79 pages • 2 hours read
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 12-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “On National Education.”
Although a private education—when children are educated at home rather than at a school—has the benefit of keeping a child within the family, it also, according to Wollstonecraft, can limit the types of knowledge and experience the child acquires. Instead, Wollstonecraft says “in order to open their faculties they should be excited to think for themselves; and this can only be done by mixing a number of children together” (167). However, the only alternative to private education are boarding schools, which Wollstonecraft critiques as “hot-beds of vice and folly” (168) and where “boys become gluttons and slovens” (168). Instead, Wollstonecraft proposes “to contrive some way of combining a public and private education” (168).
Wollstonecraft argues that public schools are full of “pedantic tyrants” (171) instead of teachers committed to the education of their students and that as a result, public schools are commonly places that only successfully elevate a “few brilliant men” (172). Wollstonecraft says that “education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of mind, which teaches young people how to begin to think” (173), and so students should not be simply instructed to “recite” facts in a “parrot-like prattle” (173), and instead be taught to think for themselves. She suggests that “proper day-schools” (172) should be established so that children could still reside at home—the place they first learn domestic affection. Furthermore, she says that the sexes should not be kept separately; rather, in order “to improve both sexes [boys and girls] ought, not only in private families, but in public schools [to] be educated together” (175). The result of this would be that women could learn to be the “companions” (175) of men, rather than their “mistresses” (175).
Schools, according to Wollstonecraft, should be free to attend (178), and girls and boys should dress alike in order to “prevent any of the distinctions of vanity” (178). Furthermore, children should “be usefully exercised” (178) in order to counteract the sedentary nature and treatment of girls. After the age of 9, “girls and boys, intended for domestic employments, or mechanical trades, ought to be removed to other schools, and receive instruction, in some measure appropriated to the destination of each individual,” while “young people of superior abilities”—both girls and boys alike—should continue their academic study together (179). Wollstonecraft acknowledges that this is a controversial suggestion, but argues that “such a degree of equality should be established between the sexes as would shut out gallantry and coquetry, yet allow friendship and love to temper the heart for the discharge of higher duties” (179). Furthermore, it would enable women to acquire wider attributes than the “accomplishments” (180) they are given at present.
Finally, Wollstonecraft says that schooling should teach children to be kind to both animals and people below them in station. She states that at present, a “habitual cruelty is first caught at school, where it is one of the rare sports of the boys to torment the miserable brutes that fall in their way” (183). Similarly, those who are educated at home are allowed to tyrannize their servants. Instead, a day school, Wollstonecraft argues, would enable children to “mix with a number of equals, for only by the jostlings of equality can we form a just opinion of ourselves” (184)—that is, by being educated with others, children might learn only empathy.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Some Instances of the Folly Which the Ignorance of Woman Generates; with Concluding Reflections on the Moral Improvement That a Revolution in Female Manners Might Naturally Be Expected to Produce.”
In this concluding chapter, Wollstonecraft sets out to discuss various defaults most common to women and “to prove, that the weakness of mind and body, which men have endeavored, impelled by various motives, to perpetuate, prevents [women] discharging the peculiar duty of their sex” (190)—that is, such defaults are a result of the way women are treated.
Firstly, many women seek the advice and guidance of medical quacks—men who pretend to be medical professionals but who instead encourage non-scientific cures Wollstonecraft describes as “fashionable deceptions” (192). Wollstonecraft argues that such men are blasphemous against God by lying and deceiving women, and it is women who perpetuate this industry by not having the education and reasoning to see these “quacks” for what they really are.
The second weakness Wollstonecraft identifies is “a romantic twist of the mind” (195) which, according to Wollstonecraft, is a result of “ignorance to their sensations, and only taught to look for happiness in love” (195). Additionally, Wollstonecraft attributes this weakness to either a lack of reading or to only reading romantic novels. As a result, women learn to view the world through the lens of these romances, believing that their lives and relationships should resemble these fictionalized stories, and “they neither acquired ideas nor sentiments” (196). She states that reading novels is preferable to reading nothing at all, but that women should “read something superior” (197).
Women are also “very fond of dress” (198), a fondness that leads to “vanity” in women (198). This fondness comes from the female “art of pleasing” (198) which, as she discusses earlier in the text, is perceived by men as the sole purpose of women. Similarly, because women “have not any business to interest them, have not a taste for literature, and they find politics dry” (199)—as they have never been encouraged to learn about or take an interest in any of these things—then what else can they be interested in except “the fondness for dress” (199). Wollstonecraft says that this vanity also leads to “perpetual rivalships” (199) between women as they compete to become the most pleasing to men.
Lastly, Wollstonecraft criticizes the way that most women rear and treat their children. She states that in many instances, women either “leave their children entirely to the care of servants” (202) or treat their children “as if they were little demi-gods” (202) and so idolize their children and allow them to become tyrannical. Wollstonecraft argues that only a woman who has received a proper education and expanded her mind can fulfill “the duties of a mother” (203) because she will not get distracted by vanities, quack doctors, or romance, and will only seek to educate her children in the way that she has been educated. Similarly, she says that the relationship between the sexes must change, becoming one of partnership rather than dependence and subordination, as “children will never be properly educated till friendship subsists between parents” (205).
Chapters 12-13 Analysis
Here, Wollstonecraft turns from criticizing the way in which women are treated by society, and thus how they behave, and provides a solution to this problem: mixed, public education. She argues that the structure of education at present is both insufficient and fails children: private education—conducted by private tutors or governesses inside the home—both encourages a sense of self-importance and does not offer children different perspectives of the world. Additionally, single-sex boarding school education only encourages boys to become tyrannical towards others. Her solution—to provide mixed, day schools—is, for her time, a radical suggestion. She is not only recommending that girls receive the same education as boys, but that they are educated alongside one another. Furthermore, she also argues for this education to be free and open to all. At that time, all forms of schooling had to be paid for, and the poor would not send their children to the same schools as the rich because they could not afford to. By advocating for free, public education, Wollstonecraft is also advocating for poor and middle class children to be educated alongside the children of the wealthy. These were incredibly radical opinions for her day.
Wollstonecraft believes that mixed, free, day schools are one solution to society’s problems. Firstly—and most importantly for Wollstonecraft—it would encourage women to expand their intelligence and reason, subverting preconceived notions of femininity. Similarly, by acquiring an academic education, women could enter professions, which would provide them with a purpose other than obsessing over dresses and attempting to please men, and would also give them independence. Furthermore, by educating women and men alongside one another, it would change the way the sexes relate to one another; instead of teasing and flirting, men and women might learn to be companions and friends which, Wollstonecraft argues, provides a much stronger foundation for marriage. Finally, an education would likely cure women of all the defaults Wollstonecraft describes in the final chapter of this work: women would no longer be seduced by quack doctors; they would read things with more variety and substance than romantic novels; they would acquire interests other than an interest in dress; and they would become better and more successful mothers.
Wollstonecraft concludes her work by blaming men for what she believes to be the current degraded state of women in society through the forcing of women to conform to false and debasing ideas of femininity, by denying them rights and education, and by subordinating them to the rule of men: “From the tyranny of man, I firmly believe, the greater number of female follies proceed” (205).
Unlock all 79 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
