Mill, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft
...only capable of serving the male citizens, “being the greatest charm of society”, and not needing any masculine qualities like education or physical strength (Rousseau, 262). Women are ill taught by men to believe these social stigmas assigned to them, which are obedience, chastity to the family, and subservience to men, their family, and society. This view of motherhood is thought to benefit the men, where as women will be their pleasing servants as wives, their children’s tutor after motherhood, and their chaste civil companion. But to this view, which Rousseau wrote a chauvinistic book about, Wollstonecraft wrote an objective book against. Wollstonecraft argues that women are not naturally weak nor are they confined to their natural role of being a mother, women are just as capable of being mothers as citizens, but they need an education. While Rousseau views the social function of motherhood to be the only duty women are capable of doing to contribute to society, a role which requires little education because he believes it to be inherent, Wollstonecraft endeavors to prove that women are equally competent citizens as men and mothers have the same natural rights to education and citizenship as men.
This male dominated society restrains women from reaching her rational, intellectual, and human rights. By denying women the freedom to “exercise their bodies and minds”, men are not allowing women to “acquire that mental activity so necessary in the maternal character” (Wollstonecraft 221). Olympe de Gouges also wrote a book on men’s need for a social contract of fidelity between man and women. Men see women as able to corrupt society with illegitimate children but de Gouges stresses the importance of compassionate human rights and a mother’s natural rights to her child and his natural father regardless of the marriage contract between the man and the women. De...
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