Character Clues

Character Analysis

Heads up, Shmoopers: This characterization section is not your typical Tools of Characterization section where we characterize the characters of the book. The characters of the book are real people, and Wollstonecraft pretty much just quotes (and then tears apart, boo yeah) their arguments.

These tools of characterization are tools that people in 1792 used to characterize women. Don't worry: Wollstonecraft tears apart these tools of characterization too, as we'll show you.

Clothing

Rousseau says that women are naturally inclined to love dressing up and looking pretty. "It's just the way they are!" says Rousseau, throwing up his hands. He doesn't think about the fact that clothing is a byproduct of civilization and civilization is not just the "way (women and men) are." We had to work pretty dang hard to get to the whole civilization-clothing-sleeping on beds-using toilets phase of existence.

And Wollstonecraft addresses this fact. She's pretty sure that the main reason women think about clothing so much is because they're trained to think about it from day one. Children thrive on praise, and little girls are praised for looking pretty. They're also dressed up by their parents, and taught to dress up dolls. It's no big shocker, then, says Wollstonecraft, that these little girls grow into women who thrive on dressing themselves up and getting complimented.

Occupation

For traditional thinkers, a woman's place in the world is to be a good wife and mother. But Wollstonecraft thinks that women should have every opportunity that men do to pursue their own interests.

If it's true that women's place in the world is to be good wives and mothers then, by golly, they'll gravitate towards being wives and mothers. If this isn't the way that it's "supposed to be" then it's just, uh, wrong.

We see this chopped logic even today. How is it fair that a guy is allowed to work all the time and be called "ambitious" while a woman who does the same thing is called a neglectful mother?

Wollstonecraft's main point is that it's not fair at all.

Wollstonecraft makes a pretty radical claim for 1792 when she says that women should be allowed to become doctors and hold official public jobs. It would be more than a hundred years later before women actually achieved this goal in the western world, but Wollstonecraft put it on the table with Vindication.

Sex and Love

Wollstonecraft is sick and tired of women being obsessed with dressing nicely and trying to make men fall in love with them. She's equally sick of men who say that that is the purpose of women: women should be decorative.

She hates this kind of thinking (in both men and women) because it encourages women to be extremely superficial. None of them concentrate on being beautiful on the inside because society only values them if they're beautiful on the outside. Is it then any wonder, Wollstonecraft asks, that women lose all sense of purpose in life once they get old and men aren't attracted to them anymore?