taylor, 211–22; Sapiro, 82–83.
Jump up ^ Johnson, 23.
Jump up ^ Johnson, 45.
Jump up ^ Johnson, 30.
^ Jump up to: a b Jones, 43.
Jump up ^ Jones, 46; Taylor, 211–22; Vindications, 101–102, for example.
Jump up ^ Kelly, 128ff; Taylor, 167–68; Sapiro, 27.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 111; see also Taylor, 159–61; Sapiro, 91–92.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 169.
Jump up ^ Jones, 45; see also Taylor, 218–19; Sapiro, 91–92.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 311; Kelly, 132–33.
^ Jump up to: a b Kelly, 109.
Jump up ^ Kelly, 113–14; Taylor, 51–53.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 162.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 163.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 111–12.
Jump up ^ Kelly, 109ff; Sapiro, 207–208.
Jump up ^ Kelly, 118ff; Sapiro, 222.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 158; Sapiro, 126.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Vindications, 165; Taylor, 159–61; Sapiro, 124–26.
Jump up ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. New York: Penguin Books (2003), 193–94.
Jump up ^ Macdonald and Scherf, "Introduction", 23 and Mellor, 141–42.
Jump up ^ Mellor, 141–42.
Jump up ^ Macdonald and Scherf, Appendix C.
Jump up ^ Sapiro, 30–31.
Jump up ^ Janes, 293; Sapiro, 28–29.
Jump up ^ Taylor, 25; see also, Janes, 293–302; Wardle, 157–58; Kelly, 135–36; Sapiro 28–29.
Jump up ^ Mellor, 143–44 and 146.
Jump up ^ Mellor, 147.
Jump up ^ Mellor, 153.
^ Jump up to: a b Gordon, 154
Jump up ^ Adriana Craciun, Mary Wollstonecraft's a Vindication of the Rights of Woman: A Sourcebook (Routledge, 2002, 2).
Jump up ^ Ralph Griffiths, The Monthly Review 30 (1799): 103.
Jump up ^ Introduction Archived 9 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine., The Unsex'd Females, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library.
Jump up ^ Pennell, Elizabeth Robins p351, Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884).
Jump up ^ Mellor, 145; Taylor, 27–28.
Jump up ^ Mellor, 155; Taylor, 30–31.
Jump up ^ Mellor, 156.
Jump up ^ Quoted in Sapiro, 30.
Jump up ^ Gordon, 521
Jump up ^ Kaplan,"Mary Wollstonecraft's reception and legacies".
Jump up ^ Woolf, Virginia. "The Four Figures Archived 3 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine.". Retrieved 17 February 2007.
Jump up ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan. Infidel. New York: Free Press (2007), 295.
Bibliography[edit]
Modern reprints[edit]
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler. 7 vols. London: William Pickering, 1989. ISBN 0-8147-9225-1.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman. Eds. D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. Toronto: Broadview Literary Texts, 1997. ISBN 1-55111-088-1
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. Miriam Brody Kramnick. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004. ISBN 0-14-144125-9.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. Deidre Shauna Lynch. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2009. ISBN 0-393-92974-4.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. Sylvana Tomaselli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-43633-8.
Contemporary reviews[edit]
Analytical Review 12 (1792): 241–249; 13 (1792): 418–489.
Christian Miscellany 1 (1792): 209–212.
Critical Review New Series 4 (1792): 389–398; 5 (1792): 132–141.
General Magazine and Imperial Review 6.2 (1792): 187–191.
Literary Magazine and British Review 8 (1792); 133–139.
Monthly Review New Series 8 (1792): 198–209.
New Annual Register 13 (1792): 298.
New-York Magazine 4 (1793): 77–81.
Scots Magazine 54 (1792): 284–290.
Sentimental and Masonic Magazine 1 (1792): 63–72.
Town and Country Magazine 24 (1792): 279.
Secondary sources[edit]
Barker-Benfield, G.J. The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN 0-226-03714-2.
Gordon, Lyndall. Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Great Britain: Virago, 2005. ISBN 1-84408-141-9.
Janes, R.M. "On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman". Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978): 293–302.
Johnson, Claudia L. Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 0-226-40184-7.
Jones, Chris. "Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindications and their political tradition". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-78952-4.
Kaplan, Cora. "Mary Wollstonecraft's reception and legacies". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-78952-4.
Kaplan, Cora. "Pandora's Box: Subjectivity, Class and Sexuality in Socialist Feminist Criticism". Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986. ISBN 0-86091-151-9.
Kaplan, Cora. "Wild Nights: Pleasure/Sexuality/Feminism". Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986. ISBN 0-86091-151-9.
Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: St. Martin's, 1992. ISBN 0-312-12904-1.
Mellor, Anne K. "Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the women writers of her day". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-78952-4.
Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN 0-226-67528-9.
Sapiro, Virginia. A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN 0-226-73491-9.
Sunstein, Emily W. A Different Face: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. ISBN 0-06-014201-4.
Taylor, Barbara. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-66144-7.
Todd, Janet. Sensibility: An introduction. London: Methuen, 1986. ISBN 0-416-37720-3.
Wardle, Ralph M. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1951.
External links[edit]
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
1796 edition of Rights of Woman from Google Books
Rights of Woman at Project Gutenberg
A version of the Vindication, slightly modified for easier reading
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Mary Wollstonecraft: A 'Speculative and Dissenting Spirit' by Janet Todd at www.bbc.co.uk
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects From the Collections at the Library of Congress
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