Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

Mary Wollstonecraft

• 02 april 2020
• 1230003790564

Samenvatting:

"Thoughts on the Education of Daughters" is the first published work of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Published in 1787, "Thoughts" is a conduct book that offers advice on female education to the emerging British middle class. Although dominated by considerations of morality and etiquette, the text also contains basic child-rearing instructions, such as how to care for an infant.

The book encourages mothers to teach their daughters analytical thinking, self-discipline, honesty, contentment in their social position, and marketable skills (in case they should ever need to support themselves). These goals reveal Wollstonecraft's intellectual debt to John Locke; however, the prominence she affords religious faith and innate feeling distinguishes her work from his. Her aim is to educate women to be useful wives and mothers, because, she argues, it is through these roles that they can most effectively contribute to society. The predominantly domestic role Wollstonecraft outlines for women — a role that she viewed as meaningful — was interpreted by 20th-century feminist literary critics as paradoxically confining them to the private sphere.