The Personal Is Political 269political rights to women; and long-term social reform of gender and class
norms through free public coeducation (Botting 2006, 193 –205).
Although some scholarship has understated the political character of
this treatise, or even downplayed its commitment to the concept of rights,
a close reading leaves no doubt that its author clearly declared her inten-
tion to defend the “civil and political rights” of her sex (Taylor 2007, 3 – 4;
Offen 2010, 16). Perhaps it is Wollstonecraft’s own use of understatement,
alongside the related rhetorical techniques of irony, sarcasm, and satire,
which have distracted some readers from recognizing this core purpose of
her work. In chapter nine, she challenges the derisory public view of the
idea of women’s suffrage with her own feminist sense of wit: “I may excite
laughter, by dropping an hint, which I mean to pursue, some future time,
for I really think that women ought to have representatives, instead of be-
ing arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in
the deliberations of government. But, as the whole system of representa-
tion is now, in this country, only a convenient handle for despotism, they
need not complain, for they are as well represented as a numerous class of
hard working mechanics, who pay for the support of royalty when they can
scarcely stop their children’s mouths with bread” (176). By framing her
appeal for women’s formal political incorporation with the anticipation of
laughter, she preempts such reactionary ridicule of her position, and opens
the door to serious consideration of it.
Proceeding with an air of intimate confi dence with the reader, she uses
“I” three times in the fi rst sentence of this passage to connote her personal
commitment to this political issue. Playing on verbal and grammatical am-
biguities, she makes a political double entendre in stating that “women
ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed”; this
phrase suggests women should not only be able to vote, but also serve as
representatives, because male representation of their interests is a sham.
With a dramatic turn to satire, she unmasks representative government as
the real joke, without the institutionalization of the rights of women and
working-class men. She assures her readers that women “need not com-
plain” for they are as “well represented” as the mechanics who, she lets
us infer, are disenfranchised too. In likely homage to the satirical inver-
sions of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” (1729), she grants that women and
working-class men at least can support the monarchy with their taxes when
they can barely feed their starving children.^3
Wollstonecraft used fi rst-person narration in her novel Maria— most
vividly with the working-class character of Jemima — to reveal the bleak