Sarah Stanberry

Rhetoric of Women’s Movement

Amy Aldridge Sanford

RR 2

January 31, 2007

When reviewing the three assigned readings I felt as if I continued to find a resounding theme in each. The reverberating message is that education is an important issue of feminism. All the articles mentioned the need for female education to reduce oppression.

The introduction was interesting in that it gave a basic time line of the first wave of feminism. I found it quite intriguing that urban women were focused on while much of the women of that time lived in rural areas of the United States. It never occurred to me that people during this time period, 1792-1920, did not live in large towns but rather in rural farm communities. I feel that I often take the right to higher education, which was a major battle during the first wave of feminism, for granted. This small two page introduction reminded me of the privileges that first wave feminist fought for.

Wollstonecraft’s article was amazing. Mary Wollstonecraft was an amazingly brilliant woman. To have the ability to articulate her feelings and knowledge about so many issues that she thought contributed to the oppression of women at the time is spectacular in and of itself. It is interesting that many of the issues Wollstonecraft discussed in her work, such as, education, male lusting, money, and marriage relationships, are still at the heart of feminist issues today. Women are still fighting for the rights to higher education, to not be seen as sex objects, to not be oppressed into a relationship because of money, and to have a loving and affectionate relationship with one’s spouse. I find her ability to draw relationships between all of her subjects quite neat. I can only imagine how much of an outcast Wollstonecraft must of felt at the time, being very smart, even if not educated formally, and fighting for something that was seen as tabu at the time. I felt as though Wollstonecraft continued to return to the need for formal education of women if the world had any hope of becoming anything more than it already was. Wollstonecraft seemed to use the issue of education, not just to further the women’s movement, but to further society’s goodness as a whole.

Cindy Griffin’s rhetorical criticism of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, the previously assigned reading, was very interesting. I found it just as odd as Griffin did when critics chastised Wollstonecraft for the way in which she wrote her article. My resounding thought is that it should not matter how anyone writes something, but rather the ideas that are represented within the writing. I agree with Griffin in that critics could not evaluate Wollstonecraft’s actual arguments within her work, so instead, they challenged her behaviors and her form of writing. I am also wondering, if it is not that these critics are upset because they themselves did not have the courage to write about the controversial issues that Wollstonecraft did. I can honestly say that I would have never been able to come up with the “Web of Reasons” that Griffin did. I did not find Wollstonecraft’s article to be long winded or repetitive (that may be because our book only possessed an portion of this work) but I also would not have been able to explain it by something as complex and brilliant as Griffin’s “Web” analogy. I am quite scared about writing my final paper, now, being that I feel as though I will not be able to produce anything nearly as brilliant as Griffin’s article.

Possible Discussion Questions:

1. What was the most shocking, either because you had not thought of it in that way or because it had never occurred to you, about the introduction?

2. Wollstonecraft talked about many issues (Griffin defined them as principles) that caused the oppression of women. Which one do you most identify with and why?

3. Wollstonecraft used happiness as her main goal for women (this was reiterated in Griffin’s article). Do you believe that happiness is still the main goal of feminism. If so why? If not what is the main goal? And why?