inconsistent to value independence and autonomy in men but not in women,
particularly as patriarchy, or male domination, degrades men as well – ‘the blind
lead the blind’ (Brody, 1992: 104).
Women, Wollstonecraft argues, are placed on a pedestal but within a prison
(Brody, 1992: 50–1). Women ought to be represented in government and have a
‘civil existence in the State’ (Wollstonecraft, 1992: 265, 267). They should not be
excluded from civil and political employments (1992: 291). The enlightened woman
must be an ‘active citizen’ ‘intent to manage her family, educate her children and
assist her neighbours’ (1992: 259). Friendship rather than gentleness, docility and
a spaniel-like affection ‘should prevail between the sexes’. The emancipation of
women is, in Wollstonecraft’s view, part and parcel of the case against autocracy
and arbitrariness in general: why contest the divine right of kings if one continues
to subscribe to the divine right of husbands (1992: 118, 119)?
Wollstonecraft’s position has a number of shortcomings that we will deal with
later, but it is generally acknowledged that she tended to juxtapose reason to feeling,
identifying feelings with animal appetites that men exploited. Moreover, she saw
perfection as a realisable ideal, a position undoubtedly influenced by the intensely
religious character of her argument. Wollstonecraft’s position was complex – and
she has been seen by some writers as ‘ambivalent, contradictory and paradoxical’
- a reformer and revolutionary, rationalist and woman of feeling (Brody, 1992: 67,
70).
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (influenced by his partner Harriet Taylor) wrote The Subjection
of Womenin 1869. In it, he argues that women should enjoy equal rights with men
- including the right to vote. Women, he contended, were still slaves in many
respects, and to argue that they are inferior by ‘nature’ is to presume knowledge of
nature: until equality has been established, how do we know what woman’s nature
is? It cannot be said that women are housewives and mothers by nature, although
Mill does say – and this position is controversial among feminists today – that they
are ‘most suitable for this role’, and he feels that female suffrage can only assist
women in supervising domestic expenditure (Coole, 1988: 144; Bryson, 1992:
55–63). Mill, it is suggested, contributed to liberal feminism by extending his liberal
principles to the position of women (Shanley and Pateman, 1991: 6) and, like
Wollstonecraft, he argued that the family must become a school for learning the
values of freedom and independence.
Liberal feminism in Britain and the USA
Throughout the nineteenth century, liberal feminism had developed often as an
extension of other emancipatory movements. In the United States, figures like
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and her lifelong friend Susan Anthony
(1820–1906) raised the issue of women’s freedom and equality as a result of
experience in anti-slavery movements. Both edited a feminist journal in the 1860s
called The Revolution.A National Women’s Suffrage Association was set up after
Chapter 14 Feminism 315