386
PARTISAN REVIEW
definition of sexual differences had been more forcefully asserted; the
behavioral characteristics of "masculinity" and "femininity" had
drawn further apart. Behind Wollstonecraft's energetic analysis is a
struggle with which we are still familiar: if a woman strives not to fall
for the lure of feminine subservience she is labelled" masculine , " in
which case what happens to her legitimate femininity or "female-
ness"? How can one be a woman, indeed womanly, and avoid the
social stereotypes? The answer is a concept of humanity which more
urgently unifies the' social characteristics of men and women:
Awild wish has just flown from my heart to my head, and I will not
stifle it, though it may excite a horse-laugh . I do earnestly wish to
see the distinction of sex confounded in society, unless where love
animates the behaviour .
In fact Wollstonecraft, while asserting equality as a human right ,
has to some degree moved away from what I have characterized as an
essentially liberal position into one that we might describe as radical
humanism. Though like the seventeenth-century writers her highest
good is reason and she demonstrates that women are inferior because
they have been subjugated-not as is usually argued that they are
subjugated because they are inferior-yet there is a new political
dimension to her feminism . Where her English predecessors were
demanding the practice consistent with the revolutionary values of
their society, Wollstonecraft , living in the double context of by then
reactionary Britain yet having the inspiration of the French Revolution ,
wanted not a change
within
society but a change
of
society:
and :
I do not believe that a private education can work the wonders
which some sanguine writers have attributed to it. Men and women
must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners
of the society they live in ... . It may ... fairly be inferred,that ,
till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected
from education .
Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all
was
right originally : a
crowd of authors that all
is
now right: and I, that all
wi/I be
right.
In Wollstonecraft the millenium has come down firmly from heaven to
earth .
