Mary Wollstonecraft in this letter is being the voice of all women in France at that time. She is supporting women’s right in education , equality and freedom. Women had been excluded from education, voting and having their own career and being independent from men for centuries. However of all this injustice and neglecting, they want women to be influential in the society as men. She is writing to Talleyrand encouraging him to reconsider what he wrote about the right of woman and national education. Wollstonecraft is a part of two discourse community by being a woman and a feminist that fights for women rights. Talleyrand does not belong to the same DC at all, he is a man who puts boundaries for woman and decides what she should do unlike the feminism DC Wollstonecraft belongs to.
Quote 1: “how can woman be expected to cooperate if she doesn’t know
why she ought to be virtuous? if freedom doesn’t strengthen
her reason until she understands her •duty and sees how
it is connected with her real •good?”
Writing strategy: questions.
By giving questions to the recipient, she is pushing him to think about the problem and to see the consequences which leads to understanding her opinion. She is also using an argumentative strategy by showing the two sides, if women have good education, they will cooperate with men otherwise do not ask them for duties if you do not give them their rights.
Quote 2: “If woman isn’t fitted by education to become man’s companion, she will stop the progress of knowledge, because truth must be common to all; if it isn’t it
won’t be able to influence how people in general behave.”
Writing strategy: persuasive.
It is a very useful strategy to convince the audience about her idea, she is telling them that what you act now will have its impact on you too. I think it will be effective to use that technique on my assignment.
YES!! Wollstonecraft does this throughout. She is really smart about point out that its to men’s advantage. In a way, these also function as implied threats, something Douglass does too. Later she suggests that without education, men can not expect faithful wives.