Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie
Elizabeth’s independent spirit was out of step with the advice given to ladies in Fordyce’s very popular Sermons to Young Women and Rousseau’s Emile, both of which we’ve quoted at length on this site. Both of these texts were enormously influential, and in Jane Austen’s day there was of course extreme social pressure on young ladies to behave according to their ludicrous ideas.
However, there were also contrary voices at the time that educated ladies of the era could have accessed. Most famously, Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 book ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’ even dared to describe women as ‘rational creatures.’ Here are a few extracts from her seminal work.
First, from the introduction, this is Wollstonecraft’s take on the dominant ideas of femininity in her day, that led to many women behaving like children:
Women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantile airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. Do not foster these prejudices, and they will naturally fall into their subordinate, yet respectable station in life.
It seems scarcely necessary to say, that I now speak of the sex in general. Many individuals have more sense than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium, without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.
Caroline Bingley and Mary Wollstonecraft are at odds over the ideals of feminine excellence.
She goes on to tackle the argument of Rousseau and Fordyce that men and women, led by their respective natures, should aspire to very different characters:
To account for, and excuse the tyranny of man, many ingenious arguments have been brought forward to prove, that the two sexes, in the acquirement of virtue, ought to aim at attaining a very different character: or, to speak explicitly, women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue. Yet it should seem, allowing them to have souls, that there is but one way appointed by providence to lead MANKIND to either virtue or happiness.
If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence? Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex, when they do not keenly satirize our headstrong passions and groveling vices. Behold, I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance! The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force. Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, OUTWARD obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for at least twenty years of their lives.
While more traditional, patriarchal ideas would surely have dominated, there were at least sections of the population that were challenging the idea that ladies should be witless, servile and above all, ‘soft’ in their dealings with men. Who knows whether Elizabeth would have agreed with Mary Wollstonecraft – although she certainly wouldn’t have gotten much from Fordyce’s Sermons!
Darcy
