Mary Wollstonecraft – Pioneered and Coined the Term Feminis
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Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was a woman who pioneered and coined the term feminist. Wollstonecraft had many different views and opinions on different subjects. Whether it is religion, human nature, womans rights or education. Wollstonecraft has elaborated her opinions about those issues. “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” is one of the earliest forms of feminism written by Wollstonecraft. Inside “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” Wollstonecraft touches upon the issue of woman being unequal to men. Wollstonecraft discusses the issue of education, and the importance of women having an education oppose to relying on their husbands to educate them. Education is important to Wollstonecraft for many different reasons, and those reasons include love, women being independent, and the issue of her not being early educated may have some influence.
“A Vindication of the rights of Women” makes many references to other male authors who portray women as weak individuals that are not capable of reasoning effectively. Wollstonecraft argues that “Emile” written by Rousseau is a piece that shows women in a feeble manner. “Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.” Wollstonecraft believed that education must be a part of women and mens lives in order to survive in society. She also believed that the best education eventually strengthens the body and forms the heart. This is something Rousseau didnt advocate. Wollstonecraft rejected the education in dependency that Rousseau advocated for women in “Emile.” Wollstonecraft argues that a woman must be intelligent in her own right, and cannot assume that her husband will be intelligent for her. Although, Wollstonecraft states that women should not depend on their husband for education, she also states that she does not contradict the role of the mother or the role the woman plays in the household. Wollstonecraft basically expresses how women should be given the opportunity to an education if they so desire one.
Wollstonecraft believed that reasoning or rationality formed the basis of human rights. She believed that it was humans ability to grasp the truth and therefore acquire knowledge of right and wrong that separated us, as human beings from the animal world. She states that through the exercise of reason we become moral and political agents. At the time Wollstonecraft wrote “A Vindication of the rights of Women,” writing was typically a mans world and their writing proved their views upon women. Wollstonecraft writing was mainly to extend the basic ideas of enlightenment philosophy to women and Rousseaus educational ideas of how to educate boys to girls. Wollstonecraft believed that if education was given to women at an early age the knowledge that she has will ultimately