Are Women Human? 235molishing. Hence her bold hope that “the divine right of husbands, like the
divine right of kings, may... in this enlightened age, be contested without
danger” (67).^16 She urges the Revolution’s supporters to further their work
by dismantling any mythical and arbitrary claim to authority that men have
over women on the basis of sex alone (23). As “children of the same par-
ent,” a more appropriate way for God’s creatures to interact is to “reason to-
gether, and learn to submit to the authority of reason” (128). She implores
her readers to “strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will
be an end to blind obedience” (50). If defenders of the Revolution wish
to promote social and political progress, they must include women in the
population of rights-bearers. As she warns Talleyrand, if woman “be not
prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the
progress of knowledge and virtue” (22; see also 66).
One of Wollstonecraft’s strategies for defending rights for women is,
therefore, to mount an urgent utility argument for extending “the abstract
rights of man” (23) to them. Once rights are respected, and “sound politics
diffuse liberty, mankind, including woman, will become more wise and
virtuous” (63). Only then can women carry out their particular duties and
become “affectionate wives and rational mothers” (29; see also 171, 174 –
176, 205, 208 –209, 222–223). But unless and until that happens, women’s
condition must impede and retard the social progress that supporters of the
Revolution hoped it would unleash (66). Nonetheless, whatever the very
real social benefi ts Wollstonecraft anticipates from rights dissemination,
her primary concern is the perfectionist one of creating opportunities for
women and men to act in accordance with their God-given nature and real-
ize their potential as rational, moral, immortal beings (Brody 1985, 56 –57;
Taylor 2003, 12, 226). Women’s “fi rst duty is to themselves as rational
creatures” (175; see also 37). As humans, “the grand end of their exer-
tions should be to unfold their own faculties and acquire the dignity of
conscious virtue” (52).^17 But Wollstonecraft’s theology means that there
is, ultimately, no confl ict between her consequentialist and deontological
arguments in defense of rights for women, because the just and benevolent
Supreme Being has so arranged things that doing the right thing will bring
salutary consequences.
Women as Rights-bearers
Because of their current education (in both narrow and broad senses), the
overwhelming majority of women are not just defective and destructive