ABSTRACT
It is virtually impossible to consider any of Mary Wollstonecraft’s works, fiction or nonfiction, without reflecting on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Scholars of British Literature, writing on Wollstonecraft’s novels, are typically concerned with the extent to which her works can be identified with Romanticism and, in this respect, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Though A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is dedicated to a French diplomat, it is immediately clear that Wollstonecraft’s fire is aimed at Rousseau. Throughout the Vindication, Wollstonecraft takes every opportunity to condemn the notion of woman as it is represented by his character, Sophie, in Emile. Wollstonecraft’s spirited attack on Rousseau in her political treatise may suggest that Rousseau’s influence extends only to her novels. On the contrary, I shall argue that Wollstonecraft learns important political lessons from Rousseau. In particular, Rousseau teaches Wollstonecraft that all individuals are not only human beings, but also either male or female. The second half of their being, their sex, is that which attaches one human being to another and adds a complexity to the individual’s natural independence or wholeness. Furthermore, Rousseau teaches Wollstonecraft the importance of natural differences between the sexes and the corrosive effect that the unnatural, corrupted male or female sex can have on the political community. Wollstonecraft, like Rousseau before her, appreciates that a woman’s roles of wife and mother, contribute to a healthy individual, family, and community. After considering the valuable lessons that Wollstonecraft gains from Rousseau, I will turn my attention to Wollstonecraft’s rejection of Rousseau’s political philosophy as the basis for her own. It would be wrong to think this rejection is simply the result of her disagreement about the character of Sophie, or with Rousseau’s understanding of women more generally. Wollstonecraft’s criticism of Sophie reveals her departure from the fundamental tenets of natural rights theory. Wollstonecraft rejects the notion that women, or human beings more
generally, are motivated by self-preservation and that human communities are formed out of a desire to protect oneself from the aggression of others. In contrast to natural rights theorists, Wollstonecraft believes human beings are motivated by their desire for virtue and that human beings live in civil society in order to foster virtue. While Sophie is the occasion for her engagement with Rousseau, Wollstonecraft’s departure from Rousseau is due to a fundamental disagreement on the nature of human beings and the character of their political relationships.
