Is Mary Wollstonecraft A Rousseauian?

The fundamental relationship between man and woman consists of a bond through marriage. An ideal home would consist of a man and wife, with children born out of the loving relationship. Man is the head of the family, while the mother is the core of the family who takes care of everyone else by keeping the home, maintaining relationships, and educating the children. Mary Wollstonecraft would most likely agree with Jean Jacques Rousseau on this broad definition of a good home, and therefore be called a Rousseauian; however, Wollstonecraft and Rousseau have fundamental disagreements concerning the implications of the achievement of a good home. Some disagreements include; different definitions of the interrelationship of man and woman, views of how nature has envisioned that relationship, and views on how the relationship should work.

Rousseau believes that men and women are not equal because of the difference of their sex. Man is the master of the home because he is stronger, and woman depends on him because she is the weaker sex, and in Rousseau’s eyes, this is how nature intended them to be. Although woman is dependent on man, likewise man is dependent on woman (Rousseau, 1261). W

Wollstonecraft believes that women should not enter into a relationship because of dependence, which Rousseau thinks is natural. Wollstonecraft believes that men and women are equal, and yet Rousseau’s society, which was created by man, does not. Neither denies the duties of a mother nor the necessity for marriage and procreation. Gleaning over the arguments, on discovers that the fundamental disagreement between them is whether the duty of motherhood is the natural definition of woman, or if she is meant to be equal to man, motherhood being only a part of womanhood.

ollstonecraft disagrees, seeing man and woman as being independent of each other, and believes that social norms have perturbed woman’s self-perception, leaving her to believe she is the lesser sex, and therefore needy of man. In Rousseau’s perfect home, the father is the head of the family not only because it is natural or that he is stronger than the mother, but because she has household duties to attend to, and has no time to venture outside of the home. Accordingly, in Greece, when women get married, they never leave their homes so that they can attend entirely to their motherly obligations. Rousseau claims that “This is the mode of life prescribed for the female sex both by nature and by reason” (Rousseau, 1286). Wollstonecraft agrees that women have a place in the home, because they are biologically bound to their children, however, she thinks that women should pursue ambitions outside of the home. She professes that women are capable of performing their duties as mothers, and yet not allow those duties to define them as human beings.

Women’s first wish should be to “make herself respectable, and not rely for all her happiness on a being subject to like infirmities with herself” (Wollstonecraft, 111), because man is e

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