Exploitation In Mary Wollstonecraft's Ideas

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Exploitation and how it relates to Wollstonecraft’s Ideas Throughout the ages men have dominated the public and political sphere of society, leaving women to their own private sphere. Through the denial of education, those in power were able to keep women ignorant and thus exploit them as well as deny them other rights. Throughout this paper I will argue for the idea that, out of Iris Young’s five faces of oppression, exploitation is the face most closely related to the ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft. I will do this by first explaining Wollstonecraft’s argument about how women are oppressed. I will then go on to describe Young’s ideas on exploitation. After the two ideas are thoroughly explained, I will explain how exactly the two relate to each other. Young Discusses that gender exploitation of women has two…show more content…
In France during the 1700’s women were valued not for their intelligence nor for their talents and virtues that ennoble the human character but rather for their “susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment and refinement of taste.” She claims that these are the phrases that men use to make the dependence of women easier. She says that these characteristics or expressions indicate weakness. She says, “I despise the weak elegance of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners that are supposed to be the sexual characteristics of the weaker sex.” Wollstonecraft dismisses these characteristics of womanly elegance and affirms that striving for a character as a human being is most important and laudable. Among other things, Wollstonecraft also discusses how, as I’ve said before, women are held back by the denial of education and that specific instruction have turned them into “insignificant objects of desire.” This is made evident by the female sex’s interest in pleasure and trivial things over achievement and other things
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