Friday, August 26, 2011

The Extremely Long, Confusing Reading by Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft states her opinion in a very peculiar way. I have never read anything like it, maybe because if this weren't assigned I would have never picked it up, or even made it past the first sentence. I hardly understood anything she was talking about. Everything she wrote consisted of words that were far beyond my vocabulary and that created for my understanding to be slim to none, not to mention the style of her writing, it was absurd. I felt that she was just rambling on in a seventeenth century tone, and obviously I couldn't quite figure that out either. Though what I did get out of it was a lot of inequality and the superiority of men over women.

While reading, I became quite intrigued about how Wollstonecraft mentioned her views on how women were set about this earth to "please" men. I'm not exactly positive if that was what she was getting to, but from an early quote in the reading, she wrote "Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needles, for, at least, twenty years of their lives." What I got out of this is that if women are beautiful and just act the way they have been taught, then they will "earn" the man's protection. To me, I find that ridiculous. I feel that men and women should work together, even if she doesn't act perfectly. Most importantly, a woman should not have to gain a man's protection or knowledge, she should just have it from the start and they should work together. I guess from my perspective, especially being a female, that's the way I'm going to feel.

Wollstonecraft made it a point to acknowledge her views on the inequality of education. In her article she wrote that "man may only have to proceed, not to begin, the important task of learning to think and reason." Where is the idea that women should recieve a good education too? According to her, women only recieve a "disorderly kind of education." They felt that men needed the education and from that, they decided to educate men from infancy. I'm not exactly sure if that's even right, because like I mentioned before I was completely lost in this reading and had no idea what was being said.

From my understanding, Wollstonecraft had numerous points she was stating, maybe could have been stated in less words, but unfortunately she felt what she had wrote was much needed. I thought it was quite repetitive and wordy. Sometimes it's wise to use large words to make your writing seem more sophisticated, but in her case, I personally believe she went over the top. I know that this is probably one of the worst blogs i've written, but it was too much for me. I thought she made some really good points, and obviously had a strong opinion. I'm sure people back in the day, especially women, got a lot out of this article and maybe even used her for inspiration. She seemed to tell people the straight up truth. I'm sure if I were around back then I would have looked up to her for taking this step and speaking her mind. If Mary were still around today, she would be much happier, but i'm sure she would still have some personal opinions she could shout out to the people.

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