-mary wollstonecraft was the daughter of a violent, alcoholic father (worthless in terms of making $ and emotional care). still she was well-educated for a woman at the time (self-educated); founded a school of her own as a governess. joseph johnson was a radical gay unitarian publisher who helped launch mary's career.
-"vindication" was a response to burke's essay that was anti-french revolution. the vindication of the rights of MEN came out 1st (1789); published anonymously (men meant all human beings). for mary, "manly" meant virtuous and rational (+). she wasn't valuing men over women. in it, she defended republicanism (democracy) and criticized monarchy. three years later in 1792 woman was published (woman meaning a class of persons who have been treated the same.
-one of the cons of referring to the human race as "man" is that is makes woman the "other." therefore, it unconsciously communicates men as superior, and not representative of humankind. it is worth noting that in her writing, mary is at least as hard on women as she is on men. to her, sexism was a systematic, structural, societal problem, which was fostered partly through education. in her day especially, education trained women NOT to be virtuous, rational or manly (this makes them occasionally turn out immoral).
-back then and definitely still today, women end up tyrannizing each other through their cunningness (and caddiness). mary was a proponent NOT of monarchy, but of MERITocracy (you achieve your goals and ideals through your talents, not through your gender, which you can't help).
-in her rights of women, she writes, "every profession, in which great subordination of rank constitutes its power, is highly injurious to morality" (ch. 1 pg. 33). a modern day example of this is the fact that we have letter grades. this diminishes and pollutes the quality of our education (i.e. playing the game, taking classes you have no interest in, etc.) ... this causes people to cheat & plagiarize and often stunts creativity.
-business school professors are credited for being hard graders (in the ENG dept, there is a different view that the success of the student depends at least partly on the professor). basically, people should be thinking, not following orders all the time. later in rights of women, ch. 2 says that women are degraded for the sake of making them sexually alluring. on pg. 41, wollstonecraft writes, "they were taught to please, and they only live to please." she also compares the military to the plight of women ("both acquire manners before morals"). soldiers are educated in the same way as women, if we can agree that women are nurtured to be inferior and dependent (NOT natural, like soldiers to their general).
-mary's response to jean-jacques rousseau — an 18th century philosopher who advocated women's place in the domestic sphere — was, "what nonsense! when will a great man arise w/ sufficient strength of mind to puff away the fumes which pride and sensuality have thus spread over the subject!" (pg. 43).
-mary also argues in ch. 3 that women aggravate the present negative situation ("women, deluded by these sentiments, sometimes boast of their weakness, cunningly obtaining power by playing on the weakness of men"). these are the kind of girls that use sexual powers to advance in society (mary's words = failure to be chaste). wollstonecraft goes further by attacking men for instilling this thought in women and attacking women for buying in to it (gives girls more power, but less somehow). by truly liberating women, it will give them less tyrannic power and more authentic power (not immediately felt). this is what wollstonecraft called for. "it is time to effect a revolution in female manners — time to restore to them their lost dignity — and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world" (ch. 3 pg. 65)
-today, most people are unaware that mary really called out to women to step their game up. mary was a feminist AND a supporter of virtue (she wanted nothing to do w/ the corrupt marriage a la mode system at the time) —> she had a child out of wedlock b/c she didn't believe in the marriage system —> and she was betrayed by cheating "husband." to mary, absolute chastity meant absolute transparency (no wedding required). william godwin (her widower) published her memoirs after she died in her memory, which unfortunately temporarily discredited her for 30-odd years due to her radical lifestyle.
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