JANE AUSTEN & MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT | Sense and Sensibility & A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

hello and welcome to close reading classic literature with me dr octavia cox today i'm going to be analyzing proto-feminist writer mary wollstonecraft and her seminal text a vindication of the rights of woman first published in 1792 and i'm going to compare a passage of wollstonecrafts to the opening of jane austen's wonderful novel sense and sensibility particularly the treatment of john and fanny dashwood towards his sisters both mary wilson craft and jane austen were concerned with the contemporary state of social injustice as a result of primer geniture which is where the eldest male son inherits and at the same time they were both concerned with the miseducation of women and how these both led to the moral degradation and degeneration of society for both women and for men too to start with education both mary wollstonecraft and jane austen refer to education as something more than just schooling as just one's kind of formal education but that the moral and kind of social education of children as well so for example just so that we understand what we mean when the term education is being used we might take the narrative voices description of julia bertram's education in jane austen's novel mansfield park and the narrative voice describes julia bertram as spiritually miserable because of the failure of her moral and you might say interpersonal education social education kind of just social education so the text in mansfield park reads the want of that higher species of self-command that just consideration of others that knowledge of her own heart that principle of right which had not formed any essential part of her education made her miserable so we have this idea of a failure of a whole kind of um holistic i suppose we might now say education which is to do with self-command to do with a just consideration of others a knowledge of your own heart so a kind of self-understanding of what you truly want and a true understanding of yourself and that principle of right which had not formed any essential part of her education the implication of course being that it should have done and i want you to bear julia bertram's education or miss education in mind as i move on to talk about a vindication of the rights of woman so wilson croft's text and jane austen's sense and sensibility now we know that jane austen at the very least was exposed to mary wollstonecraft's ideas in a vindication of the rights of women because austin possessed a full set of robert baige's 1796 novel called herm sprong which you probably haven't heard of but the full title is herm sprung or man as he is not austin's copy of herm sprong is now held in the huntington library and she was clearly pleased with her novel because she signed her name in all four volumes so clearly she was pleased to take ownership of the novel so the novel herm sprung stages a conversation this is in chapter 19 that explicitly explores wollstonecraft's treaties of indication of the rights of women in which the novel's hero supports wollstonecraft's position hermsbrung the hero says in the scene women have too little liberty of mind they have minds imprisoned which instead of ranging the worlds of physics and metaphysics are confined to the ideas of these routes and ranley's with their adjuncts of cards dress and scan meaning scandal i beg pardon i mean criticism so routes here mean emesis definition the oxford english dictionary a disreputable group of people a disorderly disorganized or unruly group of people a boisterous throng and ranley's refers to a ranley gardens which were pleasure gardens similar to vauxhall gardens which you might have heard of that held evening balls and masquerades and gathered in the late 18th early 19th century shall we say a reputation for looseness when some of the company object to herm sprong's characterization of many modern women he retorts facetiously be not angry with me be angry at mrs woolston craft who has lately abused the dear sex through through two octavo volumes who affirms that the mode of their education turns the energies of their minds on trifles whilst they women think of their charming figures as much as you suppose them to do so they think of their charming figures rather than their minds mrs wollstonecraft must write in vain and hermsprung laments that mrs woltencraft is writing in vain and that you know too many women are not kind of unimprisoning their minds and this is a bit of an aside but i think there are comparisons to be made between this scene in hermsbrung and jane austen's writing elsewhere so mr darcy in pride and prejudice for example is not dissimilar to hermsprung in arguing that in order for a woman to be really accomplished she ought to turn away from occupying herself with trifles and focus instead on the improvement of her mind by extensive reading so we can see that both these heroes focus on the importance of the cultivation of the mind and it's being useful beneficial worthwhile valuable for everybody for for men and women sort of equally so getting back to mary wollstonecraft we know that austin was exposed to wilson craft's writing then and ideas at least through robert baige's novel hermsprong and indeed claire tomlin in her wonderful biography of austin jane austen alive argues that there were biographical connections too so so william east was a kind friend to wollstonecraft after her second suicide attempt in 1796 and his son was a pupil of george austin's and he was also friends with the lead parrots and they were jane austen's uncle and aunt-in-law but in addition to this and these biographical connections i think it is clear through jane austen's writing itself that she engaged with wollstonecraft's ideas the extract that i'm going to focus on today is of mary wollstonecraft's vindication of the rights of woman from chapter four titled observations on the state of degradation to which woman is reduced by various causes now there are clear differences between the picture painted by wollstonecraft and the episode brilliantly fleshed out by austin in sense and sensibility but what i want to focus on are the similarities and we note that sense and sensibility was first uh although it was eventually published in 1811 it was austin's first novel published but it was first drafted in the mid 1790s when wollstonecraft's writing was at the peak of its popularity and although to some extent modern scholarship for a while assumed that mary wollstonecraft's vindication of the rights of a woman was thoroughly looked down on in its own time actually it was reviewed fairly well in uh in 1792 and for a number of years after the lists in circulating libraries for example suggest that there were many copies that were borrowed so it was in circulation um and seems by many people to have been looked at um open-mindedly um i don't really have time to go into it today but that changed after wollstonecraft's death and the publication of her memoirs which revealed some details about walter croft's own life that worried the public for example that she had tried to commit suicide um twice that she had um a daughter fanny imlay out of a marriage and so on and these sort of private details of her life scandalized the public to such an extent that her writings you know through the usual kind of way of condemning somebody's writing by um ad hominem attacks on the individual who wrote them so her views became uh more difficult to articulate publicly after the publication of her memoirs and by her husband william godwin and but all that's a bit of an aside when austin was first drafting sense and sensibility in the 1790s a vindication of the rights of women um did uh have kind of cultural um presence that was not entirely frowned upon i'll read it through first and then unpick it girls who have been weakly educated are often cruelly left by their parents without any provision and of course are dependent on not only the reason but the bounty of their brothers these brothers are to view the fairest side of the question good sort of men and give as a favor what children of the same parents had an equal right to in this equivocal humiliating situation a docile female may remain sometime with a tolerable degree of comfort but when the brother marries a probable circumstance from being considered as the mistress of the family she is viewed with averted looks as an intruder an unnecessary burden on the benevolence of the master the house and his new partner who can recount the misery which many unfortunate beings whose minds and bodies are equally weak suffer in such situations unable to work and ashamed to beg the wife a cold-hearted narrow-minded woman and this is not an unfair supposition for the present mode of education does not tend to enlarge the heart any more than the understanding is jealous of the little kindness which her husband shows to his relations and her sensibility not rising to humanity she is displeased at seeing the property of her children lavished on a helpless sister these are matters of fact which have come under my eye again and again the consequence is obvious the wife has recourse to cunning to undermine the habitual affection which she is afraid openly to oppose and neither tears nor caresses are spared till the spy is worked out of her home and thrown on the world unprepared for its difficulties or sent as a great effort of generosity or from some regard to propriety with a small stipend and an uncultivated mind into joyless solitude i'm going to compare wollstonecraft's arguments here with jane austen's depiction of fanny dashwood in sense and sensibility and her treatment of her husband's family now as i've said there are differences but what i'm going to focus on are the similarities and i think this is gloriously epitomized in chapter two of sense and sensibility one of my very favorite chapters in all of austin where fanny dashwood successfully manages to manipulate and persuade her husband john dashwood out of fulfilling the promise he had made to his father on his father's deathbed that he would take good care of his sisters eleanor marianne and margaret dashwood so wollstonecraft had said girls are often cruelly left by their parents without any provision and of course are dependent on not only the reason but the bounty of their brothers now eleanor marianne and margaret have not been cruelly left without any provision by mr henry dashwood their father as he had inherited the nor the norland estate in such a way as to leave to himself no power of providing for his wife and daughters the narrative voice explicitly tells us and the native voice also tells us that he died only a year after inheriting the norland estate meaning that he had no time to build up any savings for them so whether cruelly or not then many daughters were left on the deaths of their fathers dependent on both the reason and bounty of their brothers as the dashwood girls are left dependent on the reason and bounty of john dashwood and this is something that jane austen knew herself very well personally on the death of her own father george austin in 1805 she her sister cassandra and their mother were reliant then on the reason and bounty of her brothers luckily for the austin women uh the austin men were much much kinder and more generous than john dashwood but the power dynamics in that situation i think we we can see the kind of precarity and the uncertainty that women many women austin women the dashwood women experienced because of this culture of primogeniture the girls the dasha girls are left dependent on the reason and bounty of their brother and their father knows this too which is why he had extracted a death bed promise from his son to provide for them indeed we are told by the narrative voice that john dashwood had promised to do everything in his power to make them comfortable so why i think this is important is because austin is establishing the idea that this is unsatisfactory for everybody it's unsatisfactory for the father as well as for the daughters and mrs dashwood his widow to rely on promises extracted from people who hold all the power and even even having extracted a deathbed promise from his son that's not enough to prevent john dashwood from later kind of going against his father's wishes and the narrative voice in chapter three explicitly tells us that mrs dashwood the widow had relied on this promise too and she had we're told that her husband had told her that john dashwood had promised to look after elena marianne and margaret um and that had comforted mrs dashwood to some extent so many people not just the daughters are um relying simply on the promises of people where there is no requirement to make sure that they uh honor their promises waltoncraft had said these brothers are to view the fairest side of the question good sort of men so you know being as kind as possible let's say that they're a good sort of man and john ashford might be described looking from the fairest side of the question as a good sort of man we're certainly told that he's seen as a good sort of man in society generally because he is polite and he behaves with apparent propriety um and the narrative voice does describe him as not an ill-disposed young man unless to be rather cold-hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed and we know brilliant the brilliant use of lytotes here he is described as not ill-disposed rather than the positive kind of affirmative statement well-disposed he's not well-disposed he's just not ill-disposed and these brothers give as a favor what children of the same parents had an equal right to wollstonecraft here is adopting a radical position in asserting that children of the same parents have an equal right to any provisions and bounty notice the gender-neutral language children wollstonecraft argues against the culture of primogeniture in which the eldest male inherits the father's property and this culture of primogeniture is seen operating very strongly and arbitrarily in the opening pages of sense and sensibility where the norland estate is secured from the old gentleman to henry dashwood to john dashwood to his son harry dashwood wollstonecraft uses the term explicitly equal right and this was highly politicized language at the end of the 18th century today we are very familiar with and indeed legally accept the concept of equal rights the phrase equal rights indeed is part of our everyday language but in the late 18th century the concept of equal rights was still being contested for example in the revolutions in america and france and incidentally mary wollstonecraft went to paris in 1792 at the the kind of pitch of the french revolution and she hoped to emigrate to america with her lover gilbert imlay who was an american so wollstonecraft was really on the on the front lines of these revolutionary ideas of uh equal rights and this is a bit of an aside but the development of the term equal rights i think is is quite interesting so america's declaration of independence written in 1776 had stated we hold these truths to be self-evident and interestingly i think they had originally written sacred and undeniable and had to cross that out for self-evident now of course you you might say well if something's self-evident you don't need to declare it but that that's part of part of the point of you know breaking away from britain and holding these truths to be self-evident that had not been kind of held to be self-evident in britain and but anyway we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights similarly the very first article the article premiere of france's declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen from 1789 translates as men are born and remain free and equal in rights thomas paine a key figure in both the american and french revolutions in 1791 published the rights of man in which he argued i see that the principle of it that is america's government which is that of the equal rights of man is making a rapid progress in the world in these three examples we can see the development of the term equal rights so in america's declaration of independence men are created equal and have unalienable rights in france's declaration of the rights of the citizen men are free and equal in rights and in pains the rights of man we actually have the phrase equal rights thomas paine and mary wollstonecraft shared a publisher the radical publisher joseph johnson and they were acquaintances through that literary circle you can see from the title pages that thomas paine's rights of man was first published by johnson although johnson refused to publish subsequent parts sensibly as it turned out and also published wollstonecraft's vindication of the rights of men from 1790 and her vindication of the rights of women from 1792 and i do think it's worth pointing out that the american declaration of independence france's declaration of the rights of man and thomas payne's rights of do all use gender-specific language and wollstonecraft felt this enough to write a separate vindication of the rights of women as distinct from vindication of the rights of men but that's a bit of a side point some people argue that at this time men simply meant human and you may well accept that argument but they would have saved everyone a lot of bother in that case if they had simply put you know all people are created equal but in a vindication of the rights of women wollstonecraft does extend many of the arguments that have been articulated by thomas payne in the rights of man the idea of the equal rights as i've said the phrase the equal rights of citizens seems uncontroversial to us now but the publication of payne's rights of man caused a sensation in britain when it was published the establishment were incredibly worried about the effect that it might have on the general population and so the government issued a charge accusing pain of seditious libel against the crown and in december 1792 thomas payne was tried and convicted in absentee so payne was actually in france at the time of the trial but he was convicted so this is hot material for wollstonecraft to be dealing with in 1792. the idea that all men had equal rights was controversial enough but to argue that women too had inherent equal rights was additionally controversial incidentally it was not until 1848 that america's first women's rights convention that there was an organized push to update the declaration of independence to include women specifically so in their declaration of sentiments they had said suggested that instead the text should read we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal in wollstonecraft's insistence then in 1792 that children of the same parents have an equal right to property inheritance she was using language that was deliberately political and provocative wollstonecraft implies that such brothers absurdly act as though any benevolence to their sisters was a great favor to them they give as a favor what children of the same parents had an equal right to women might not currently have an equal legal right to it but they have walter craft suggests a an equal moral right to property inheritance so that they would be able to look after themselves and not have to rely on the beneficence of a brother however much of a good sort he might be jane austen does not use the radical political language that wollstonecraft had but we can see this very scenario playing out in sense and sensibility in john dashwood imagining himself to be doing a great favor to his sisters in providing them with much less than their father wanted them to have and indeed much less than he had promised to do for them wollstonecraft continues in this equivocal so uncertain humiliating situation humiliating is a really strong word i think for wollstonecraft to use this humiliating situation a docile female may remain sometime with a tolerable degree of comfort and not just a docile female but those who have no other option we might think as i've said of the austin family themselves austin family women after the death of their father in 1805 but when the brother marries a probable circumstance from being considered as the mistress of the family she the sister is viewed with averted looks as an intruder an unnecessary burden on the benevolence of the master of the house and his new partner the culture of primogeniture according to wollstonecraft leads to the probable circumstance where dependent female relations are seen as intruders in their own homes and an unnecessary burden on the household bernie dashwood is not a new partner and there is mrs dashwood to consider too so there are differences but austin's narrative represents a very similar situation occurring at norland so the text reads mrs john dashwood now installed herself mistress of norland and her mother and sister's in-law that is mrs dashwood eleanor mary and margaret were degraded to the condition of visitors like wollstonecraft's intruders they are now visitors and degraded as well like wollstonecraft's um strong humiliating situation the dashwood women are relegated they are degraded by their new kind of status humiliating status as intruders in what was their home as such however they were treated by her with quiet civility and that's really damning with fake praise i think there by the narrative voice they were treated by her with quiet civility so not you know generosity of spirit or kindness or anything like that no quiet civility and by her husband so what's interesting here i think is the way that this is very much positioned as fanny dashwood being the mistress and john dashwood being kind of her husband and really she is the one who's kind of leading the changeover at norland so they were treated by her husband with as much kindness as he could feel towards anybody beyond himself his wife and their child through john dashwood and fanny dashwood in wollstonecraft's terms are giving as a favor what eleanor marianne and margaret to have an equal right to and jane austen's construction i think in her husband with as much kindness as he could feel shows both how john dashwood views himself so he likes to think of himself as operating with kindness but undercuts this with the narrative voices as much as he could feel wilson craft continues who can recount the misery which many unfortunate beings whose minds and bodies are equally weak suffer in such situations unable to work and ashamed to beg and i would argue that it's not just the women who find themselves in this situation who who have a sense of misery potentially but the worry of being in this position would also create a lot of anxiety and misery for sisters who were worried perhaps about becoming reliant and being dependent on their brothers so in pride and prejudice for example charlotte lucas there is a hint at anxiety within the lucas family about charlotte becoming a burden on her brothers uh when the narrative voice tells us when she accepts mr collins the narrative voice tells us that the boys were relieved from their apprehension of charlotte's dying an old maid and it's just a hint but just from that hint that austin gives us we might understand a motivation for charlotte's agreeing to marry mr collins which is just what wollstonecraft is saying here the the worry about being in this situation the misery of being in and the suffering of being in such a situation unable to work and ashamed to beg who wouldn't be you know ashamed to be in a position of being forced to beg your brother to look after you wollstonecraft threw out a vindication of the rights of women argues that the education of women leaves them unable to work and support themselves financially and she rails against a society that essentially trains women to focus on emotion and sensibility or going back to the conversation in hermsprung on trivial matters as in pride and prejudice actually and it doesn't train them in in things you know reason practical means of supporting oneself now none of jane austen's novels promote the idea that heroines ought to be going out to work um although the kind of miserable conditions for governesses is touched on in the character of jane fairfax in emma um but in her own life jane austen clearly did relish being able to work and earning money from her writings and because she had earned some money gaining some sense of independence financial independence so she wrote to her brother frank in july 1813 for example you will be glad to hear that every copy of sense and sensibility is sold and that it has brought me 140 pounds besides the copyright if that should ever be of any value i have now therefore written myself into 250 pounds which only makes me long for more returning to wollstonecraft the wife a cold-hearted narrow-minded woman john dashwood is described as rather cold-hearted and rather selfish and mrs john dashwood fanny was a strong caricature of himself so john ashford but pushed even further even more narrow-minded and selfish and cold-hearted too the wife a cold-hearted narrow-minded woman and this is not an unfair supposition for the present mode of education does not tend to enlarge the heart any more than the understanding we might return again here to the description of julia bertram's miss education where a higher species of self-command just consideration of others knowledge of her own heart or principle of right had not formed any essential part of her education and supposed that a similar miseducation was given to many other girls in a similar position such as women like fanny dashwood this cold-hearted narrow-minded wife is jealous of the little kindness which her husband shows to his relations we might remember that john dashwood acts with as much kindness as he could sort of find it in his heart to to act with but even this fanny reacts with quiet civility too her sensibility not rising to humanity she is displeased at seeing the property of her children lavished on a helpless sister and this exactly encapsulates fanny dashwood's feelings as is made clear in austin's texts mrs john dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters to take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to a most dreadful degree she begged him to think again on the subject how could he answer it to himself to rob his child and his only child too of so large a some and what possible claim could the miss dashwoods who were related to him only by half-blood which she considered as no relationship at all have on his generosity to so large an amount it was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist between the children of any man by different marriages and why was he to ruin himself and their poor little harry by giving away all his money to his half-sisters it was my father's last request to me replied her husband and what's interesting here i think is that fanny dashwood so jane austen uses the technique of free indirect discourse in this paragraph here where that's a third-person narrative that adopts the third person narrative voice that adopts the sort of perspective and the thoughts of a character in this case fanny dashwood so it's the voice of entering into the mind of flanny dashwood here and she very much ex sort of expunges the idea that eleanor marianne and margaret are their fathers children holy just as much as john dashwood is his father's child holy and given that what they are talking about is is the inheritance from that father both branches of the family are equally the children of that same father but fanny is not choosing to think about it in those terms and she is the text suggests to readers that she is presenting this to john dashwood not as them being wholly the father's children equally but no no they are merely your half-sisters you know that's kind of distance any familial uh sympathy and furthermore the language of fanny dashwood's thinking here is couched in incredibly strong terms to give anything to his sisters would be to rob his child this is the language of theft they the sisters would be in the wrong if they took his money in her implied language choice fanny dashwood eliminates any possibility that his sisters have any moral right to the property and money that john dashwood has inherited worst craft continues these are matters of fact which have come under my eye again and again the consequence is obvious the wife has recourse to cunning to undermine the habitual affection so the familial affection between brother and sister which she is afraid openly to oppose and neither tears nor caresses are spared till the spy is worked out of her home and thrown on the world fanny dashwood's chosen method is not tears nor caresses but she does have effective recourse to cunning on the one hand she puffs her husband up with ludicrous misplaced flattery so at one point john dashwood ponders perhaps then it would be better for all parties if the sum were diminished one half yes obviously it's better for the recipient if they get only half the amount of money they were originally going to get uh it would be better for all parties if the sun were diminished one half 500 pounds would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes to which fanny dashwood bursts out oh beyond anything great what brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters even if really his sisters and as it is only half blood but you have such a generous spirit it's completely ridiculously ludicrous i mean almost so embarrassingly ludicrous for him to accept that his wife is claiming that this is evidence of him having a generous spirit so she has fanny dashwood has records on the one hand too puffing up her you know flattering her her husband ridiculously but on the other hand fannie's recourse to cunning is to stoke her husband's resentment that's his father had wanted to do everything that he could in terms of providing financially for his daughters we have already been told in the novel that john dashwood was amply provided for by the fortune of his mother which had been large he already has a large fortune and so he needs his father's money much much less than eleanor marianne margaret and mrs dashwood do but fanny dashwood pokes at his underlying selfishness and resentment in saying your father thought only of them and i must say this that you owe no particular gratitude to him nor attention to his wishes for we very well know that if he could he would have left almost everything in the world to them this argument was irresistible it gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before and he finally resolved that it would be absolutely unnecessary if not highly indecorous to do more for the widow and children of his father than such kind that such kind of neighborly acts as his own wife pointed out i.e not actually give them any money but sending them presents of food when when that food was in season if not highly indecorous it would be highly indecorated he's managed to persuade himself somehow that financially providing for his sisters would be highly indecorous and it's his resentment that his father had wanted to provide financially for his sisters that ultimately is the argument that persuades him out of giving them what they have a right to you might think i mentioned earlier the gender neutral language of worcestercraft's phrase what children of the same parents had an equal right to and i think it is interesting that in the final sentence of this chapter and this scene jane austen chooses the phrase phrase the the language in the same kind of gender-neutral terms and to refer to the children of his father so at the beginning of the scene john dashwood had said it was my father's last request to me that i should assist his widow and daughters but in the final sentences move to the gender-neutral phrase children of his father the text language reminds readers that john elena marianne and margaret are all equally children of the same father worldstonecraft continues so no canning is spared till the spies worked out of the wife's home and thrown on the world unprepared for its difficulties or sent as a great effort of generosity or from some regard to propriety with a small stipend and an uncultivated mind into joyless solitude wollstonecrafts wonderfully pointed phrase a great effort of generosity beautifully catches i think the spirit of john and fanny dashwood who mutually persuade themselves that they are indeed being incredibly generous and that john dashwood has a very generous spirit while actually being of course entirely self-serving the dashwood women do not have uncultivated minds and are not reduced to begging but it is only their good fortune that sir john middleton a cousin of mrs dashwoods comes to their rescue fanny dashwood and john dashwood too it seems would happily throw them out into the world completely unprepared to survive we are told for example in chapter 3 of the dashwood women's house hunting that ellen is steadier judgment rejected several houses as too large for their income which her mother would have approved indeed fannie dashford seems to relish the prospect of them being cast in wollstonecraft's phrase into joyless solitude and even has the temerity to say altogether they will have 500 a year amongst them and what on earth can four women want for more than that they will live so cheap the housekeeping will be nothing at all they will have no carriage no horses and hardly any servants they will keep no company and can have no expenses of any kind only conceive how comfortable they will be 500 a year i am sure i cannot imagine how they will spend half of it and as to your giving them more it is quite absurd to think of it they will be much more able to give you something they are just single women so why would they need any company who could possibly want to visit a household of only women and of course without a man about they won't require any food or firewood or candles they will live so cheap their housekeeping will be nothing at all they can have no expenses of any kind because they're only women cold-hearted narrow-minded and selfish indeed jane austen was not as overtly radical as mary wollstonecraft had been but she makes similar points about social injustices between the sexes and the failures of women's usual education miss education to provide them with the skills to be independent of and so less likely to participate in the cultural acceptance of primogeniture both waltoncraft and austin articulate that it is not just men who participate in the promotion and continuation of a culture of primogeniture but that women do too and the solution for both women for both austin and wollstonecraft is a revolution in the education of women thank you very much indeed for watching remember if you like what i do here on my channel where i analyze classic literature then do subscribe and if you have liked the video then do please press the like button it helps me out in youtube's algorithm and what are your thoughts on jane austen's brilliant character funny dashboard particularly in light of mary wollstonecraft's passage from a vindication of the rights of woman do share your thoughts in the comments below