1) Female patriots (1814 Taunton celebration where women participated), but what kind of patriots

2) Position of Women

a) Marriage laws

i) women lose all property

ii) become property of husband

b) Women worked

i) urbanization created larger servant class

ii) presence of servants in middle-class tradespeople households meant greater leisure time for women

c) Cult of maternity

i) especially during war

ii) "Increase of Children a Nation’s Strength" (240)

d) Separate Spheres

3) Anxieties

a) Urbanization and servant class

b) Leisure time for women

c) "masculine women"—women dressing like men

d) Women having a public presence

i) Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

(1) "unnaturalness" of her participation in election

(2) Irony—Fox’s slogan "man of the people" if adopted by the Duchess ("woman of the people"?) would have made her a prostitute

e) Paradox—anxiety over perceived freedom increased the determination to restrain them

i) Colley’s point—the separate spheres were so constantly being prescribed because they were so constantly being violated

4) War

a) French feminized and British masculinized (252)

b) Public role of French women seen as collapse of deference (and therefore order)

c) French threat

i) war portrayed as the loss of a way of life (a way of life that women were mostly in charge of maintaining)

ii) Women victims of French violence (Marie Antoinette) often figured as violation

iii) British women portrayed as safe (for now)

d) Cult of heroism

i) Women jeer Leicestershire militiamen who refused to fight in Ireland

ii) Women form subscription to support statue of Wellington in Hyde Park (so much resplendent male nudity)

e) Patriotic activism

i) Traditional female virtues (domestic) transformed into public activities

(1) making flags and banners

(2) organizing charities

(3) why we fight—to protect the women and children

5) Separate Spheres

a) Rousseau

i) Women’s place in home

ii) where she was center of morality

iii) because civic virtue was connected with the family, women were now justified in intervening in politics

b) Women must stay in the private sphere and yet exercise moral authority in the public sphere

i) This clearly seen in women’s involvement in anti-slavery campaign

1) Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

a) Wollstonecraft’s Biography

i) grows up in abusive household—protects mother from tyrannical father

(1) becomes lady’s companion but returns to nurse mother

(2) leaves home for good; works as seamstress then schoolmistress

ii) turns to writing to pay off debts after school fails

(1) Thoughts on the Education of Daughters published in 1786

(2) Meets Joseph Johnson who publishes Mary, A Fiction (1788)

iii) becomes part of Johnson’s circle (Blake, Paine, Priestley, Fuseli, Godwin, Barbauld and Joel Barlow)

(1) A Vindication of the Rights of Men published anonymously in 1790; with her name in 1791 and earns her reputation

(2) Publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792

iv) Her public behavior stigmatizes her and her argument

(1) enamored of Fuseli and publicly pursues him

(2) goes to Paris in 1793 to forget Fuseli; meets and "marries" Gilbert Imlay

(3) has child with Imlay (Fanny); they split

(4) returns to England and finds Imlay living with actress; attempts suicide

(5) he sends her to Scandinavia; she returns in Oct 1795 to find him living with a different actress; attempts suicide by jumping into the Thames

(6) publishes her letters to Imlay in attempt to win him back; letters win admiration of Godwin

(7) pregnant with Godwin’s child, they marry; child born (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley); Wollstonecraft dies

(8) Godwin publishes his Memoir of Wollstonecraft, which details all of the above; his attempt to honor her ends up scandalizing her

v) Even some modern feminists still upset over the damage Wollstonecraft did to women’s rights. While her writing advanced the cause, her lifestyle tainted it for decades if not centuries

b) Dedication to M. Talleyrand-Perigord (who advocated female education but along Rousseau lines—trained for subservience to men)

i) Refers to wives as slaves (230)

ii) Sees women as coerced into their domestic role (231)

c) Introduction

i) offers no apology for treating women "like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood" (233)

ii) women’s education creates weak women

(1) women "are rendered weak and wretched"—not naturally so but made (232)

(2) "false system of education" to blame (232)

iii) women’s treatment makes them dependent

(1) treating women softly softens them; treating them as dependents trains them to be dependent

(2) women "objects of desire" (234)

(3) women’s "artificial weakness" (the weakness they have been trained up to) "produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning"

d) The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered

i) Society must be judged by how well it enables (235)

(1) Reason

(2) Virtue

(3) knowledge

ii) How would we (Europe) be judged?

(1) slavery (235)

(2) a history showing power gained through vice (236)

(3) subordination of man to man

(a) monarchy (236)

(b) example of army and navy (237)

(c) clergy and universities (237)

e) The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed

i) Women are assumed to not have enough Reason to acquire Virtue

(1) and yet they must be virtuous

(2) this lack is the product of a poor education (238)

(3) frequently compared with children—yet children can grow into rational beings while women cannot (238)

ii) Example of Milton

(1) He makes women subservient to men because they lack reason (238)

(2) He has Adam argue for an "rational" partner (239)

iii) Women enslaved by their lack of proper education

(1) education by snatches if at all (240)

(2) always secondary to beauty (240)

(3) compared to soldiers

(a) gallantry like coquetry(241)

(b) both acquire manners (rules) without morals (thought) (241)

iv) Enslavement desired by the "sensualists"

(1) Rousseau a sensualist—woman as plaything (241-2)

(2) sensualists claim that the "whole tendency of female education ought . . . to render them pleasing" (243)

v) Dr. Gregory’s conduct book

(1) assumes certain traits in women "natural" (243-4)

(2) encourages lying, weakness, dependence (244)

(a) Wollstonecraft refutes

(i) encourages friendship over love (245)

(ii) speaks against passion (245)

(3) goal is to get a husband (246)

(a) women must look beyond a husband

(b) proper education—"a well stored mind would enable a woman to support a single life with dignity" (246)

vi) "Teach them, in common with man, to submit to necessity, instead of giving, to render them more pleasing a sex to morals" (248)

f) The Same Subject Continued

i) Different education and treatment of boys and girls (250)

(1) refutes claim that girls naturally like sedentary activities while boys like active activities

(2) Her evidence and experience—gender differences socially constructed not natural

ii) Dependence of body leads to dependence of mind

(1) women encouraged to be "delicate"

(2) a kind of tyranny exercised by the weak

iii) "It is time to effect a revolution in female manners" (251)

(1) Men compared to viceregents (colonial?) (251)

(a) because they rule the weak they are bound to become tyrannical

(2) Women trained to dependence are left defenseless when they lose their protectors (fathers, brothers, husbands)

(3) Women trained to be coquettes cannot be adequate teachers of the young

iv) Man and woman must be the same

(1) there are no "sexual" virtues (i.e. virtues that belong to one gender and not the other)

(2) wealth and female softness debase mankind

g) Concluding Reflections

i) Sexual distinction is arbitrary (256)

ii) From the tyranny of man, the greater number of female follies proceed (256)

iii) Compares women to dissenters (256)

iv) "Asserting the rights which women in common with men ought to contend for, I have not attempted to extenuate their faults; but to prove them to be the natural consequence of their education and station in society. If so, it is reasonable to suppose that they will change their character, and correct their vices and follies, when they are allowed to be free in a physical, moral, and civil sense" (256).

2) Barbauld’s "The Rights of Woman"

a) Read as refutation of Wollstonecraft

i) opening stanzas sarcastic

ii) focus on womanly qualities

(1) native empire o’er the breast (feeling)

(2) soft melting tones (sentiment)

(3) blushes and fears (womanly persuasion)

iii) subjugation of man by too-potent women

iv) commanding is not itself freedom

v) but this empire will also end (similar to Eighteen Eleven argument)

b) Barbauld though criticizes same expectations of women

i) Woman as "angel pureness which admits no stain" speaks to expectations of women’s behavior

ii) Women turned oppressors is no better than male oppressors

c) End of Empire?

i) note frequency of empire, imperial

ii) one oppressor or another doesn’t matter—oppression itself must end

iii) higher level synthesis

(1) separate rights are lost in mutual love

(2) not ruled and rulers, but mutuality

(3) submission and humility defeat pride; replace rule with respect

3) Southey’s "To Mary Wolstoncraft"

a) How does Southey’s poem honoring MW reinscribe common attitudes towards women?

i) stock images from love poetry at beginning

ii) "turn not thou away" motif of conventional love poetry

iii) invocation of female figures problematic

(1) Joan of Arc to a British audience

(2) Roland confused with medieval romance—maybe even worse, Madame Roland, a victim of the terror

(3) Corday—more French Revolutionary types

4) Polwhele’s "The Unsex’d Females"

a) How women should be (39-52)

i) beauty, polish, taste, modest, luxury, etc.

ii) relieve domestic care (47)

iii) melt the withering frown of war (48)

iv) to Nature true, draw from feeling (49-50)

b) How they are today (1-38)

i) licentious, whorish

ii) masculine

iii) immodest (in some very immodest lines)

c) Why?

i) Reason

ii) Revolution

iii) Wollstonecraft

d) Polwhele’s Notes

i) The notes on Mary Hays and on Wollstonecraft are somewhat severe

ii) The notes of each of the women writers (Barbauld, Robinson, Smith, Williams, and Yearsley) are mostly positive

iii) The claim is not that women writers are bad or unnecessary; rather that these women writers have been led astray—allowed themselves to be swayed by the revolution