A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman
Are Women Human? 245
- Every corps in a standing army also exhibits this dual character of both slave
and tyrant (42).
- A handful of women have circumvented the constraints of their education (in
both senses) to become rational and active human beings (29, 60, 88, 207).
Examples include “Sappho, Eloisa, Mrs. Macaulay, the Empress of Russia,
Madame d’Eon” (104 note‡; see also 132 on Macaulay). She is also no doubt
thinking, correctly, of herself as part of this exceptional crew. Interestingly,
Madame D’Eon was a well-known male transvestite.
- Emphasis original. A prefatory note promises a discussion of women’s “pe-
culiar duties” in a second volume (25). Wollstonecraft’s untimely death pre-
vented this from materializing. These duties might have spawned additional
gender-specifi c rights.
- From MacKinnon (2006).
- For a fuller discussion of this, see Green (1995, 82–103).
- Wollstonecraft, like Taylor and Mill, tries to educate men about their interest
in women’s emancipation (179).
- Engster (2001) situates Wollstonecraft vis-à-vis the ethic of care debate,
arguing that her political philosophy synthesizes the justice and care per-
spectives.
- For a fuller discussion, see Reilly (2009).
- Just how all-encompassing her concept of tyranny is becomes evident when
she describes boys who are cruel to animals making “the transition, as they
grow up, from barbarity to brutes to domestic tyranny over wives, children,
and servants” (203).
- For similar references to dignity, see 31, 76, 83, while the term “conscious
dignity” is repeated on 77. Stetson claims that Wollstonecraft sees rape and
seduction as a loss of women’s dignity (1996, 175).
- Indeed, respect is closely allied with friendship (56, 101, 197), so my
claim about its ubiquity in a healthy society complements Frazer’s analysis
(2008).
- Because it recognizes rationality and independence, the term respect is also
apropos for one’s relationship to writers. The very term respect connotes
for Wollstonecraft “Mrs. Macaulay,” just as she respects but disagrees with
“Mrs. Chapone” (132). We learn that what people respect in one another is
what they admire in the Deity — not power, but virtue (Taylor 2003, 107–
108), which provides further support for my emulation thesis above.
- Gunther-Canada (2001), Taylor (2003), and Botting (2006) contextualize
Wollstonecraft’s thought historically.
