Eric Knickerbocker
May 11, 2004

Wollstonecraft’s Vindication: Relocating Nature and Art

The Eighteenth Century was an era in Western history known for the all but ubiquitous values of moderation, rationality, and morality. Among the leading debates of the day, we find a question framed under the heading “Nature versus Art.” But in what sense did the Restoration mind employ these terms? Are they akin to our current debate of “Nature versus Nuture”? To answer these and other questions, we will turn to Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 treatise On the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and see how she both agrees with the debate of her day and conversely relocates it. We should clarify from the onset, along with critic Patricia Howell Michaelson, that “the core of the Vindication is a religious argument” though we may not all initially agree with her claim that “The Rights of Woman is not, in fact, about rights at all; it is, rather, about how women could be better fit to fulfill their duties—especially their maternal duties” (Michaelson: 286, 287).

The “Nature” Half of the Equation

Wollstonecraft’s definition of Nature (and therefore of what is natural), is quite clearly spelled out and resembles the description given by the Apostle Paul in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans. Before we examine her arguments closely, we will look at the Apostle’s words, for, as we noted in our introduction, Wollstonecraft’s argument is wholly religious in nature and draws much inspiration from the Bible and a long tradition based on many of its central tenets.

Vindication of the Rights of Woman

In the opening chapter of the book of Romans, the Apostle sternly warns against unbelief in God. Beginning with the eighteenth verse, he writes:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:18–20, NASB)

We have in these verses two ideas rolled into one: (1) Nature points to the God who made her because (2) His attributes are displayed throughout that which is made. The Restoration understanding of the universe, while often taking a Deistic view that denied the miraculous and reduced God to the disinterested clockmaker, nonetheless saw order in the universe, and, along with the Apostle, taught that this clearly showed the workings of a Master Mind. Very much a product of her day, Wollstonecraft takes God as a given, citing His character as the very bedrock upon which virtue is founded:

The only solid foundation for morality appears to be the character of the Supreme Being; the harmony of which arises from a balance of attributes,—and, to speak with reverence, one attribute seems to imply the necessity of another. He must be just, because He is wise; He must be good, because He is omnipotent. For to exalt one attribute at the expense of another equally noble and necessary, bears the stamp of the warped reason of man—the homage of passion. (37)

This admission further mirrors the Apostle’s sentiments in the verses following his declaration of Nature clearly revealing God and leaving man without excuse. Because God is so apparent in creation—because no man can honestly deny His existence—the consequence spelled out in verse twenty-one and following is that the mind of the one who willfully turns his back on what is clearly visible becomes darkened. God lets Nature run its course, giving him over to a depraved mind that in turn leads to more and more outrageous acts of perversity. If this rebellion against God continues unchecked, it will further lead him to not only practice such shameful things himself, but take delight in watching others do the same. In sum, the Apostle argues that the man who willfully walks away from the truth will be the author of his own undoing—and potentially that of others around him as well.

This Scriptural conception of God and Nature, then, gives us the basis for Wollstonecraft’s understanding of what is natural. Nature is the creation of God and reveals His attributes. When sentient beings choose to operate according to His design, they are acting naturally, when they go against His design as revealed in Nature, they are going against that which is natural. While perhaps built on a more Deistic base than the often more “mystical” Apostle, it is from this perspective that Wollstonecraft evaluates the “naturalness” or “unnaturalness” of a given argument. And this then, defines to large degree what Nature implied to the Restoration mind. Nature is the creation and standard of God, mirroring His attributes, and to the degree that a man is in harmony with Nature—and thereby God—that is the degree to which he is natural. Perhaps the strongest example in Vindication is found in the sixth paragraph of the introduction that leads into her treatise:

[A]ddressing my sex in a firmer tone, I pay particular attention to those in the middle class, because they appear to be in the most natural state. Perhaps the seeds of false refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and affections of their race, in a premature unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society! As a class of mankind they have the strongest claim to pity; the education of the rich tends to render them vain and helpless, and the unfolding mind is not strengthened by the practice of those duties which dignify the human character. They only live to amuse themselves, and by the same law which in Nature invariably produces certain effects, they soon only afford barren amusement.

We have taken several factors into our argument beyond the words of the Apostle, but we can see his influence at play, for Nature affords only barren amusements—which are surely no amusements at all—to the rich: we can only imagine how much more severely the openly corrupt would reap the bounty of their harvest. Yes, Nature is the handiwork of God, and when we pursue the natural order of things, the net result will not be vice but rather the culmination of virtue. And this achieved morality for Wollstonecraft, as we have seen, is built on the “solid foundation” of “the character of the Supreme Being” (37).

The “Art” Half of the Equation

Now that we have a working conception through the eyes of Wollstonecraft of what Nature implied to the Restoration mind, what of the other half of the equation: Art? We know that it must not be Nature, and if not Nature, it must be in some way be “artificial.” We also know that in order to be tied to this dichotomy of Nature versus Art, it must refer in some way to the development of our personhood and not to our usual conception of creativity employed to artistic ends. Uncovering the concept of Art in Vindication will be slightly more difficult than examining the concept of Nature, for Wollstonecraft never uses the term “Art” explicitly in this manner, though we can infer her meaning, as we will see in a moment, from various passages throughout her work. Further, we do not see Art working in opposition to Nature in Vindication, but rather rounding it out and completing it as an essential component; in fact, it is precisely the lack of Art that is often the problem. The very reason why the absence of Art is the problem is because it is assumed that proper Art will take as its model Nature, rather than work in opposition to it, in which case, it would be unnatural and perverse: artifice rather than artistry.

Good Art, then, refines human nature by working in concert with the larger schema of Nature, seeking, as it were, to align itself with the very attributes of God and to culminate virtue thereby. Yet how can this be? In what sense can one exceed his own inherent nature to progress toward that Higher Nature of God? Wollstonecraft lays out the very instrument and basis of such refinement in the first chapter with maxims she considers self-evident, as they would indeed have been to the Restoration mind: “In what does man’s pre-eminence over the brute creation consist? The answer is as clear as that a half is less than the whole, in Reason” (10).

However, Wollstonecraft does not see Reason alone as the raison d’être: that honor is conferred upon the acquisition of virtue. “What acquirement exalts one being above another? Virtue, we spontaneously reply” (10). But this virtue is only tenable if we admit that human beings are rational creatures. Michaelson carries this point further:

For Wollstonecraft, equality between the sexes is based on reason; the burden of her entire argument is to show that all human beings are, first and foremost, “rational creatures.” This is obvious to any reader of the Vindication. What has received less attention, however, is that reason is not, to Wollstonecraft, an end in itself. Reason leads to virtue—and virtue is crucial solely and explicitly because we expect an afterlife.

We have again come back around to a religious basis for Wollstonecraft’s argument. Created in the image of our Maker, we were given a mind with which to reason. We use Reason to seek out Nature so that we may cultivate Virtue—this then, is what constitutes Art: the further refinement of our God-given gifts and talents. Not only is Virtue good because it reflects the attributes of God—“It is not impious thus to scan the attributes of the Almighty: in fact, who can avoid it that exercises his faculties? For to love God as the fountain of wisdom, goodness, and power, appears to be the only worship useful to a being who wishes to acquire either virtue or knowledge”—it also points to a state of perfection not to be achieved in this lifetime alone (38):

The stamen of immortality, if I may be allowed the phrase, is the perfectibility of human reason; for, were man created perfect, or did a flood of knowledge break in upon him, when he arrived at maturity, that precluded error, I should doubt whether his existence would be continued after the dissolution of the body. But, in the present state of things, every difficulty in morals that escapes from human discussion, and equally baffles the investigation of profound thinking, and the lightning glance of genius, is an argument on which I build my belief of the immortality of the soul. (44)

But what then, are we to make of those elements of Nature that tend to lead a person toward vice? If God created the world, if He is the source of all morality and goodness, if what is natural is a pursuit of Him, why then do we have baser elements to our nature? Further what do these elements look like and what shall we call them?

Reason versus the Passions

Wollstonecraft again speaks in the language of the Restoration era when she identifies those elements of human nature that must be transcended and overcome: the Passions. In His infinite wisdom, God created the Passions within us so that we could wrestle ourselves higher than the animals, our souls growing ever closer to Him: “For what purpose were the passions implanted? That man by struggling with them might attain a degree of knowledge denied to the brutes, whispers Experience” (10). And with what tool do we pit ourselves against these lower Passions? “Man’s pre-eminence over the brute creation” consists of Reason and “from the exercise of reason, knowledge and virtue naturally flow” (10). Yet, as Michaelson reminds us, Wollstonecraft is not implying that the presence of reason automatically leads to virtue and knowledge:

Occasionally, Wollstonecraft sounds as if she believes that reason leads inevitably to virtue. For example, having asserted as first principles the importance or reason, virtue, and knowledge, she says that reason is the most important, because “from the exercise of reason, knowledge and virtue naturally flow.” Experience and common sense will tell us that educated people are probably not, as a group, any more virtuous than anyone else. Wollstonecraft’s linkage of reason and virtue is not a matter of class bias. Rather, Wollstonecraft’s point is that virtuous acts that are the result of anything but conscious moral choice—reason—are not truly virtuous. As she puts it, “it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.”

This point is extremely well taken, for without an understanding of the basis for Wollstonecraft’s true moral choice, we fail to appreciate the logic of her argument. When Reason acts in accord with Nature, knowledge and virtue are the inevitable result, for Nature reflects God. It is this very rationality that separates us from the animals and it is a trait we share in common, whether we be male or female. If then, for any being true virtue comes from “the exercise of its own reason,” this precludes blind obedience to another human being (18). And this is precisely what men often demand of women, argues Wollstonecraft, forgetting that women and men alike are rational creatures. In this regard, Wollstonecraft is departing to some degree from traditional Restoration thought while using its own arguments and terminology against it—for what she believes is its own benefit and good.

The Gender Divide Made Wider

After Wollstonecraft has laid down the theological basis of her argument that all human beings are rational creatures and that by Reason we can obtain virtue and knowledge—an argument very familiar to the Restoration mind—she begins a critique on the role of women in society and how these very same men who argue for Reason often argue against Nature in assigning women their place. Her qualm is not that Nature has designated women the physically weaker sex; in fact, she grants this point early in her argument:

In the government of the physical world it is observable that the female in point of strength is, in general, inferior to the male. This is the law of Nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. A degree of physical superiority cannot, therefore, be denied, and it is a noble prerogative! (10)

After she has made this concession, however, she begins to speak out against the notion that women are weaker in terms of rationality. Her complaint is with men and women alike: men, because they tend to view women as beautiful creatures to be possessed for a time, and women, because they are swept away by this false flattery, often learning to exploit it to gain control over men. Women play into this inferior role of becoming the outwardly alluring model when they have never developed strong inward characteristics: strength of soul and character. Both sexes lose out when women are thus so basely motivated.

God made men and women alike rational creatures and to treat women as though they were little more than sex objects or trophies is to demean them even lower than the weakness of their frames. And women are just as guilty, because they play into this very role, not thinking how it affects them as women or the men they pretend to love: “[N]ot content with this natural preeminence, men endeavour to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow-creatures who find amusement in their society” (10).

If we have been listening to anything Wollstonecraft has been trying to tell us, we will soon see that this shallowness is not at all natural: it is a perversity of Nature. Nature points us to God, and He is the source of all virtue. There is no virtue in women thus caving in to men or of men claiming to represent Nature in thus lowering women still further than the weaker nature of their physical frames: both of the sexes are weakened and shamed by this unnatural conduct parodying under the guise of Nature. What women desperately need is more Art—in the form of education—to compel them to virtue. And this is partly a fault of men for keeping them in the dark. Such men are hardly operating according to Nature or using Reason to cultivate virtue:

Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right endeavour to keep woman in the dark, because they only want slaves, and the latter a plaything. The sensualist, indeed, has been the most dangerous of tyrants, and women have been duped by their lovers, as princes by their ministers, whilst dreaming that they reigned over them. (20)

Yet she has not given up on all men (nor, for that matter, all women, else she wouldn’t be arguing her case so strongly). She instead extends an appeal to them, suggesting that when we understand what we are doing, the truly “rational men will excuse me for endeavouring to persuade” women to pursue the use of Reason (5). Further, it is her hope that rational men will see the value in encouraging the education of women in this regard for the benefit of all of society.

The Voice of Reason Cries out to Both Sexes

It is clearly obvious that reducing women to a lower status is not within the keeping of that which is natural, nor is it natural that women should thusly try to control men. Rather than operating from the higher faculty of Reason, men and women are both appealing to the baser Passions when they play these games, little transcending the kingdom of animals. Yet perhaps, notes Wollstonecraft, it is true after all that even on the level of virtue, women are the weaker vessel. Therefore, she proposes, “Let men become more chaste and modest, and if women do not grow wiser in the same ratio, it will be clear that they have weaker understandings” (5). She goes on to add that “If women are by nature inferior to men, their virtues must be the same in quality, if not in degree, or virtue is a relative idea; consequently their conduct should be founded on the same principles, and have the same aim” (21). So then, let women’s “faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale” (29).

Wollstonecraft wants to ensure that she does not include all women in this potentially lower category, for clearly some women have a much higher aptitude for reason than others. Yet even if women as a whole should be proven to be the weaker in terms of rationality, they should be allowed to develop the degree of virtue that Nature has appropriated. They too, being rational creatures, should answer directly to God and not to man and be able to seek His counsel. If we wish to have the most virtuous race—if we wish to operate in accordance with Nature—there are a few things we as men and women need to carefully consider alike:

But to view the subject in another point of view. Do passive indolent women make the best wives? Confining our discussion to the present moment of existence, let us see how such weak creatures perform their part? Do the women who, by the attainment of a few superficial accomplishments, have strengthened the prevailing prejudice, merely contribute to the happiness of their husbands? Do they display their charms merely to amuse them? And have women who have early imbibed notions of passive obedience, sufficient character to manage a family or educate children? So far from it, that, after surveying the history of woman, I cannot help agreeing with the severest satirist, considering the sex as the weakest as well as the most oppressed half of the species. (29)

Now we have arrived at the heart of Wollstonecraft’s argument—and the remedy that she believes will provide the solution? a proper moral education. While things like reading novels are better than not reading at all, Wollstonecraft sees some drastic alterations in order for the education of most women. Lay the playing field wide open for us, she challenges the men who govern the nation. Instruct us in the way of Reason that we might develop our minds and serve as better wives, mothers, sisters, and members of society at large. In this sense, her location of proper Art and its argument from Nature is a bit left of center and more expansive than that of the typical Restoration mindset—a mindset overwhelmingly dominated by male voices clinging to the “prevailing prejudice” of the day. While for Restoration thought Wollstonecraft’s definition of Nature and Art is not fundamentally different, the positioning of the argument is rather unorthodox, even as it argues in compliance with the times for a society in which both sexes retain their mutually complementary roles.

Nature versus Nurture?

We can see then that the Restoration mind centered Nature and Art on a vastly different foundation than the current “nature versus nurture” debate. Wollstonecraft may have been seen as progressive for her time, yet she likewise adopted a very strong religious foundation for her epistemology. However, the epistemological base for science and theory has changed rather drastically since that time. Nevertheless, its antecedent is firmly anchored in the very religious expression upon which it has turned its back; from the very beginning, the Bible challenged the mythological notions of the surrounding culture, proposing a form of naturalism. After noting that “The Book of Genesis was itself in large part intended, scholars tell us, as a polemic against pagan superstition,” Stephen M. Barr goes on to add: “For example, whereas the sun and moon were the objects of worship in pagan religion, the Book of Genesis taught that they were nothing but lamps set in the heavens to give light to day and night: not gods, but mere things, creatures of the one true God” (Barr, para. 7) He continues:

It is true that the Bible is overwhelmingly supernatural in its outlook and literary atmosphere. However, what is critically important is that the Bible’s supernaturalism is concentrated in a God who is outside of Nature, and radically distinguished from the world He has made. Therefore the world of nature is no longer seen as populated by capricious supernatural beings, by fates and furies, dryads and naiads, gods of war or goddesses of sex and fertility. The natural world has been “disenchanted.” But whereas many give credit to science for this, the distinction belongs in the first instance to the monotheism of the Bible, which by depersonalizing and desacralizing the natural world helped clear the ground for the eventual emergence of modern science. (Barr, para. 8)

From here, he goes on to trace the role of Judeo-Christian thought right up until the present, which necessarily passes through the Restoration conception of the clockmaker God along the way. The period historians call the Enlightenment was birthed in the Restoration Era, furthering along the dislocation of the natural world from any ties to transcendent Deity. It wasn’t until after Charles Robert Darwin that it became widely popular to remove consideration of God completely from discussions of Nature. Once God was removed from the picture, men like Nietzsche rightly bemoaned the “death of God,” for while he assumed that the idea of God was merely a social construct, it had nonetheless proven a highly effective one, leaving the philosopher obsessed with what it might mean to live in a post-Theistic world.

It is into this very limelight that our current theories in psychology have been borne, most notably from the mind of that famous Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, publicly known for his atheism, privately for his preoccupation with death (Nicholi, chap. 9). The whole Enlightenment thought itself gave to us our reliance on inductive reasoning and empirical observation. For all of these reasons, it is clear that a discussion of “nature versus nurture” has an entirely different epistemological base than that of the Restoration notion of Nature versus Art. To the Restoration mind, Nature was the handiwork of God and that which was natural followed after His decrees; to the modern mind, Nature, if we even give it the deference of a capital letter, means the biological beginnings of a human being and the structure and composition of one’s DNA and other factors that shape a person biochemically. By nurture, we mean something of the same perhaps as Art once did, but even here our observation is not based so much in its moral adherence to Nature (or lack thereof), but instead the influence it holds over our development: this aspect of “nature versus nurture” wonders to what extent cultural and social factors influence the individual versus that which is purely hereditary.

Different but Equal

“Different but equal” has an interesting twist when we consider modern gender studies and how they contrast with those proposed by Wollstonecraft. In an interview conducted by Arwad Esber, Julia Kristeva, one of the best known and widely respected Parisian intellectuals alive today, is asked of her reservations about the feminist movement. As she frames her reply, she notes something interesting about the development of feminism and the subsequent phases it has passed through:

I have taken part in the women’s movement since its inception, around 1968, when it gained momentum within leftist movements. I was particularly drawn by the movement’s determination to go beyond the achievement of Simone de Beauvoir. It seems to me that the women’s movement in Europe went through three phases. The first is that of the early suffragettes at the end of the nineteenth century. The second is the period of Simone de Beauvoir and the struggle for gender equity. The third, which is the subject of our discussion, is the current phase, in which the emphasis is not so much on gender equality but gender disparity and difference. In this last phase, the focus is on the characteristics of women, their distinctive contribution to civilization, their relationship to the other, the idiosyncracy of their sexual pleasure, the uniqueness of their writing, the peculiarity of their mental traits, and so on. These issues found their way into a number of movements in 1968, and it is within these movements that I was active. (Kristeva, para. 7)

Kristeva then goes into a fascinating observation that these movements quickly degenerated into “the worst forms of leftist dogmatism” in which “an authoritarian group gathers around a ‘ruling’ woman whose despotism is not much different from that of any ‘ruling’ man. This authoritative figure used to exercise tyranny over the rest of the women in the movement, leading to both an economic and sexual subjection” (Kristeva, para. 8). She finds this form of despotism “totally unacceptable” and the unfortunate result in her experience? “Addressing such issues as motherhood or conjugal life was unthinkable because it was considered either a form of betrayal to the cause of the woman or simply a submission to patriarchy” (ibid.).

In fact, there seems to be a growing trend within the current phase of feminism to make due allowance for “motherhood” and “conjugal life,” well within the keeping of Kristeva’s description of the third phase of feminist thought: different but equal. And, in many ways, this was the very thing that Wollstonecraft was arguing in her day as well, though from a different epistemological base that assumed Biblical principles as its central foundation. Yes, argues Wollstonecraft, men and women alike are created rational creatures, but she does not get into any involved discussion as to the respective positions men and women should play, instead endorsing, at least tacitly, the accepted roles within the traditional Judeo-Christian family structure. For this reason, Michaelson proposes an idea that many are likely to disagree with, at least without a bit more thought and analysis:

[I would] question the extent to which Wollstonecraft argues for women’s “rights.” The title of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is adapted from her earlier work, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, where the term “rights” involved a specific political agenda. But The Rights of Woman is not, in fact, about rights at all; it is, rather, about how woman could be better fit to fulfill their duties—especially their maternal duties. Contemporary reviewers considered it an educational treatise, which is closer to the mark; Wollstonecraft argues, to repeat, that women’s irresponsible behavior results from their shoddy education. Educate women rationally, and virtue will increase. (Michaelson, 286, 287)

Melissa Benn does not have a drastically different interpretation, despite the nearly two hundred year gap that separates her from Wollstonecraft. In fact, she finds much relevancy in Wollstonecraft’s treatise that is applicable to modern day feminists, particularly those interested in marrying and being mothers. The premise of her lecture that she addressed at the Royal Festival Hall’s “Essays” is that “Two hundred years ago Mary Wollstonecraft made radical demands for gender equality. But today’s feminists have forgotten what struggle is” (Benn, para. 1). Her conclusion pretty much says it all:

In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman published in 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft set out her defence of women as rational beings, equally capable of benefiting from education and of performing the duties of citizens. Male power had prevented women from realising their moral and intellectual capacities, and thus from being able exercise genuine judgment or attain genuine virtue. Nevertheless, while the equality of men and women as rational beings was central, the equality of roles was not. Women could still perform their duties as citizens from within the home. (Benn, concluding para.)

For Benn, this premise still frames a very valid argument that should not soon be forgotten. These thoughts are well in accord with Kristeva’s observation of the third wave of feminism in Europe and presumably in the rest of the Western world as well. After many false starts and stops, feminism is beginning to locate its base much closer to that of Wollstonecraft, even if the epistemological foundation remains quite different. Women are different, yes. But they are equal intellectually and with this equality and difference they bring their own set of strengths to any given setting.

Conclusion

We have taken quite an extensive journey and considered many more issues than those we find in Wollstonecraft’s seminal treatise while at the same time necessarily leaving much of her finely nuanced detail for the reader to discover on his own. Yet we have also found that even though we are located in a much different place than the one from which Wollstonecraft was stretching forth her hand, we have nonetheless managed to connect somewhere peculiarly close to the middle. Perhaps there was more to the Restoration notion of Nature than we initially realized. Whatever the case, we could hardly argue that our society would do well to search more diligently for the acquisition of virtue today or that this is applicable to both sexes alike.

Beyond this admission, I am quite certain that the God of Wollstonecraft is not dead. His people still dot the countryside, a minority perhaps, but still alive and aware, drawing many conclusions in common with this short-lived Restoration author. It seems to me that in the end, no matter how much our individual views about God or other matters may differ, there is still one fact of Nature that remains the same: Human beings are only superficially different: we are fundamentally the same the world over. Different but equal indeed—and, in the eyes of God, spanning far beyond the gender divide to all peoples in all places for the entirity of time. In sum, we are imago Dei—made in the image of our Maker. And, no matter our gender, it is to Him again that we do well to turn.

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