AUTHOR: Mary Wollenstonecraft
PUBLISHED: 1790
CATEGORY: Non-Fiction, Classics
GENRE: Essays
PREMISE: Mary Wollenstonecraft writes a series of essays calling for education of women.
MY REVIEW: For those that do not know: Mary Wollenstonecraft was the mother of Mary Shelley (who got the name Shelley when she married). She was a writer, philosopher, and many other things. Some consider her one of the very early feminists in history.
So this is basically Wollenstonecraft saying "hey, women aren't as fragile as you make us out to be. Educate us and stop treating us like infants and we'll probably accomplish just as much as men do." To me, this seems pretty obvious and I think history has basically proven her correct. What really gets me is honestly...she wasn't even calling for anything huge. She wasn't saying women should run for office or defy gender roles or anything. She literally was just saying, hey we're people too. We deserve to get an education too. I doubt she was including PoC women in this, because racism in that time was normal. But still...it didn't seem all that radical to me. Yet...simply asking for education was enough for people to lose their shit. I can't help but think of all the trolls/MRAs who whine about little things like Star Wars having female main characters. The more things change, the more they stay the damn same.
Enjoyment of this work is...probably going to depend on how much you love your scholarly discourse. It's old-fashioned language so deciphering it sometimes takes a bit. So reading it can be sometimes tedious (I started this back during Christmas and just finished it last week to give you an idea of how long it can take). I highly recommend this for those looking into early feminist ideas.
WHO SHOULD READ: Feminists, those interested in scholarly discourse
No comments:
Post a Comment