FREE ESSAY ON COMPARE CONTRAST - WOLLESTONECRAFT & C. BRONTE

COMPARE CONTRAST - WOLLESTONECRAFT & C. BRONTE

Vindicating Women's Strength
The focus of female literary writers from the seventeenth century into the nineteenth
century is to reform men's attitudes toward women. Through their writing, they are
encouraging women to gain respect and acceptance as viable, rational and intelligent
human beings rather than domestic maidservants created for the pleasure of man. Women
writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Charlotte Bronte forcefully bring these issues into
the forefront of societies minds. 
Wollstonecraft's publication, A Vindication of the Rights of Women is in response to the
French Revolution. Arguing the subjugation women endure from the lack of education and
legal rights afforded them will result in undermining the government's goals. She bases
her response on men's misconception that women lack the basic human intellectual
qualities to be equal to men. 
Bronte's Jane Eyre is the type of personified woman Wollstonecraft ascribes women to
emulate. Jane Eyre, a fictional portrayal of a woman seeking her independence and equal
rights is unwilling to sacrifice her principles to satisfy society standards. In 1848
Elizabeth Rigney stated, Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of an unregenerate
and undisciplined spirit. (468) Rigney and societies belief is based on the writings of
men, as Rousseau, who states women should be pure, submissive, decorous, and even angelic
creature[s] (289) depending on men for instruction and guidance to preserve their
virtue.
Wollstonecraft in her essay detests this type of thinking, believing women should aspire
to become masculine. (259) When using the term masculine, she is encouraging if not
demanding women to seek out intellectual exercise of which enobles the human character,
and which rises females in the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively
termed mankind. . . (259) Wollstonecraft contends, if women are not allowed to have
sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue (262) they
will remain in a subservient status depending solely on their beauty and charm for
fulfillment and direction in life. 
Bronte's Jane echo's Wollstonecraft's thoughts. Feeling confined in her governess duties
at Thornfield Hall she begins to feel just as men feel; [needing] exercise for [her]
faculties and a field for [her] efforts as much as [men] do; suffer[ing] from too rigid a
restraint, too absolute stagnation, precisely as men would suffer. (544) Although
reasonably content in her employment, Jane longs for the same freedom as men to gain
knowledge through experience. She is not willing to mold herself according to the
standards of society, as is Blanche Ingram. Jane views Blanche as a product of the
training afforded women during this epoch who are taught by example by their mothers,
that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper,
outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain
for them the protection of man. (262) While Jane does seek love and companionship of a
man, she must be his equal and allowed to grow intellectually with him to form a
successful and passionate union.
Wollstonecraft is contradictory on her advice concerning passion. While she advocates
women to be passionate in fighting against the inferior status imposed upon them by
society, she discourages passion in love. Her belief on this subject is that love, the
common passion, in which chance and sensation take place of choice and reason, is, in
some degree, felt by the mass of mankind (268) and the foe of reason and intelligence.
Her advice to married couples drives this point home; In order to fulfill the duties of
life, and to be able to pursue with vigor the various employment's which form the moral
character, a master and mistress of a family ought not to continue to love each other
with passion. (269) However, this is not the attitude Wollstonecraft subscribes to in her
personal life with Fuseli, Imlay, and Godwin, where she saw no contradiction between
reason and passion.
Bronte in contrast, employs Jane to be passionate in all areas of her life. Anger is the
common emotion Bronte uses to define and develop Jane's character. Angry as a child from
the mistreatment she receives at Gateshead and Lowood Institution, as she matures, she
learns to temper her passion. Her ability to combine passion with reason enables her to
develop a strong loving relationship with Rochester and refuse St. Johns sterile marriage
proposal.
Bronte and Wollstonecraft along with many other female writers during their time have
paved the way for women to establish themselves as equal beings and rise above their
subservient status. Expressing her views rationally and emotionally, Wollstonecraft
provided women guidance to pursue further their quest for independence and acceptance.
Bronte illustrates through Jane Eyre; the road to success is not always easy, but well
worth the struggle.