Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

Women have continuously fought for what they believed in. Men were the only decision makers affecting the community and the nation. The only role of the woman was to stay at home, clean the home, take care of the children, and cook for the man. However, some women believed that the society would only change for the better if Men allowed them to be part of the decision makers. Even though it was very challenging for women to soften the men’s hearts. Women started writing pamphlets to communicate their message until it was clear what they wanted (women’s rights). Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects and Olympe de Gouges’ Declaration of the Rights of Woman works, which relates

The two have one objective, to fight for the rights of women. The two authors believed that the constitution was vague and biased towards them. The constitution at the time stated that men had rights to property, liberty, and justice. According to these two authors, there was no justification for man to be above the woman, after all, they were men. According to Mary Wollstonecraft (1792), morality would never gain grounds if men and women were not equal. Olympe de Gouges (1791) reinforces that by claiming that both men and women were equal in the eyes of the law and should have representation in all sectors

The Betrothal in the Village, 1761 image shows the process of paying bride price. It shows the harmony of a family in that event. However, it is clear that the men were making the decisions, since bridegroom’s father agreed the price to the bride’s father (Grauze, 1791). That shows that although the family seemed like a unit, men were in control, which was the case at the time. The Jean Baptiste Greuze’s The Beloved Mother, 1765-1769 painting strengthens this model. The painting shows a man entering a house with his hunting dogs to find a woman swarmed by several children (Grauze, 1769). From the image, it is clear that the woman had stayed home to look after the children while the man went to hunt (Grauze, 1769). This portrays the real situation at the time, where women had no other chores other than staying at home. Women staying at home throughout, whether they had children or not is probably the reason they were not part of the decision makers as claimed by Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges in their