HCJ Lecture One Mary Wollstonecraft

Apologies to my readers for the extremely delayed HCJ blog. For some reason my account has constantly refused to log me in the past week or so, but I return, at the turn of the tide to tell you stories of Mary Wollestonecraft and her views on women's rights.

She experienced a difficult early life with a drunken father along with her family's social standing declining. This meant she was forced to work as a governess to a wealthy family in Ireland, however in 1787 she became obsessed with education. Wollstonecraft argued that the education given to women was superficial, promoting an obsession with appearance and superficial accomplishments like sewing did not equip women with independence of thought or judgement.

The philiosophy of empricist John Locke was very attractive to Wollstonecraft. The idea that the mind can be shaped by education and experience, and for Wollstonecraft, she believed that people could then be changed through Reason and that if you could educate people properly, then you can make them rational, responsible citizens. Along with Locke, she was also fascinated with Rousseau, finding him inspirational and aggravating. She liked his anti-elitism and his attack on modern manners as well as his egalitarianism.

Edmund Burke was a critic of the French Revolution because he believed that societies were built on tradition and to attempt to rip all that up and begin again was a recipe for disaster. The French Revolution was known for change, and it's belief that 'ripping' it apart and beginning society again would work. Burke hated this. In response to his criticism, Wollstonecraft wrote a book, "The Vindication on the Rights of Men" and in it she claimed ideas of aristocracy and hereditary power were mistaken.

One of her other pieces of text, and probably her most signifcant was "The Vindication of the Rights of Women". This book does not actually have much to say on the civil rights of women, or other issues such as voting, however it was given a warm response. Her life started drastically moving downhill again as she had a failed affair and then in Paris 1792 was the beginning of the Terror when she was abandoned by Imlay and has several suicide attempts.

However, despite her mixed life, she is still seen today as the champion of Women's Rights and her idea was that men and women should just be human beings, and the woman should not be part of a man but respected as a human being.

Another person we looked at in the lecture and the seminar was John Stuart Mill. He believed strongly in the liberty of people and wrote a book called "On Liberty". Liberty as we understand though, began as an attempt to limit the powers of government through bills of rights and the extension of the franchise. It also located authority to the individual, just like Locke's idea of inalienable rights. Liberals believe in a Laissez Faire attitude to economics-favouring private property and free trade, the same view taken my the founder of economics, Adam Smith. They prize freedom over equality and favour equality of opportunity over egalitrianism. Socialists say equality of opportunity should be entitled to everybody and not the minority of self-righteous people.

John Stuart Mill had a very early education learning Greek and Latin at very early ages. However at 17, he was thrown in jail for distirbuting literature on contraception. Along with this, he was threatened with death over his prosecution of Governer Eyre, and introduced the first bill to give women the vote then, three years later he suffered a nervous breakdown. Mill dismisses the social contract (which was supported by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau) but he does admit individuals must follow societies' rules and if actions affect society then the state can enforce certain behaviour. He argues that the state should not interfere with people's "choices of pleasure", as long as no one else is harmed, but he does feel the state can interfere in certain situations, for example, involving children.

Many Thanks for reading.

G-Man