Feminism In The Nineteenth Century

INTRODUCTION

Women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were challenged with expressing themselves in a patriarchal regime that commonly refused to grant merit to women 's ideas. Both political and cultural events during these centuries increased attention to women 's issues such as education reform, and by the end of the eighteenth century, women were increasingly able to speak out against inequity. Though modern feminism was non-existent, many women expressed themselves and revealed the conditions that they used to cope with, albeit often indirectly, using a variety of disruptive and creative tactics.

The eighteenth century brought the beginning of the British Cultural Revolution. With the growing strength of the middle class and a

O’NEILL – “THE BURKE-WOLLSTONECRAFT DEBATE: SAVAGERY, CIVILIZATION, AND DEMOCRACY” (2012)

O’Neill’s book ensures a very detailed discussion of the political theory and moral philosophy of Burke and Wollstonecraft and emphasizes the significance of the intellectual inheritance that framed their commitment to the Revolution Controversy. Many modern feminists and conservatives discover the roots of their ideologies, correspondingly, to Edmund Burke (1729–1797) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), and a correct understanding of these two prominent thinkers is therefore essential as a framework for political debates at that time.

Burke is misinterpreted, if viewed as mostly providing a notice about the dangers of attempting to turn utopian concept into political sphere, while Wollstonecraft is definitely a far more than just a supporter of extending the public sphere rights of man to include women. Contrarily, at the heart of their dissimilarities lies an argument over democracy as a force leaning toward savagery (Burke) or toward civilization (Wollstonecraft). These dissimilarities are clarified during their debate over the meaning of the French Revolution. However, the main key to comprehend the essence of the debate is its reference to the intellectual heritage of the Scottish Enlightenment, whose language of politics provided the discursive structure within and against which Burke and Wollstonecraft developed their own unique conceptions about what was included in the

The result of many years ' involvement in Wollstonecraft, Taylor 's study of her works in her time - and in ours - perceives numerous paradoxes and inconsistencies in them, in her life and in the perception of them.

The main goal of Taylor 's book is to emend the modern misappropriations by placing her back in the 18th century. Taylor, in a very convincing way, provides her conviction about religion and its role in Wollstonecraft’s thinking. When she strove for something beyond woman 's allotted sphere, she was reaching heavenwards, and found in religion, as did many women in the period, "a route to enhanced self-esteem and moral status, and sometimes to the potential subversion of Female Duty" (99). Taylor 's point is not to "bury Wollstonecraft at last” but to resurrect her by historicising her. After the intensive debates of the 1790s and 1970s, it is a far better for us to assess Wollstonecraft 's accomplishment, thanks to the efforts of Taylor in whose work Wollstonecraft is still