24086 results in Literary texts
Chapter XI - Duty to Parents
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Summary
There seems to be an indolent propensity in man to make prescription always take place of reason, and to place every duty on an arbitrary foundation. The rights of kings are deduced in a direct line from the King of kings; and that of parents from our first parent.
Why do we thus go back for principles that should always rest on the same base, and have the same weight today that they had a thousand years ago—and not a jot more? If parents discharge their duty they have a strong hold and sacred claim on the gratitude of their children; but few parents are willing to receive the respectful affection of their offspring on such terms. They demand blind obedience, because they do not merit a reasonable service: and to render these demands of weakness and ignorance more bind-ing, a mysterious sanctity is spread round the most arbitrary principle; for what other name can be given to the blind duty of obeying vicious or weak beings merely because they obeyed a powerful instinct?
The simple definition of the reciprocal duty, which naturally subsists between parent and child, may be given in a few words: The parent who pays proper attention to helpless infancy has a right to require the same attention when the feebleness of age comes upon him. But to subjugate a rational being to the mere will of another, after he is of age to answer to society for his own conduct, is a most cruel and undue stretch of power; and, perhaps, as injurious to morality as those religious systems which do not allow right and wrong to have any existence, but in the Divine will.
I never knew a parent who had paid more than common attention to his children, disregarded; on the contrary, the early habit of relying almost implicitly on the opinion of a respected parent is not easily shook, even when matured reason convinces the child that his father is not the wisest man in the world. This weakness, for a weakness it is, though the epithet amiable may be tacked to it, a reasonable man must steel himself against; for the absurd duty, too often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.
I distinguish between the natural and accidental duty due to parents.
Abbreviations
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Chapter 4 - Femme Godwin and Her Religion
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Summary
Since Joseph Johnson published Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in January 1798, just a few months after Wollstonecraft’s untimely demise, arguably she became one of the most controversial figures in all literary history. To many readers at the end of that century and decades that would follow, the Christian piety apparent in Rights of Woman was nullified by the revelation of her “non-Christian” lifestyle. “Reviewers and commentators were increasingly unable to separate the writer from her texts,” Harriet Jump noted (2003, 1:5). Wollstonecraft’s texts were reconsidered, deemed dangerous and capable of spreading moral contagion, and then buried for nearly 50 years (5). However, there have been those who questioned Godwin’s rendition of his wife. To Anna Seward, Romantic poet and author of Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin (1804), Godwin’s Memoirs was a “needless display of his own infidelity.” Godwin’s writing implicated his wife in his own skepticism and offered no proof that Wollstonecraft gave up on religion. Indeed, Seward questioned Godwin’s motives for “expos[ing his wife] to the censure of irreligion from the mass of mankind” (1811, 5:74).
As I theorized in my Betwixt and Between the Biographies of Mary Wollstonecraft,
When biographers write about a person’s life, they prioritize what is important to themselves: what interests them, what resonates with them, what helps them, what teaches them, what makes sense to them, and most significantly, what advances their own political agenda whether it is conscious or not.
(2017, 1)Even though Godwin’s critics and most scholars have agreed that Memoirs is biased and unreliable, his “account” of Wollstonecraft’s religious beliefs has continued to be accepted as gospel truth and repeated by some of the very same scholars that have disparaged his reliability. In 1981 Mitzi Myers observed that despite the profusion of discredit imputed to Memoirs, even after two centuries his biography “remains the substratum on which even the newest live erects their varying portrayals” of Wollstonecraft (299). In Margaret Kirkham’s words,
with a genuine respect for truth, but a total lack of interest in how the truth would be received and what effects it would have, he disclosed full details of his wife’s relationship with Imlay, her suicide attempts, and her having conceived his child before marriage. He also praised, without full regard for the truth, her rejection of Christianity.
Chapter I - The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Summary
In the present state of society it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground. To clear my way, I must be allowed to ask some plain questions, and the answers will probably appear as unequivocal as the axioms on which reasoning is built; though, when entangled with various motives of action, they are formally contradicted, either by the words or conduct of men.
In what does man’s pre-eminence over the brute creation consist? The answer is as clear as that a half is less than the whole; in Reason.
What acquirement exalts one being above another? Virtue; we spontaneously reply.
For what purpose were the passions implanted? That man by struggling with them might attain a degree of knowledge denied to the brutes; whispers Experience.
Consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness, must be estimated by the degree of reason, virtue, and knowledge, that distinguish the individual, and direct the laws which bind society: and that from the exercise of reason, knowledge and virtue naturally flow, is equally undeniable, if mankind be viewed collectively.
The rights and duties of man thus simplified, it seems almost impertinent to attempt to illustrate truths that appear so incontrovertible; yet such deeply rooted prejudices have clouded reason, and such spurious qualities have assumed the name of virtues, that it is necessary to pursue the course of reason as it has been perplexed and involved in error, by various adventitious circumstances, comparing the simple axiom with casual deviations.
Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they can scarcely trace how, rather than to root them out. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves. Yet the imperfect conclusions thus drawn, are frequently very plausible, because they are built on partial experience, on just, though narrow, views.
Going back to first principles, vice skulks, with all its native deformity, from close investigation; but a set of shallow reasoners are always exclaiming that these arguments prove too much, and that a measure rotten at the core may be expedient.
Chapter IX - Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Summary
From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind. For it is in the most polished society that noisome reptiles and venomous serpents lurk under the rank herbage; and there is voluptuousness pampered by the still sultry air, which relaxes every good disposition before it ripens into virtue.
One class presses on another; for all are aiming to procure respect on account of their property: and property, once gained, will procure the respect due only to talents and virtue. Men neglect the duties incumbent on man, yet are treated like demigods, religion is also separated from morality by a ceremonial veil, yet men wonder that the world is almost literally speaking, a den of sharpers or oppressors.
There is a homely proverb, which speaks a shrewd truth, that whoever the devil finds idle he will employ. And what but habitual idleness can hereditary wealth and titles produce? For man is so constituted that he can only attain a proper use of his faculties by exercising them, and will not exercise them unless necessity, of some kind, first set the wheels in motion. Virtue likewise can only be acquired by the discharge of relative duties; but the importance of these sacred duties will scarcely be felt by the being who is cajoled out of his humanity by the flattery of sycophants. There must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, and this virtuous equality will not rest firmly even when founded on a rock, if one half of mankind be chained to its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining it through ignorance or pride.
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are, in some degree, independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection, which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish, and the men who can be gratified by the fawning fondness of spaniel-like affection, have not much delicacy, for love is not to be bought, in any sense of the words, its silken wings are instantly shrivelled up when any thing beside a return in kind is sought.
Chapter VII - Modesty—Comprehensively Considered, and Not as a Sexual Virtue
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Modesty! Sacred offspring of sensibility and reason!—true delicacy of mind!—may I unblamed presume to investigate thy nature, and trace to its covert the mild charm, that mellowing each harsh feature of a character, renders what would otherwise only inspire cold admiration—lovely!—Thou that smoothest the wrinkles of wisdom, and softenest the tone of the sublimest virtues till they all melt into humanity;—thou that spreadest the ethereal cloud that, surrounding love, heightens every beauty, it half shades, breathing those coy sweets that steal into the heart, and charm the senses—modulate for me the language of persuasive reason, till I rouse my sex from the flowery bed, on which they supinely sleep life away!
In speaking of the association of our ideas, I have noticed two distinct modes; and in defining modesty, it appears to me equally proper to discriminate that purity of mind, which is the effect of chastity, from a simplicity of character that leads us to form a just opinion of ourselves, equally distant from vanity or presumption, though by no means incompatible with a lofty consciousness of our own dignity. Modesty, in the latter signification of the term, is, that soberness of mind which teaches a man not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think, and should be distinguished from humility, because humility is a kind of self-abasement.
A modest man often conceives a great plan, and tenaciously adheres to it, conscious of his own strength, till success gives it a sanction that determines its character. Milton was not arrogant when he suffered a suggestion of judgment to escape him that proved a prophecy; nor was General Washington when he accepted the command of the American forces. The latter has always been characterized as a modest man; but had he been merely humble, he would probably have shrunk back irresolute, afraid of trusting to himself the direction of an enterprise, on which so much depended.
A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous:—this is the judgment, which the observation of many characters, has led me to form. Jesus Christ was modest, Moses was humble, and Peter vain.
Thus, discriminating modesty from humility in one case, I do not mean to confound it with bashfulness in the other.
Frontmatter
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Chapter 3 - A Biblical Accounting for the Equality of Women
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Summary
That a woman who argued for equal education and vocation for women and who had such a devotion to the Bible that she could use it to such a great degree in Rights of Woman may be surprising given the track record of misogyny in the Christian Church. Historically, Christianity has often been the greatest enemy of the woman. Born about the same time that Jesus was crucified, St. Clement, once he became the father of the Greek Church, was certain that “the consciousness of [women’s] own nature must evoke feelings of shame” (quoted in Lucas 2010, 37). Known as the founder of Western theology as well as the father of Latin Christianity and of the African church, Tertullian averred that women are “the devil’s gateway” (1869 [2nd Century], 304). In the fourth century, St. Jerome, the writer of the Vulgate, defined “woman” as “the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word a perilous object,” and St. Gregory, the Bishop of Constantinople, rated her this way; “fierce is the dragon and cunning the asp; But woman have [sic] the malice of both” (quoted in McCabe 1908, 30). St. Augustine asked why women were created at all (quoted in Chvala-Smith 2007, 85), but the famous theologian of the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas, attempted to answer his question by claiming that she was “created to be man’s helpmeet, but her unique role is in conception … since for other purposes men would be better assisted by other men” (quoted in Crysdale 2001, 74).
Although the list of Christian misogynists throughout history is a veritable “Who’s Who in Church History,” the oppression of women runs through all cultures and begins with the Genesis account of Adam’s blaming God for giving him “the woman,” and then blaming the woman for giving him the forbidden fruit. From the beginning of human time, men have been inclined to blame God and women for all wrongs and rarely have taken accountability for their own misdeeds. The Talmud actually offers a morning blessing for men to give thanks to God that He did not create them to be women (Segal n.d., n.p.).
More recently the most senior Islamic cleric in Australia publicly announced that women who did not wear the hijab (Islamic scarf) were like “uncovered meat.”
Chapter VIII - Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of a Good Reputation
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Summary
It has long since occurred to me that advice respecting behaviour, and all the various modes of preserving a good reputation, which have been so strenuously inculcated on the female world, were specious poisons, that incrusting morality eat away the substance. And, that this measuring of shadows produced a false calculation, because their length depends so much on the height of the sun, and other adventitious circumstances.
Whence arises the easy fallacious behaviour of a courtier? From his situation, undoubtedly: for standing in need of dependents, he is obliged to learn the art of denying without giving offence, and, of evasively feeding hope with the chameleon’s food: thus does politeness sport with truth, and eating away the sincerity and humanity natural to man, produce the fine gentleman.
Women likewise acquire, from a supposed necessity, an equally artificial mode of behaviour. Yet truth is not with impunity to be sported with, for the practised dissembler, at last, become the dupe of his own arts, loses that sagacity, which has been justly termed common sense; namely, a quick perception of common truths: which are constantly received as such by the unsophisticated mind, though it might not have had sufficient energy to discover them itself, when obscured by local prejudices. The greater number of people take their opinions on trust to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human. “Women,” says some author, I cannot recollect who, “mind not what only heavensees.” Why, indeed, should they? it is the eye of man that they have been taught to dread—and if they can lull their Argus to sleep, they seldom think of heaven or themselves, because their reputation is safe; and it is reputation, not chastity and all its fair train, that they are employed to keep free from spot, not as a virtue, but to preserve their station in the world.
To prove the truth of this remark, I need only advert to the intrigues of married women, particularly in high life, and in countries where women are suitably married, according to their respective ranks, by their parents.
Dedication
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Chapter X - Parental Affection
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Parental affection is, perhaps, the blindest modification of perverse self-love; for we have not, like the French, two terms to distinguish the pursuit of a natural and reasonable desire, from the ignorant calculations of weakness. Parents often love their children in the most brutal manner, and sacrifice every relative duty to promote their advancement in the world.—To promote, such is the perversity of unprincipled prejudices, the future welfare of the very beings whose present existence they imbitter by the most despotic stretch of power. Power, in fact, is ever true to its vital principle, for in every shape it would reign without controul or inquiry. Its throne is built across a dark abyss, which no eye must dare to explore, lest the baseless fabric should totter under investigation. Obedience, unconditional obedience, is the catch-word of tyrants of every description, and to render “assurance doubly sure,” one kind of despotism supports another. Tyrants would have cause to tremble if reason were to become the rule of duty in any of the relations of life, for the light might spread till perfect day appeared. And when it did appear, how would men smile at the sight of the bugbears at which they started during the night of ignorance, or the twilight of timid inquiry.
Parental affection, indeed, in many minds, is but a pretext to tyrannize where it can be done with impunity, for only good and wise men are content with the respect that will bear discussion. Convinced that they have a right to what they insist on, they do not fear reason, or dread the sifting of subjects that recur to natural justice: because they firmly believe that the more enlightened the human mind becomes the deeper root will just and simple principles take. They do not rest in expedients, or grant that what is metaphysically true can be practically false; but disdaining the shifts of the moment they calmly wait till time, sanctioning innovation, silences the hiss of selfishness or envy.
If the power of reflecting on the past, and darting the keen eye of contemplation into futurity, be the grand privilege of man, it must be granted that some people enjoy this prerogative in a very limited degree.
Chapter 6 - Fellow Heirs, Travelers, and Sojourners
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Summary
To George Blood, Wollstonecraft admitted that she felt “particularly attached to those who are heirs of the promises, and travel on in the thorny path with the same Christian hopes that render my severe trials a cause of thankfulness” (Todd, CL 54; emphasis in original). Wollstonecraft did have a sense of fellowship with other Christians and that she was not alone as she ran her race (68). In Thoughts, she affirmed her faith that “It is our preferring the things that are not seen, to those which are, that proves us to be the heirs of promise” (108). “Heirs,” “travelers,” “thorny paths,” “trials,” and “race” are all biblical metaphors for the experiences in life that Christians are called to endure as they grow to be more like Christ and to serve their Maker. More to the point of this study, although there were many different groups of thinkers and proponents of a variety of religious doctrines during the end of the eighteenth century, Wollstonecraft was aware that she felt a particular kinship with evangelical Christians, and that was because she identified herself as one. Referring to those who are “heirs of the promises” refers to many verses in the New Testament, but primarily to Rom. 8. It is this chapter that clarifies for us what Wollstonecraft believed, at least in 1785. She would not live in condemnation because her sins were forgiven by the death of Christ (1–3). She would not be legalistic because she knew that the law condemned, but to live in the Spirit was freedom (3–4). But that also meant that she would not be “carnally minded” because to be otherwise robbed her of “life and peace” and put her in “enmity against God” (5–12). To be “led by the Spirit of God” not only made her a child of God through adoption (14–15), it placed her in a spiritual family which made her “joint-heirs” with Christ and other Christians who “suffer with Him” so that even though they were “made subject to vanity” (20), a condition to which she would refer often in Rights of Woman, they would “be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (21).
This portrait of Wollstonecraft runs counter to those depicted by most Wollstonecraftian scholars. In fact, it runs counter to how many postmodernists look at the Age of Enlightenment in general.
Contents
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Introduction: A Vindication of Mary Wollstonecraft
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Summary
To comfort himself and ostensibly to present his wife to the world as a strong, independent woman who lived by her own rules, Wollstonecraft’s husband wrote and then published Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” four months after her death. The brief and candid biography revealed to the world that the celebrated proselytizer of virtue and excellence had conceived two daughters out of wedlock and attempted two suicides.
From thenceforth the events in her life and her life choices would overshadow the ideas in her work. As Cora Kaplan observed, “Curiously, for an author-activist adept in many genres—a career to which many feminists have aspired—up until the last quarter-century Wollstonecraft’s life has been read much more closely than her writing, which has sometimes seemed a mere pretext for telling and retelling her personal story” (2002, 247). It is true that ever since academe has embraced the cause of feminism, Wollstonecraft’s work has received much more critical attention than it had in the past. However, it is also true that what seems to continue to interest readers about Wollstonecraft is her life more than her works. Rarely does one find a critical book or article that focuses only on her work; most critics do not separate her ideas from her life.
Unfortunately, because of Memoirs, Wollstonecraft became “an object lesson on the dangers of feminist ideas and ideals—as if a woman could not live in the world, she advocated but had no problems in the one she opposed” (Davidson 1986, 132). Reviews, poems, essays, and sermons were written to denounce her, similar to the view published in The European Magazine and London Review:
Such was the catastrophe of a female philosopher of the new order; such the events of her life; and such the apology for her conduct. It will be read with disgust by every female who has pretensions to delicacy; with detestation by everyone attached to the interests of religion and morality; and with indignation by anyone who might feel any regard for the unhappy woman, whole frailties should have been buried with oblivion.
(1798, 251)A Presbyterian theologian at Princeton Theological Seminary conceded that Rights of Woman was ingenious, but her “licentious practice renders her memory odious to every friend of virtue” (Miller 1803, 284).
Chapter 7 - Postmortem Rendering of Wollstonecraft’s Beliefs
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Summary
In her book Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (2010), Sarah Apetrei made an accurate and fearless criticism: “There is something slightly grating, something nigglingly unsatisfactory about the expressions used by many historians to describe the cultural interplay between women and religion” (2010, 27), and by “historians,” one may include literary critics. “But many recent scholars while recognizing the partisan agenda, are unconcerned with Wollstonecraft’s personal belief,” Lisa Plummer Crafton noted in her scholarship on the debate about the French Revolution in English literature, “American scholars, especially, and those who to Wollstonecraft via liberal feminism, place Wollstonecraft in a secular framework dominated by the language of rights” (1997, 30). As an example, she critiqued Gary Kelly’s own treatment of Wollstonecraft as a Revolutionary feminist writer (1992) in which she accuses him, with foundation, for being like “many writers on early feminists” in “explain[ing] away” religious references an assuming that “the argument is stronger without them” (30). She also noticed that especially “twentieth-century liberal feminism” has chosen to ignore Wollstonecraft’s religious beliefs. Those who have written on her treat religion as “predictable or irrational” and that it “does not ‘count’ as political” (30).
And to cite just one more of several who have observed the anti-Christian climate of the Postmodern Age:
Feminists today have decidedly mixed views about the value of religious belief. Materialists of course discount all religion as oppressive; secular humanists see it as either silly or pernicious. Even feminist theologians debate whether or not Christianity can possibly “empower” women. Some would say, since Christianity is rooted in a patriarch past, it can never she patriarchal values; others would argue that Christ’s teachings are themselves antiauthoritarian and in sense, feminist.
(Michaelson 1993, 291)It is not that the biographers and academics have failed to address Wollstonecraft’s beliefs, doubts, doctrines, and religious practices; indeed, all of them have had much to say on this topic; however, most of them summarily replicate Godwin’s comments on Wollstonecraft and her religion, without considering what Wollstonecraft conveyed about her beliefs throughout her works and letters. Many of them have been too quick to suppose that once Wollstonecraft had become truly “enlightened,” she had very little need for Christianity as if those that subscribed and subscribe to religious faith, respectively, were and are only ignorant, superstitious, and narrow-minded.
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- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Chapter VI - The Effect Which an Early Association of Ideas Has Upon the Character
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Summary
Educated in the enervating style recommended by the writers on whom I have been ani-madverting; and not having a chance, from their subordinate state in society, to recover their lost ground, is it surprising that women every where appear a defect in nature? Is it surprising, when we consider what a determinate effect an early association of ideas has on the character, that they neglect their understandings, and turn all their attention to their persons?
The great advantages which naturally result from storing the mind with knowledge, are obvious from the following considerations. The association of our ideas is either habitual or instantaneous; and the latter mode seems rather to depend on the original temperature of the mind than on the will. When the ideas, and matters of fact, are once taken in, they lie by for use, till some fortuitous circumstance makes the information dart into the mind with illustrative force, that has been received at very different periods of our lives. Like the lightning’s flash are many recollections; one idea assimilating and explaining another, with astonishing rapidity. I do not now allude to that quick perception of truth, which is so intuitive that it baffles research, and makes us at a loss to determine whether it is reminiscence or ratiocination, lost sight of in its celerity, that opens the dark cloud. Over those instantaneous associations we have little power; for when the mind is once enlarged by excursive flights, or profound reflection, the raw materials will, in some degree, arrange themselves. The understanding, it is true, may keep us from going out of drawing when we groupour thoughts, or transcribe from the imagination the warm sketches of fancy; but the animal spirits, the individual character, give the colouring. Over this subtile electric fluid, how little power do we possess, and over it how little power can reason obtain! These fine intractable spirits appear to be the essence of genius, and beaming in its eagle eye, produce in the most eminent degree the happy energy of associating thoughts that surprise, delight, and instruct. These are the glowing minds that concentrate pictures for their fellow-creatures; forcing them to view with interest the objects reflected from the impassioned imagination, which they passed over in nature.
I must be allowed to explain myself.
Chapter 2 - Ripe for Revolution and Revelation
- Brenda Ayres , Liberty University, Virginia
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Summary
“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners,” Wollstonecraft pronounced in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, “time to restore to them their lost dignity—and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world” (83; ch. 3). By “them,” of course, she meant “women.” Wollstonecraft was aware of the time in which she lived; it was a time for and of revolution. The Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776; and then, with the aid of France, America won its independence from Britain. A mere 13 years and 10 days later (July 14, 1789), revolutionary insurgents stormed the Bastille, thus proving that the populace could and would overthrow the monarchy and the ancient régime. Wollstonecraft and many of the great thinkers of her generation assumed that both revolutions held promise that countries, including Britain, could someday become utopias where all people were equal and no person would go without the necessities of life, including freedom and the opportunity to pursue happiness, a basic right endowed by the Creator, or so said Thomas Jefferson.
It is in that aurora that Wollstonecraft optimistically believed that surely the Estates General was composed of the most “enlarged minds” (ROW vi; Dedication) of the world and would grant equal education, vocation, and legal rights to women in the new republic. She must have assumed that Britain, in its own disquiet about possible insurrection by oppressed groups, would follow suit. Ever since the French invaded England in 1066 and then established common law and its ideas of coverture, married women—and then by extension, all women—were declared legally as nonentities. By British law, women were understood to be subsumed by the men in their lives and “covered” by them, ostensibly to protect them and also to relegate them to a state of male possession. Supposedly the idea of coverture derives from 1 Cor. 11, where Paul says, “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” Then the letter warns that if men pray and prophecy with their head covered, they shame their heads, meaning that they shame the Head, namely Christ. As for women, if they pray and prophecy without a head covering, they dishonor their head.
3 - Mimicry and Experiments of the 1960s
- Nivedita Misra
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- Book:
- V. S. Naipaul of Trinidad
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 27 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 09 January 2024, pp 65-82
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Summary
V. S. Naipaul’s travels to Trinidad and India led him to create a narrative ‘I’ for his race-class-ethnic-gender-time specific experience of travel writing. Due to his travel writing experiments, Naipaul got interested in the point of view technique and the resultant fiction of the 1960s produced a narrative emphasis on the protagonists’ limitations in knowing the world. Naipaul had protected his writer self from public scrutiny through the use of boyish narrators (adults writing from the point of view of their younger selves) in his social comedies of the 1950s. His travel writing of the early 1960s created a narrator who voiced his insecurities and anxieties with reference to an issue or geographical area but also hid his constant need for social and financial support. Naipaul the narrator could be under the critical eye while Naipaul the person retreated from the public space. Naipaul’s writings of the 1960s, more generally, are dominated by a schizoid personality as he watches himself construct various narrators who are sometimes only observers, sometimes participants and most times participants and observers to their own drama of life.
Though it is often thought that Naipaul did not write about Trinidad after the first four books, Naipaul, in fact, began to write about Trinidad from his own experiences in the 1960s and the 1970s. The differences are manifold: while the fiction of his 1950s books was based upon his father’s transference of material and techniques, he now came to write directly from his own experience. This is not to say that the material used by him for his 1950s writings were not his experience, but to emphasise that those experiences were his while ensconced in his father’s care. A second difference is that just as he produced a difference between his narrator and writer personae, he now created the landscape of a fictional Caribbean island, that was like Trinidad yet not exactly so, whether it was as an unnamed island in the short story ‘The Nightwatchman’s Occurrence Book,’ the island in the novella ‘A Flag on the Island’ or the island of Isabella in The Mimic Men. This marks a growth in Naipaul’s oeuvre as he felt distanced enough from his raw experiences to write about Trinidad as a fictional landscape (Poynting 1985, p. 775). He was no longer transforming reality into art but artfully crafting a distance between his experience and his writing.
Dedication
- Nivedita Misra
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- Book:
- V. S. Naipaul of Trinidad
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 27 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 09 January 2024, pp iii-iv
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