Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
Encyclopedia
Kingdom of Great Britain
The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...
feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
. Published in 1787
1787 in literature
-New books:*Elizabeth Bonhôte - Olivia, or, The Deserted Bride*Johann Jakob Wilhelm Heinse - Ardinghello and die glückseligen Inseln*Elizabeth Helme - Louisa; or the Cottage on the Moor*Bernardin de Saint-Pierre - Paul et Virginie...
by her friend Joseph Johnson
Joseph Johnson (publisher)
Joseph Johnson was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...
, Thoughts is a conduct book
Conduct book
Conduct books are a genre of books that attempt to educate the reader on social norms. As a genre, they began in the mid-to-late Middle Ages, although antecedents such as The Maxims of Ptahhotep are among the earliest surviving works...
that offers advice on female education
Female education
Female education is a catch-all term for a complex of issues and debates surrounding education for females. It includes areas of gender equality and access to education, and its connection to the alleviation of poverty...
to the emerging British middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
. Although dominated by considerations of morality and etiquette, the text also contains basic child-rearing instructions, such as how to care for an infant.
An early version of the modern self-help book
Self-help book
Self-help books are books written with the stated intention to instruct any readers on a number of personal problems. They take their name from Self-Help, the Victorian best-seller, but are also known and classified under "self-improvement", a term that is a modernized version of self-help...
, the 18th-century British conduct book drew on many literary traditions, such as advice manuals and religious narratives. There was an explosion in the number of conduct books published during the second half of the 18th century, and Wollstonecraft took advantage of this burgeoning market when she published Thoughts. However, the book was only moderately successful: it was favourably reviewed, but only by one journal and it was reprinted only once. Although it was excerpted in popular contemporary magazines, it was not republished until the rise of feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...
in the 1970s.
Like other conduct books of the time, Thoughts adapts older genres to the new middle-class ethos. The book encourages mothers to teach their daughters analytical thinking, self-discipline, honesty, contentment in their social position, and marketable skills (in case they should ever need to support themselves). These goals reveal Wollstonecraft's intellectual debt to John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
; however, the prominence she affords religious faith and innate feeling distinguishes her work from his. Her aim is to educate women to be useful wives and mothers, because, she argues, it is through these roles that they can most effectively contribute to society. The predominantly domestic role Wollstonecraft outlines for women—a role that she viewed as meaningful—was interpreted by 20th-century feminist literary critics as paradoxically confining them to the private sphere.
Although much of Thoughts is devoted to platitudes and advice common to all conduct books for women, a few passages anticipate Wollstonecraft's feminist arguments in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
(1792), such as her poignant description of the suffering single woman. However, several critics suggested that such passages only seem to have radical undertones in light of Wollstonecraft's later works.
Biographical background
Like many impoverished women during the last quarter of the 18th century in Britain, Wollstonecraft attempted to support herself by establishing a school. She, her sister, and a close friend founded a boarding schoolBoarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
in Newington Green
Newington Green
Newington Green is an open space in north London which straddles the border between Islington and Hackney. It gives its name to the surrounding area, roughly bounded by Ball's Pond Road to the south, Petherton Road to the west, the southern section of Stoke Newington with Green Lanes-Matthias Road...
, a village already known for its Dissenting academies
Dissenting academies
The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and nonconformist seminaries run by dissenters. They formed a significant part of England’s educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries....
, including that of political theorist and educational reformer James Burgh
James Burgh
James Burgh was a British Whig politician whose book Political Disquisitions set out an early case for free speech and universal suffrage: In it, he writes, "All lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people." He has been judged "one of England's foremost propagandists...
, whose widow acted as "fairy godmother
Fairy godmother
In fairy tales, a fairy godmother is a fairy with magical powers who acts as a mentor or parent to someone, in the role that an actual godparent was expected to play in many societies...
" in helping Wollstonecraft to find a house and pupils. However, in the late 1780s the school closed because of financial difficulties, and, desperate to escape from debt, Wollstonecraft wrote her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. The title alludes to Burgh's Thoughts on Education (1747), which in turn alludes to John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
's 1693 work, Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Some Thoughts Concerning Education is a 1693 treatise on the education of gentlemen written by the English philosopher John Locke. For over a century, it was the most important philosophical work on education in England...
. She sold the copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
for only ten guineas to Joseph Johnson
Joseph Johnson (publisher)
Joseph Johnson was an influential 18th-century London bookseller and publisher. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...
, a publisher recommended to her by a friend; they became friends and he encouraged her writing throughout her life.
Governess
A governess is a girl or woman employed to teach and train children in a private household. In contrast to a nanny or a babysitter, she concentrates on teaching children, not on meeting their physical needs...
, but she chafed at her lowly position and refused to accommodate herself to her employers. The modest success of Thoughts and Johnson's encouragement emboldened Wollstonecraft to embark on a career as a professional writer, a precarious and somewhat disreputable profession for women during the 18th century. She wrote to her sister that she was going to become the “first of a new genus” and published Mary: A Fiction
Mary: A Fiction
Mary: A Fiction is the only complete novel by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. It tells the tragic story of a heroine's successive "romantic friendships" with a woman and a man...
, an autobiographical novel, in 1788.
Overview
Addressed to mothers, young women, and teachers, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters explains how to educate a woman from infancy through marriage. Its twenty-one chapters are not arranged in any particular order and cover a wide variety of topics. The first two chapters, "The Nursery" and "Moral Discipline", offer advice on shaping the child's "constitution" and "temperament", arguing that the formation of the rational mind must begin early. These chapters also offer specific recommendations regarding the care of infants and endorse breastfeedingHistory of breastfeeding
Breastfeeding is the feeding of breastmilk to a child directly from mouth to breast contact.Various substitutes for breast milk have been introduced around the world, most notably infant formula.-Early history:...
(a hotly debated topic in the 18th century). Much of the book criticizes what Wollstonecraft considers the damaging education usually offered to women: "artificial manners", card-playing, theatre-going, and an emphasis on fashion. She complains, for example, that women "squander" their money on clothing, “which if saved for charitable purposes, might alleviate the distress of many poor families, and soften the heart of the girl who entered into such scenes of woe". She contrasts this common but ineffectual education with one based on early childhood reading, benevolence, and love. Wollstonecraft also delves into a description of social issues, addressing the "Unfortunate Situation of Females, Fashionably Educated, and Left without a Fortune" in addition to the "Treatment of Servants". Religious faith plays a prominent role in Wollstonecraft's educational plan; she advocates Sabbath observance and describes the "Benefits which arise from Disappointments", that is, the benefits which arise from suffering sent by God.
In her later works, such as A Vindication of the Rights of Men
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France is a political pamphlet, written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism...
(1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
(1792), Wollstonecraft repeatedly returns to the topics addressed in Thoughts, particularly the virtue of hard work and the imperative for women to learn useful skills. Wollstonecraft suggests that the social and political life of the nation would greatly improve if women were to acquire valuable skills instead of being mere social ornaments.
Genre: the conduct book
Between 1760 and 1820, conduct bookConduct book
Conduct books are a genre of books that attempt to educate the reader on social norms. As a genre, they began in the mid-to-late Middle Ages, although antecedents such as The Maxims of Ptahhotep are among the earliest surviving works...
s reached the height of their popularity in Britain; one scholar refers to the period as "the age of courtesy books for women". As Nancy Armstrong
Nancy Armstrong
Nancy Armstrong is a scholar, critic and is a professor of English at Duke University.-Overview:Before moving to Duke, Armstrong was the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Comparative Literature, English, Modern Culture & Media, and Gender Studies at Brown University...
writes in her seminal work on this genre, Desire and Domestic Fiction (1987): "so popular did these books become that by the second half of the eighteenth century virtually everyone knew the ideal of womanhood they proposed".
Blue Stockings Society (England)
The Blue Stockings Society was an informal women's social and educational movement in England in the mid-18th century. The society emphasized education and mutual co-operation rather than the individualism which marked the French version....
Hester Chapone's
Hester Chapone
Hester Chapone , writer of conduct books for women, was born on 27 October 1727 at Twywell, Northamptonshire,The daughter of Thomas Mulso , a gentleman farmer, and his wife , a daughter of Colonel Thomas, Hester wrote a romance at the age of nine, 'The Loves of Amoret and Melissa', which earned...
Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773), which went through at least sixteen editions in the last quarter of the 18th century, and the classically-educated historian Catharine Macaulay's Letters on Education (1790). Chapone's work, in particular, appealed to Wollstonecraft at this time and influenced her composition of Thoughts because it argued "for a sustained programme of study for women" and was based on the idea that Christianity should be "the chief instructor of our rational faculties". Moreover, it emphasized that women should be considered rational beings and not left to wallow in sensualism. When Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
in 1792, she drew on both Chapone and Macaulay's works.
Conduct books have traditionally been viewed by scholars as an integral factor in the creation of a bourgeois
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
sense of self. The conduct book “helped to generate the belief that there was such a thing as a 'middle class' and that the modest, submissive but morally and domestically competent woman it described was the first 'modern individual'”. By developing a specifically bourgeois ethos through genres such as the conduct book, the emerging middle class challenged the primacy of the aristocratic code of manners. However, conduct books simultaneously constricted women's roles, propagating what has been called "the angel in the house" image (alluding to Coventry Patmore's
Coventry Patmore
Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore was an English poet and critic best known for The Angel in the House, his narrative poem about an ideal happy marriage.-Youth:...
poem of that name
The Angel in the House
The Angel in the House is a narrative poem by Coventry Patmore, first published in 1854 and expanded up until 1862. Although largely ignored upon publication, it became enormously popular during the later nineteenth century and its influence continued well into the twentieth...
). Women were encouraged to be chaste, pious, submissive, modest, selfless, graceful, pure, delicate, compliant, reticent, and polite.
More recently, a few scholars have argued that conduct books should be differentiated more carefully and that some of them—such as Wollstonecraft's Thoughts—transformed traditional female advice manuals into "proto-feminist tracts". These scholars view Thoughts as part of a tradition that adapted older genres to a new message of female empowerment, genres such as advice manuals for women's education, moral satires, and moral and spiritual works by religious Dissenters
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
(those not associated with the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
). Wollstonecraft's text resembles conventional conduct books in promoting self-control and submission, traits that were supposed to attract a husband. Yet at the same time, the text challenges this portrait of the “proper lady” by introducing strains of religious Dissent that promote equality of the soul. Thus, Thoughts appears to be torn between several sets of binaries, such as compliance and rebellion; spiritual meekness and rational independence; and domestic duty and political participation. This view of the conduct book, and of Thoughts in particular, questions the earlier interpretation of the genre as a mere tool of ideological indoctrination, an interpretation that grew out of criticism influenced by theorists such as Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
.
Pedagogical theory
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
e (novels of education); she translated educational works such as Christian Gotthilf Salzmann's
Christian Gotthilf Salzmann
Christian Gotthilf Salzmann was the founder of the Schnepfenthal institution, a school dedicated to new modes of education...
Elements of Morality; she wrote a children's book, Original Stories from Real Life
Original Stories from Real Life
Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness is the only complete work of children's literature by 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Original Stories begins with a frame story, which sketches out...
(1788); and her Vindication of the Rights of Woman is largely an argument for the value of female education. As is evidenced by this broad range of genres, “education” for Wollstonecraft and her contemporaries included much more than scholastic training; it encompassed everything that went into forming a person's character, from infant swaddling
Swaddling
Swaddling is an age-old practice of wrapping infants in swaddling cloths, blankets or similar cloth so that movement of the limbs is tightly restricted. Swaddling bands were often used to further restrict the infant...
to childhood curricular choices to adolescent leisure activities.
Wollstonecraft and other political radicals during the last quarter of the 18th century focused their reform efforts on education because they believed that if people were educated correctly, Britain would experience a moral and political revolution. Religious Dissenters
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
, especially, embraced this view; Wollstonecraft's philosophy in Thoughts and elsewhere closely resembles that of the Dissenters she met while teaching in Newington Green, such as the theologian, educator, and scientist Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...
and the minister Richard Price
Richard Price
Richard Price was a British moral philosopher and preacher in the tradition of English Dissenters, and a political pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the American Revolution. He fostered connections between a large number of people, including writers of the...
. Dissenters “were most concerned with molding children into people of good moral character and habits”. However, political conservatives, who also believed that childhood was the crucial time for the formation of a person's character, used their own educational works to deflect rebellion by promoting theories of compliance. Liberals and conservatives alike subscribed to Lockean
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
and Hartleian
David Hartley (philosopher)
David Hartley was an English philosopher and founder of the Associationist school of psychology. -Early life and education:...
associationist psychology
Association of Ideas
Association of Ideas, or Mental association, is a term used principally in the history of philosophy and of psychology to refer to explanations about the conditions under which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers...
: that is, they believed that a person's sense of self was built up through a set of associations made between things in the external world and ideas in the mind. Both Locke and Hartley had argued that the associations formed in childhood were nearly irreversible and must thus be formed with care. Locke famously advised parents to keep their children away from servants, as they would only tell children frightening stories that would foster a fear of the dark.
Wollstonecraft was significantly influenced by Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Some Thoughts Concerning Education is a 1693 treatise on the education of gentlemen written by the English philosopher John Locke. For over a century, it was the most important philosophical work on education in England...
(1693) (her title alludes to it) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
Emile
Emile: Or, On Education
Émile, or On Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. Due to a section of the book entitled “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” Émile was be...
(1762), the two most important pedagogical treatises of the 18th century. Thoughts follows in the Lockean tradition with its emphasis on a parent-directed domestic education, a distrust of servants, a banning of superstitious and irrational stories (e.g. fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
s), and an advocacy of clear rules. Wollstonecraft breaks from Locke, however, in her emphasis on piety and her insistence that the child has “innate” feelings that guide her towards virtue, ideas likely drawn from Rousseau.
Themes
Thoughts advocates several educational goals for women: independent thought, rationality, self-discipline, truthfulness, acceptance of one's social position, marketable skills, and faith in God.Education of women
Wollstonecraft assumes that the “daughters” in her book will one day become mothers and teachers. She does not propose that women abandon these traditional roles, because she believes that women can most effectively improve society as pedagogues. Wollstonecraft and other writers as diverse as the evangelicalEvangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
moralist Hannah More
Hannah More
Hannah More was an English religious writer, and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical...
, the historian Catherine Macaulay
Catherine Macaulay
Catharine Macaulay was an English historian.-Early life: 1731 – 1763:...
, and the feminist novelist Mary Hays
Mary Hays
Mary Hays was an English novelist and feminist.- Early years :Mary Hays was born in Southwark, London on Oct. 13, 1759. Almost nothing is known of her first 17 years. In 1779 she fell in love with John Eccles who lived on Gainsford Street, where she also lived. Their parents opposed the match but...
, argue that since women are the primary caregivers of the family and educators of children, they should be given a sound education. Thoughts is insistent, following Locke and associationist psychology, that a poor education and an early marriage will ruin a woman. Wollstonecraft argues that if no attention is paid to girls as they are growing, they will turn out poorly and marry while still intellectual and emotional children. Such wives, she contends, perform no useful role in society and, indeed, contribute to its immorality. She expanded upon this argument five years later in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
.
Wollstonecraft's feminist critics charged that the masculine role for women that she envisioned — one designed for the public sphere but which women could not perform in the public sphere — left women without a specific social position. They saw it as ultimately confining and limiting—as offering women more in the way of education without a real way to use it.
Wollstonecraft's most passionate writing in Thoughts focuses on the lack of career opportunities for women, a theme that would dominate her later novel Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman is the 18th century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman...
(1798). In the chapter entitled "Unfortunate Situation of Females, Fashionably Educated, and Left without a Fortune" she writes, perhaps describing her own experiences:
[T]o be an humble companion to some rich old cousin … It is impossible to enumerate the many hours of anguish such a person must spend. Above the servants, yet considered by them as a spy, and ever reminded of her inferiority when in conversation with the superiors. … A teacher at a school is only a kind of upper servant, who has more work than the menial ones. A governess to young ladies is equally disagreeable. … life glides away, and the spirits with it; 'and when youth and genial years are flown,' they have nothing to subsist on; or, perhaps, on some extraordinary occasion, some small allowance may be made for them, which is thought a great charity. … It is hard for a person who has a relish for polished society, to herd with the vulgar, or to condescend to mix with her formal equals when she is considered in a different light. … How cutting is the contempt she meets with!—A young mind looks round for love and friendship; but love and friendship fly from poverty: expect them not if you are poor!
Religion
Although Wollstonecraft's comments on female education hint at some of her more radical arguments in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the religious tone of the text—also found in her first novel, Mary: A FictionMary: A Fiction
Mary: A Fiction is the only complete novel by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. It tells the tragic story of a heroine's successive "romantic friendships" with a woman and a man...
—is generally viewed by scholars as conservative. The religion presented in Thoughts is one that celebrates the “pleasures of resignation”, the belief that the afterlife is awaiting and that the world is ordered by God for the best. Wollstonecraft writes:
He who is training us up for immortal bliss, knows best what trials will contribute to make us [virtuous]; and our resignation and improvement will render us respectable to ourselves, and to that Being, whose approbation is of more value than life itself.
Although she drifted away from these beliefs and later adopted a more permissive theology, Thoughts is “steeped in orthodox attitudes, advocating 'fixed principles of religion' and warning of the dangers of rationalist speculation and deism". Wollstonecraft even agrees with Rousseau that women should be taught religious dogma rather than theology; clear rules, she maintains, will restrain their passions.
Reception
These thoughts are employed on various important situations and incidents in the ordinary life of females, and are, in general, dictated with great judgment. Mrs. Wollstonecraft appears to have reflected maturely on her subject; … while her manner gives authority, her good sense adds irresistible weight to almost all her precepts and remarks. We should therefore recommend these Thoughts as worthy the attention of those who are more immediately concerned in the education of young ladies.
However, no other journal reviewed the book and Thoughts was not reprinted until the late 20th century, when there was a resurgence of interest in Wollstonecraft among feminist literary critics
Feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...
.
Alan Richardson, a scholar of 18th-century education, points out that if Wollstonecraft had not written A Vindication of the Rights of Men
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France is a political pamphlet, written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism...
(1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
, it is unlikely that Thoughts would have been considered progressive or even worthy of notice. One critic has even said that the text reads as if it were simply trying to please the public. Although some scholars have argued that there are glimmers of Wollstonecraft's radicalism in this text, they admit that the “potential for critique remains largely latent”. Thoughts is therefore usually interpreted either teleologically
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
, as a first step towards the more radical Rights of Woman, or dismissed as a “politically naïve potboiler” written prior to Wollstonecraft's conversion to radicalism while she was writing the Rights of Men.
Modern reprints
- Wollstonecraft, MaryMary WollstonecraftMary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. Clifton, NJ: A. M. Kelley, 1972. ISBN 0-678-0090-15. - Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1994. ISBN 1-85477-195-7.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. London: Printed by J. Johnson, 1787. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (by subscription only). Retrieved on 18 July 2007.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet ToddJanet ToddJanet Margaret Todd is a Welsh-born academic and a well-respected author of many books on women in literature. Todd was educated at Cambridge University and the University of Florida, where she undertook a doctorate on the poet John Clare...
and Marilyn ButlerMarilyn ButlerMarilyn Butler is a British literary critic. She was Rector of Exeter College, Oxford from 1993 to 2004, and was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge, from 1986 to 1993...
. 7 vols. London: William Pickering, 1989. ISBN 0-8147-9225-1.
External links
- Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) at Google Books