Mary Wollstonecraft believes that women are no more naturally subservient than men and nobody, male or female, values freedom unless they have had to struggle to attain it (1792)
About this Quotation:
Mary Wollstonecraft raises a very interesting point about why humans allow themselves to be ruled by others. This is question which occupied Edmund Burke and David Hume as well. Her answer was that, just as men had “willingly” submitted to aristocratic rule for centuries, so too had women “willingly” submitted to their husbands in unequal marriages. Is the habituation to rule then the justification for that rule by others?
Other quotes from this week:
- 2009: Harriet Taylor wants to see “freedom and admissibility” in all areas of human activity replace the system of “privilege and exclusion” (1847)
- 2008: Ludwig von Mises shows the inevitability of economic slumps after a period of credit expansion (1951)
- 2007: John Stuart Mill on the “atrocities” committed by Governor Eyre and his troops in putting down the Jamaica rebellion (1866)
- 2004: Shakespeare farewells his lover in a Sonnet using many mercantile and legal metaphors (1609)
Other quotes about Women's Rights:
- 2009: Harriet Taylor wants to see “freedom and admissibility” in all areas of human activity replace the system of “privilege and exclusion” (1847)
- 2009: John Stuart Mill uses an analogy with the removal of protective duties and bounties in trade to urge a similar “Free Trade” between the sexes (1869)
- 2006: J.S. Mill in The Subjection of Women argued that every form of oppression seems perfectly natural to those who live under it (1869)
- 2006: J.S. Mill spoke in Parliament in favour of granting women the right to vote, to have “a voice in determining who shall be their rulers” (1866)
- 2005: J.S. Mill denounced the legal subjection of women as “wrong in itself” and as “one of the chief hindrances to human improvement” (1869)
10 October, 2005
 | Mary Wollstonecraft believes that women are no more naturally subservient than men and nobody, male or female, values freedom unless they have had to struggle to attain it (1792) |
Mary Wollstonecraft begins chapter 4 on "Observations on the State of the Degradation to which Woman is reduced by various Causes" with the following observation:
That woman is naturally weak, or degraded by a concurrence of circumstances, is, I think, clear. But this position I shall simply contrast with a conclusion, which I have frequently heard fall from sensible men in favour of an aristocracy: that the mass of mankind cannot be any thing, or the obsequious slaves, who patiently allow themselves to be driven forward, would feel their own consequence, and spurn their chains. Men, they further observe, submit every where to oppression, when they have only to lift up their heads to throw off the yoke; yet, instead of asserting their birthright, they quietly lick the dust, and say, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Women, I argue from analogy, are degraded by the same propensity to enjoy the present moment; and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.
The full passage from which this quotation was taken can be be viewed below (front page quote in bold):
That woman is naturally weak, or degraded by a concurrence of circumstances, is, I think, clear. But this position I shall simply contrast with a conclusion, which I have frequently heard fall from sensible men in favour of an aristocracy: that the mass of mankind cannot be any thing, or the obsequious slaves, who patiently allow themselves to be driven forward, would feel their own consequence, and spurn their chains. Men, they further observe, submit every where to oppression, when they have only to lift up their heads to throw off the yoke; yet, instead of asserting their birthright, they quietly lick the dust, and say, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Women, I argue from analogy, are degraded by the same propensity to enjoy the present moment; and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain. But I must be more explicit.