A Vindication Rights Of Woman Analysis

Two different literary works that explore the expectations and definitions of womanhood are Female Orations by Margaret Cavendish and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. Seventeenth century writer, Cavendish, asserts that men of her time envisaged the perfect spouse or lover to possess youthful, enticing and “lovely features” accompanied by a “graceful demeanor” (Cavendish 164). Idyllically women should strive continuously to “be acceptable and pleasing to God and men” meaning that they must “be modest, chaste, temperate, humble, patient, and pious; also, be housewifely, cleanly, and of few words” (Cavendish 163). Despite all these delightful attributes that men demanded, Cavendish made it clear that “women are witless and strengthless, and unprofitable creatures, did …show more content…
Her book, which was published 130 years after Cavendish’s book, blamed society for the expectation put upon women to fulfill their gender role. She claimed that “women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers…[to instill] weakness…softness of temper, outward obedience, and [maintain] a scrupulous attention to…propriety” (Wollstonecraft 377). Men did not require nor wish their wives to be academically educated rather than merely be schooled in the art of pleasing (Wollstonecraft 381).
Wollstonecraft fervently disputed this long-accepted ideal. She emphasized the relevance of women choosing the “noble pursuit” of education so they would not be “entirely dependent on their senses for employment and amusement” but could engage in respectable pursuits and worthy relationships (Wollstonecraft 382). Being a woman that is on a noble pursuit of a college education, many of Wollstonecraft’s opinions resonate with me. I could not imagine an acceptable partner wishing me to fill an uneducated, passive and dependent role. Nor could I imagine being denied the right to a formal