This is my chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. As I’m currently reading the book at the moment, I’ll be updating this post as I go, so do keep checking in on it so you don’t miss any new chapters.
Introduction
In her introduction, Wollstonecraft explains exactly what the next two hundred pages will entail: an unapologetic critique of gender inequality in the 18th century, focusing on the importance of women’s education and equality of opportunity for both sexes.
She begins by observing that most women in her time are “only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.” She concludes that one of the primary causes of this rotting of the female mind is the lack of accessible education for them. Wollstonecraft is appalled by how women are treated by men as “a kind of subordinate beings,” and wittily vows to her female audience that she will speak to them plainly and directly, “instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood” as men do, in order to “soften our slavish dependence.”
Wollstonecraft admits that biologically, men have the advantage over women in terms of physical strength, but asserts that in a modern society, men should never have the reason to use all their strength, so this doesn’t matter. Therefore, women should be treated just the same as men because they have just the same intellectual capacity. She dismantles the expected counter-argument that treating women like men would cause them to adopt typically masculine traits, saying that if people who make this claim are referring to the adoption of masculine activities like hunting, she wholeheartedly agrees that women should not take part in those; but if they mean the adoption of stereotypically manly talents and virtues like courage and assertiveness, Wollstonecraft encourages women in no uncertain terms to “every day grow more and more masculine.”
In her introduction, then, we have learnt not just of Wollstonecraft’s intentions in writing the book to come and of her inspiring passion for women’s rights, but of her tough, witty and thoroughly likeable character too.
Chapter I
At the beginning of her first chapter, Wollstonecraft claims that an argument must always be sound and valid based on the most basic of assumptions. She makes three assumptions to found all her following arguments on: firstly, that the power of reason is what gifts man with his “pre-eminence over the brute creation”; secondly, that virtue is what makes one man superior to another; and lastly, that God gave man passions and impulse in order that he gain knowledge through his struggle to resist them. We are left, then, with three important principles on which Wollstonecraft resolves to base her following arguments: reason, virtue, and knowledge. Reason, she claims, should be used to dispel our prejudices, although all too often it is wrongly used to try and justify them.
Wollstonecraft moves on to make a more political point about the virtue of democracy and the arbitrary, unearned power-seizing by the upper classes of her time. She mentions Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that man was naturally free and wild (a “noble savage”) but that civilisation and socialisation corrupted him over the course of his lifetime (“man is born free, but is everywhere in chains”). Rousseau himself became a recluse, believing that by nature humans are solitary creatures.
Wollstonecraft calls Rousseau’s theories “plausible, but unsound”; her argument is that, if civilisation, which humans divined, is as corrupting and imperfect as Rousseau suggests, humans must necessarily be imperfect themselves, which is an impious and nonsensical thing to say seeing as humans are all created perfectly by God.
Wollstonecraft advocates that no person should ever have absolute and unquestionable dominance over another, but she is not just talking about government and tyranny. She applies her theory about the abuse of power to more close-to-home areas as well, believing that teachers should have to justify their every action to their students, employers to their employees, parents to their children – basically, it is never acceptable to answer “Why?” with “Because I said so.” As much as she acknowledges that in prehistoric times, humans most likely reigned over other humans based on strength and power, she maintains that in modern times, it is important that we rely on rationality and reason to make sound and democratic decisions.
Chapter II
Wollstonecraft has observed that many men of her time believe that women are intellectually unable to be morally good without the help of men. But she believes that, seeing as women have souls like men, they are just as capable of being morally good on their own. However, she acknowledges that most women of her time are superficial and unable to think for themselves: this, she claims, is because the education men impose on girls teaches them not how to be independent thinkers, but how to be nice and quiet and obedient for their husbands later in life.
Wollstonecraft also observes that men tend to treat women as though they are children. They try to keep women innocent, which Wollstonecraft sees as an insult to their adulthood. In conclusion, she agrees that women tend to be useless and shallow, but only because their education has steered them in that direction.
As well as citing Rousseau as an advocate of these oppressive ideas against women, Wollstonecraft begins to dissect the works of a man called Dr Gregory, particularly his account of how daughters should be raised. A substantial part of how he has brought up his daughters, it would seem, is in getting them to wear dresses because, he claims, women have some kind of innate, biological love of them. Wollstonecraft calls this nonsense, saying that for a woman to have an innate love of dresses would require this love to be part of their soul before it entered their body, which is ridiculous. She thinks that women of her time only wear dresses both because men tell them to, and because that is how they acquire the most social attention (attention, not respect, is all women can realistically hope for).
Gregory’s main point seems to be that women were created simply for childbearing and pleasing their husbands. Once they have had children, then, and their husbands are tired of them, there is no use for women anymore. Wollstonecraft naturally finds this incredibly insulting and reiterates her point that if only we educated women like men, they would prove to be just as useful and resourceful members of society. If men still believe that they really are definitively superior to women, Wollstonecraft proposes to at least give women the chance to prove them wrong.
At the time that A Vindication was published, men were becoming increasingly politically aware of their oppression by their leaders. Wollstonecraft cleverly uses this to appeal to her male audience: men have no more right to oppress women than kings do to oppress men.
Chapter III
In Chapter III of A Vindication, Wollstonecraft continues her ideas about nature vs nurture when it comes to the upbringing of boys and girls. She agrees with a certain Mr Day, who wrote a book about how he raised his daughter to be both which Wollstonecraft quotes: “If women are in general feeble both in body and mind, it arises less from nature than from education. We encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely call delicacy; […] we breed them to useless arts, which terminate in vanity and sensuality.” Wollstonecraft further asserts that women ought not to be “educated like a fanciful kind of half being – one of Rousseau’s wild chimeras.”
Returning to the idea (which she agrees with) that men have the advantage over women biologically due to their higher physical strength, Wollstonecraft reemphasises the unimportance of physical strength in a modern society. She argues that women are taught to see their physical weakness and fragility as a kind of charm that they should strive to present more in their mannerisms because men find it attractive. Wollstonecraft says that the fact that men teach women to “labour to become still weaker than nature intended [them] to be” is the perfect example of girls being held back by men from developing into rational members of society. She likens women who take pride in their delicacy and softness as “the mind [that] shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.” She calls Rousseau, who advocated for all these kinds of plainly sexist ideas, “beyond contempt,” accusing men like him of believing in some kind of “divine right of husbands.”
To conclude her chapter, Wollstonecraft takes the example of a woman recently widowed and left to look after children on her own. A woman who has had the education offered to women of Wollstonecraft’s time would be at a loss to know how to educate her children without the help of a husband. However, a woman who had been educated in philosophy and logic and common sense would know how to assume both motherly and fatherly roles when it came to educating her children.
(Incidentally, Wollstonecraft discreetly makes a very political point in this chapter, saying that “slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long in freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.”)
Chapter IV
In this chapter, Wollstonecraft expands on her ideas of women as rational, reasoning and intellectual beings who only appear shallow and self-obsessed because their education has brought them up that way. She counters the argument that women already have a lot of power over men in looking nice and wearing pretty dresses by saying that this kind of power is pathetic and shouldn’t be what women strive for. Wollstonecraft rails against the sad truth that for men of her time, marriage was an achievement secondary to career-building and money-making, but for women, marriage was the ultimate objective in living.
Wollstonecraft comments in passing that polygamy should not be encouraged in Europe where there are, statistically speaking, enough men and women for everyone to have a monogamous relationship, but in countries where there are less men, polygamy is fine. Slightly bizarre and irrelevant argument but we’ll move swiftly on.
She also protests against the idea that women who have children out of wedlock should be shunned by society, saying she pities these women, a bold stance that resulted in Wollstonecraft’s own unpopularity in this respect. Ultimately, she claims that the education generally provided for women of her time teaches them to think only of their appearance and not how to think intelligently or for themselves.
Chapter V
In this chapter Wollstonecraft unapologetically breaks down the arguments of Rousseau another man called Dr Fordyce. Firstly, she evaluates the famous nature vs nurture debate in an attempt to discredit Rousseau’s claims that girls naturally want to look pretty and play with dolls. Wollstonecraft believes they only want to do that because they have been brought up to. (I would actually argue that nature, not nurture, may have more of an influence on a child’s disposition and inclinations than Wollstonecraft gives credit for here.)
Dr Fordyce is another writer who thinks women’s sole focus should be on their appearance to men. He even goes so far as to suggest that they should make sure they look attractive while praying, which Wollstonecraft finds hugely offensive, saying anyone’s attention during prayer should be on God, not looking pretty.
Further, Fordyce argues that women complain too much that their husbands are not listening to them. If, he argues, women were to submit to their husbands’ every wish and obey every order, they would surely receive more attention from them. Naturally, Wollstonecraft refutes this argument with sickened contempt.
Wollstonecraft continues to cite both male and female writers who believe women are inferior to men and should not have the same rights. Her conclusion is that girls should be brought up to be respectful, moral, critical thinkers just like boys, and not the shallow men-pleasers they are (in her time).
Chapter VI
Chapter VI deals with the effects of a superficial education on a woman. Wollstonecraft reemphasises her point that teaching girls only to care about their appearance leaves you with a frivolous woman who can’t think for herself. She says girls are over-complimented on their appearance and know nothing of their true self-worth. A thorough education from an early age will result in a well-rounded and self-respecting lady, Wollstonecraft believes.
Chapter VII
This chapter focuses on modesty. Wollstonecraft emphasises the importance of understanding the distinction between having superficial modesty and a genuine understanding of both one’s self-worth and place under God. She advocates for women to engage in intellectual activities that challenge and expand their mindset, not frivolous, brain-rotting ones like flirting or gossiping.
Wollstonecraft believes that if women are obliged to be modest, men should be too. She claims that much of the problem is that men don’t know how to control themselves around women. If they stopped flirting with women, women would stop believing that all their worth is concentrated in their appearance to men.
Chapter VIII
Wollstonecraft observes that both men and women tend to think that maintaining a flawless public reputation is more important than working on their actual character. While she admits that reputation is a good indicator of someone’s personality, it is not everything, and women in particular should stop focusing on how other people perceive to be and start focusing on bettering themselves. The same goes for men, and indeed, Wollstonecraft raises the injustice of men being allowed to have relationships outside of marriage, but women being shunned for doing the same. If men aren’t prepared to change their ways, women can never hope to change theirs, Wollstonecraft argues.