How to Disprove Propaganda 101 Prior to 1789, France was a country that was an absolute monarchy, and the population was divided up into three parts: the clergymen (also known as the First Estate), the nobility (also known as the second estate), and the Third estate (most of the population). In an absolute monarchy, although he did have advisors, King Louis XVI had absolute say in the law, and he did not have to explain himself to anyone. The problem was, he did not listen to his advisors, which played a part in the royal treasury being depleted. Meanwhile, the peasants were being worked and taxed into exhaustion and poverty, to the point where most of the population was starving. Nevertheless, the nobility continued to spend lavishly while …show more content…
On the one hand, by this time feudalism had been abolished (at least in theory), and the nobility and clergymen had lost their special privileges. In addition, the Estate-General (French government prior to the revolution) had renamed itself the National Constituent Assembly. On the other, there were a lot of resistance to the revolution going on because some people were not happy about the fact that the Third Estate had forced the French government to start making changes to the social and political hierarchy of France, in order to fix the economy and address social inequality. Among these people is Edmund Burke, who wrote an epistle called Reflections on the Revolution in France. This was an instant bestseller in November of …show more content…
She makes it abundantly clear that Burke’s contempt for the poor irritates the snot out of her; this is understandable because of what her understanding of equality is. She defines equality is an amount of freedom given to an individual that is equivalent to the amount of liberty that is given to every other person that is part of the same society as said individual. In other words, it could be said that Mary Wollstonecraft was a supporter of socialism. According to the Oxford University Press, socialism is, “A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” (1) Therefore, it is clear that Wollstonecraft is an advocate of equality. This is not surprising though, considering that equality was one of the goals of the French Revolution. Word count: 1101 Works Cited: Greenblatt, Stephen, et al., editors. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period, Vol. D, 9th edition, Norton, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-393-91253-1. J. Llewellyn and S. Thompson, “French Revolution timeline 1789”, Alpha History, February 26, 2018, http://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/french-revolution-timeline-1789/. “Vindicate.” Entry 1.1. Oxford Living Dictionary. Web. February 2018. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/vindicate “Socialism.” Entry 1. Oxford Living Dictionary.