Mary Wollstonecraft, "Vindication of the Rights of Women," Ch.2-5, notes

*Does it strike anyone else as ironic and stupid that the most obvious advertisement next to the table of contents is an ad for weight loss?

bartleby.com/144

Ch2:

"Thus Milton describes our first frail mother; though when he tells us that women are formed for softness and sweet attractive grace, I cannot comprehend his meaning, unless, in the true Mahometan strain, he meant to deprive us of souls, and insinuate that we were beings only designed by sweet attractive grace, and docile blind obedience, to gratify the senses of man when he can no longer soar on the wing of contemplation." - She gets right to the point!

"Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood."

"...let us, disregarding sensual arguments, trace what we should endeavour to make them in order to co-operate, if the expression be not too bold, with the supreme Being." - suggests that treating women as they are treated is an unchristian act, one against G-d.

Though, to reason on Rousseau's ground, if man did attain a degree of perfection of mind when his body arrived at maturity, it might be proper, in order to make a man and his wifeone, that she should rely entirely on his understanding; and the graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous. But, alas! husbands, as well as their helpmates, are often only overgrown children; nay, thanks to early debauchery, scarcely men in their outward form—and if the blind lead the blind, one need not come from heaven to tell us the consequence." - There is a bit of a smirking tone here that I enjoy, even though it is still a very serious part of her argument.

- "Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing." - Her frank writing voice keeps me in my toes, even 200 years after it was put to paper!

- "It has been well said, by a shrewd satirist, "that rare as true love is, true friendship is still rarer.""

- In order to fulfil the duties of life, and to be able to pursue with vigour the various employments which form the moral character, a master and mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other with passion. I mean to say, that they ought not to indulge those emotions which disturb the order of society, and engross the thoughts that should be otherwise employed."

-purblind

Ch3:

- "...the first care of those mothers or fathers, who really attend to the education of females, should be, if not to strengthen the body, at least, not to destroy the constitution by mistaken notions of beauty and female excellence; nor should girls ever be allowed to imbibe the pernicious notion that a defect can, by any chemical process of reasoning, become an excellence." - Still a struggle for men and women - look at statistics about weight loss, or websites that encourage looking thin and adopting a dangerous diet. Common, still important topic: who are female role models today? Who do people think they should be, and what kind of women really get the most public, widespread publicity?

- "Why do men halt between two opinions, and expect impossibilities? Why do they expect virtue from a slave, from a being whom the constitution of civil society has rendered weak, if not vicious?"

- "...how can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?"

Ch4:

- "Thus understanding, strictly speaking, has been denied to woman; and instinct, sublimated into wit and cunning, for the purposes of life, has been substituted in its stead."

- " I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. It is not condescension to bow to an inferiour."

- "It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion, that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness: 'Fine by defect, /and amiably weak!'"

- "'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves."

- The more interesting the reading became, the fewer notes I took. Looking forward to the class discussion, though!