Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
IEF – Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal [email protected]
In my inquiry, I shall analyse some aspects of Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas on education. The main goal of Mary Wollstonecraft’s education programme could be synthesised, in my opinion, in the promotion of individual’s reason, virtue and independence: Mary Wollstonecraft aims to give individuals, in general, and women, in particular, a moral structure. The faculty of reason in the individuals ought to be continuously cultivated. Correspondingly, individuals should be taught to dominate their own passions. Individuals, in general, and women, in particular, ought to achieve, through a new system of education, a solid rational constitution. The main subject which comes out from Mary Wollstonecraft’s meditation on education is reason: reason should be the constitution of the individual, and reason ought to be the principle of education.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s constant aim throughout her works is to improve the moral level of individuals and of society. To give a first presentation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas, I would like to quote a short passage in which Mary Wollstonecraft expresses her awareness of the effects caused on individuals by unjust environments:
‘The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong.’ (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 153)
To be hit by injustice causes the incapability to distinguish between right and wrong. Bearing injustice, therefore, worsens the moral condition of the victims of injustice. This general principle can be applied to women:
‘Besides, how can women be just or generous, when they are the slaves of injustice?’ (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 261)
Women cannot be just if they undergo an atmosphere of injustice. In general, enduring injustice morally corrupts individuals. In particular, women cannot be just since they are slaves of injustice. To endure injustice represents, therefore, no value at all. As we can see, the environment in which an individual lives is decisive for the development of the moral level of the individual. If injustice dominates, human beings will become worse, not better. Mary Wollstonecraft concentrates her attention on the moral deterioration of an individual who is compelled by the events of life to bear injustice: to bear forms of injustice will render individuals worse than they originally were. If an individual is exposed to continuous abuses at home, he will lose the faculty of distinguishing right and wrong.
A reform of society is necessary in order to have better individuals; conditions of abuse of individuals correspond to conditions of deterioration of the moral level of individuals; just conditions in a society correspond to positive moral conditions in the individuals. The right social conditions turn out to be, in the opinion of Mary Wollstonecraft, indispensable for reaching the correct moral formation of individuals. In a further passage, we can see that a correct system of education is the basis for a correct society; reform of education is the foundation of a global reform of society:
‘I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the managements of schools; but what has been the result? – a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity.’ (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 73)
Due to the traditionally received education, individuals are not in a healthy mental condition. The analysis of the system of education shows that lack of education is the origin of the minority condition in which women are compelled to live. The problems for society derive from a wrong education: the traditional model of education for women is, as such, a form of abuse. Herewith, we do not have a case of abuse in the lives of women or of a series of abuses in their lives. Through this kind of education, we have a system of life, i.e., a programme of life that is as such an abuse of women’s nature: this programme represents the complete deformation of women’s capabilities.
Mary Wollstonecraft expresses the strong conviction that liberty is indispensable for the development of virtue:
‘Liberty is the mother of virtue, and if women [be], by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air of freedom, they must ever languish like exotics, and be reckoned beautiful flaws in nature.’ (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, p. 105)
Liberty is defined by Mary Wollstonecraft as the mother of virtue: without liberty, there is no way to become virtuous. Liberty is indispensable for the moral development of individuals. Individuals cannot reach an appropriate moral development without liberty.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman proves to be a programme of reform of society: Mary Wollstonecraft proposes in her works, among other things, the following subjects:
• a new model of education and formation for all individuals and, in particular, for women,
• a new role of women in society,
• a new proposal for the organisation of family life,
• political representation for women,
• the foundation of a national system of education,
• a common education for girls and boys,
• a modification of the theological assumptions describing the nature of God in order to promote a conception of God based on rationality and not on mystery.
As regards Mary Wollstonecraft’s meditation on the female dimension, it could be said that the strategy of Mary Wollstonecraft consists, among other things, in putting in doubt the existence of an essence of women: Mary Wollstonecraft refuses the very notion of an essence of women. Women are made to have precise characteristics in correspondence with the kind of women which a particular kind of society wants to produce. There is no determined essence of women: women are transformed into that which the orientation of society wants them to become. Likewise, there is no neutrality in education. Education is always directed to a precise goal: it is functional to the affirmation and to the conservation of specific values of a society. Mary Wollstonecraft’s inquiry into the structure of society shows that the leading cultural disposition of society has a precise programme of education for all individuals, in general, and for women, in particular. Every individual, on closer inspection, becomes that which the specific traditions dominating a society have as a programme for the development of the individuals. Therefore, education is not neutral: it is functional to precise goals. The process of uncovering the aims of society which Mary Wollstonecraft fulfils consists in showing that an individual becomes the kind of individual which society has programmed and prescribed for him.
The system of education which is reserved for women is a kind of education which aims to assign women to a specific place and position within society. In other words, the education system of a society is not independent of the power strategy of the dominant group in society. On the contrary, the education system is directly functional to the affirmation of the values and of the interests of the dominant groups of society. Since the interest of the dominant groups of society consists in assigning women to a subaltern position in society, the model of education proposed by the dominant groups aims to render women subaltern. The education of women is the foundation of the whole structure of society: changing the system of education of women means changing the whole society. The presence of a non-submissive woman who is master of herself implies a different structure of the family, a different interpretation of the relationships which hold between individuals, a different vision of marriage, a different conception of society, a different conception of citizenship, and so on. Therefore, to say that the education of women ought to be different is to say that the whole society ought to be different.
All the characters that are habitually assigned to women are characters produced by a particular kind of education which aims to acquire power over women: if women are educated to be the prey of their passions, this kind of education, in truth, corresponds to a precise programme of a particular kind of society which aims to make women the prey of passions. Women’s being the prey of passions is, therefore, not natural, but artificial: it is the result of a kind of education which aims to render women slaves of passions and, therefore, dependent beings.
There is no essence of women, at least as regards their supposed lack of reason and their being slaves of passions. It is a precise scheme of society, and it is a precise organisation of the society that wants to have women considered as essentially consisting in emotions, feelings, and passions. Every form of passion is, for Mary Wollstonecraft, a form of dependence: the first abuse exercised against an individual is to render that individual dependent on his passions. Due to the subjugation which the individual suffers in relation to passions, an individual is no longer able to dominate himself, to have power over himself and to use reason.
To obtain a complete description of the model of education due to which women become the prey of passions, let us consider, for instance, the following observations, in which the symptoms of women who receive the traditional education are described (pp. 129–131):
‘Their senses are inflamed, and their understanding neglected, consequently they become the prey of their senses, delicately termed sensibility, and are blown about by every momentary gust of feeling (…) Ever restless and anxious, their over exercised / sensibility not only renders them uncomfortable themselves, but troublesome, to use a soft phrase, to others. All their thoughts turn on things calculated to excite emotion; and feeling, when they should reason, their conduct is unstable, and their opinions are wavering – not the wavering produced by deliberation or progressive views, but by contradictory emotions.
(…) This overstretched sensibility naturally relaxes the other powers of the mind, and prevents intellect from attaining that sovereignty which it ought to attain to render a rational creature useful to others, and content with its own station: for the exercise of the understanding, as life advances, is the only method pointed out by nature to calm the passions.’
Mary Wollstonecraft points out that the development of sensibility and the development of reason exclude each other: education to the slavery of passions is education to general enslavement. Women are a product of a specific education strategy which aims to render them permanently slaves of their character: the enslavement and the self-enslavement of women are the goals of this education system. Women will become enslaved by their character: consequently, they will always be dependent entities. Mary Wollstonecraft’s criticism of the mental environment of passions in which girls and women are intentionally relegated by the social structures is clear: any development of reason for women proves to be impossible in these conditions. Women’s senses are inflamed so that women’s understanding is made weaker. Mary Wollstonecraft supports a model of education of the soul which brings about a condition in which reason subdues passions: not sensibility, but reason and intellect ought to be improved and strengthened. Senses and passions gain the upper hand in the individual and deteriorate the nature of the individual if the individual is not educated to oppose passions. The correct way of development for the individual is the development of reason and intellect.
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