Jevon Williams 

ENG 1121 

Micro Activity#6 

  1. Why is she writing this letter? What does she want from the recipient of the letter? 

       In part, as a response to Edmund Burke’s Thoughts on the French Revolution, published in late 1790, Wollstonecraft wrote the novel. Burke viewed the French Revolution as a movement that would eventually fail because the society needed traditional institutions to strengthen it, such as inherited roles and land. Wollstonecraft’s original approach was to write A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) rebuttal arguing in favor of parliamentary reform and claiming that religious and civil liberties were part of a man’s birthright, with corruption primarily impelled by ignorance. 

  1. After reading this letter, how would you identify the DC that Wollstonecraft is a part of? Does the recipient appear to be a part of this DC or outside of it? (Really think about this!) 

      I would identify Wollstonecraft with radical feminism. Mary Wollstonecraft was a philosopher of morality and politics whose study of women’s status in modern society maintains much of its original radicalism. One of the reasons her comments on the topic remain difficult is that her thoughts on women’s group are part of the attempt to get a holistic interpretation of human relations within a society predominantly dominated by egoism and consumption. 

  1. Find two moments (either a sentence or a paragraph) where Wollstonecraft’s writing strategy gets your attention, and think about how you might use these strategies as models for your own writing.  

In your response for #3, use the following format: 

Quote 1: “I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.” 

Identify the writing strategy you see Wollstonecraft using: In European and Western cultures, Mary Wollstonecraft confronts the arguments raised against women’s suffrage and supporting the status quo. 

Explain why you find this useful, persuasive, or effective in some other way: Wollstonecraft presents a set of counter considerations that cumulatively create a crippling rejection of the result and the opponents’ pseudo-rationalist game. In doing so, she demonstrates skill and ability far beyond her opponents to convince both men and women of the opposing view’s folly. This potential has not been recognized and is worth acknowledging and illuminating for those interested in knowing her varied abilities. 

Quote 2: “[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.” 

Identify the writing strategy you see Wollstonecraft using: Mary advocates women’s equality, embraces women’s liberation with zest, and is keen to point out that men are either tyrants or sexual deviants who don’t have the best interests of women. She gives a long and thorough account of the “women’s past,” exposing the fallacy of the female gender stereotypes promoted by almost all-male society. 

Explain why you find this useful, persuasive, or effective in some other way: 
The purpose of Wollstonecraft’s aggressive approach is to show that, for both men and women, a simple view of the historically conceptualized condition of women in society is unacceptable.  

In the case of women, the rebuttal of the legal problem is either empirical or factual (either psychological, dispositional, or hybrid, psychological / disposal) because it argues that women are unable to live in the conceptual role given to them by men (and by men) that many women do so).