Reflections on Vindication

Reflections on Vindication: Burke vis a vis Wollstonecraft.

In Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke states that one
should "Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery
for future revolutions." (22). No doubt Burke's statement was a
reflection on England's own Glorious Revolution of 1688 that resulted
in the deposition of James II, and the accession of his daughter Mary
II and her husband William III. James's overt Roman Catholicism, his
suspension of the legal rights of dissenters, and the prospect of a
Catholic heir to the throne had brought discontent to a head, and seven
eminent Englishmen invited the Protestant William of Orange to bring an
army to redress the nation's grievances. James's supporters turned
against him and he fled to France. The Convention Parliament asked
William and Mary to rule jointly and set the monarchy in a subordinate
position in regards to the English Parliament.
In contrast the French Revolution of 1789 was nothing but a series of
bloody revolutions against the French monarchy. The causes of the
revolution were, by Burke's simple gauge of misrule, reasonable. A
large portion of the peasantry was starving to death due to national
mismanagement and hence they no longer supported the feudal lords who
governed them. The efforts of the regime in 1787 to increase taxes
levied on the privileged classes initiated another public relations
crisis. In response to mounting pressure, Louis XVI convened the
Estates-General, made up of clergy, nobility and the Third Estate
(commoners). The king grudgingly concurred in the formation of the
National Assembly, but rumors of an "aristocratic conspiracy" created
pandemonium in the streets of Paris and ended with a mob taking the
Bastille on July 14, 1789. That October the king was kidnapped and
dethroned.
Burke disapproved of the French Revolution for its leaders'
precipitous actions and its anti-aristocratic bloodshed. Though he no
doubt recognized that the French people were badly governed, and
governmental misrule was the reason he had supported the American
Revolution, he was greatly alarmed at their violent behavior. He states
in his Letters on Regicide (1797), "The blood of man should have never
been shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our
family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind.
The rest is vanity; the rest is crime." (qtd. in Seldes 59). It seems
he saw the French revolutionaries as simply being an angry mob without
leadership and definitive goals, other than seeking vengeance through
blood.
Burke's work, a defense of traditional institutions, gradualism, and
conservative ideology, sparked an open debate. The main authors of the
liberal side of the debate included the Americanized Thomas Paine, who
wrote the Rights of Man (1791), and Mary Wollstonecraft, who authored A
Vindication of the Rights of Women (1790), and its precursor, A
Vindication of the Rights of Men (1792). Wollstonecraft's A Vindication
of the Rights of Men was written in direct response to Burke's
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men was the first of
the liberal responses to Burke's scathing attack of the French
Revolution, and it was, in turn, a direct attack on Burke himself.
Wollstonecraft's opening statement of "It is not necessary, with
courtly insincerity, to apologize to you for thus intruding on your
precious time..." (129), is the opening stab of what is tantamount to a
four-paragraph attack on the character and motivations of Burke in a
none-to-succinct 392 words. During which she continually states that
she has no need for politeness, any amount of deference, or for the
flowers of rhetoric. She, as she states in her own words, will "...not
attempt to follow you [Mr. Burke] through the 'horse-way and foot
path'..." (129). No, here Wollstonecraft is using Shakespeare and
rhetoric not to build up an argument, as Burke does, but instead to
tear down her enemy as viciously as she would have his beloved monarchy
torn down.
After the 392 word introduction Wollstonecraft proceeds in making her
case, stating that because man is rational, he has a right to liberty
and freedom, and that due to the idea of social rank "...man has been
changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he was
born..." (Vindication of Men 131). Her ideals of liberty are expressed
more fully with her paragraph here:

"The birthright of man, to give you, Sir, a short definition of this
right, is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is
compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is
united in a social compact, and the continued existence, of that
compact." (Vindication of Men 130).

However, if one has read Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in
France, one would note the exact same sentiment with "If civil society
be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is
made become his right." Furthermore he states that the people "...have
a right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of making
their industry fruitful. They have the right to the acquisitions of
their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their
offspring...What ever each man can separately do, without trespassing
upon others, he has a right to do for himself, and he has a right to a
fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill
and force, can do in his favor." (43-4).
There is no disagreement here between Wollstonecraft and Burke (Or
should I say John Locke and Burke) , indeed it seems Burke is expanding
on Wollstonecraft's definition and not, the other way around. Here
Burke has stated, in agreement with Wollstonecraft, that man has a
right to the benefits of the society he creates, but Wollstonecraft
states that those rights are inherent whereas Burke states those rights
are endowed by the creation of social compact. If society is made for
the benefit of man, those benefits by creation are his.
However, Burke thought haste in the realm of reform led to an even
greater injustice than deliberate inaction. Which is why he
pragmatically chooses not to support the French Revolution. His
description of the bloodshed of the King and Queen uses the words;
sleep, startles, cried, save, flight, fidelity, dead, cut down, cruel,
ruffians, assassins, reeking, blood, a hundred strokes of bayonets,
persecuted, naked, murderers, children, forced, abandoned, swimming in
blood, polluted, massacre, scattered, limbs, mutilated, carcasses,
unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous, slaughter, beheaded, spears,
horrid, shrilling, frantic, abused, vilest, bitterness, death, slow,
torture...et ceteria (Reflections 60). These select words from a
description of only the kidnapping of the monarchs family is in
actuality a foreshadowing of their deaths. These words are also a
description of the horror of the French Revolution, horrors that Burke
believed could be avoided through gradualism.
The bane of Wollstonecraft's real argument is that Burke denies the
right to change ones society, and since Wollstonecraft's ultimate goal
is the equality of men and women, as we will see in her next essay A
Vindication of the Rights of Women, this simply will not due. The main
thrust of her argument is found through her attack of Burke's
aforementioned support for the American Revolution.
Wollstonecraft writes, "But on what principle Mr. Burke could defend
the American independence, I cannot conceive, for the whole tenor of
his plausible arguments settles slavery on an everlasting foundation."
(Vindication of Men 131). Here the argument is that Burke does not
allow for change in government, society, nor tradition. Burke
recognized the need for reform in the American Colonies and how the
lack of reform forced the American colonists to revolt. "A state
without the means of some change," he wrote, "is without the means of
its conservation." (Reflections 17).
Wollstonecraft has stated that Burke is completely against all change,
she has stated it unequivocally with her sentences that he endorses the
slave trade, or at least would make it impossible to change. So hence
he would either be a bigot or an idiot, or both. But Burke has
expressly stated that change is sometimes necessary, but should not
come at the cost of the rights of social compacts. The French had few
rights before the revolution, and fewer during the reign of terror, and
strangely enough, it took another monarch such as Napoleon to restore
order.
With each accusation made by Wollstonecraft, there is an equal retort
from Burke's work that belays her complaint. Where then is the rift?
The anger is entirely on her side...why? Well, Wollstonecraft believed
that because man was rational, authority should rest on the grounds of
justice and reason. Hence she deplored inherited rank and therefore
believed that inherited rank should be eliminated. Moreover, since
reason is the natural state of men, she believed that the French
Revolution would quickly establish a republic that would endorse the
rights of everyone. She confused simple hate for a monarch that starved
his people with an intellectual movement towards social equality.
Furthermore she misunderstands Burke's statements about England's
institutions and constitutional monarchy. She believes he is saying
that they are perfect in the abstract, whereas he is realistically
saying the English approach is preferable to the French approach, which
history does show produced years of bloodbath, many inept governments,
and one dictator who tried to take over the world.
Since her ultimate goal of sexual equality is based on her firm belief
on human reason, on can only imagine her despair when she traveled to
France and saw the unstable mess of the revolution. Not only was the
French Revolution not an intellectual movement towards social equality,
but it took a step backwards when in 1791 the French Minister of
Education proposed that all females be educated to become housewives
and mothers. She soon wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women in
response.
Wollstonecraft's focus in A Vindication of the Rights of Women was
primarily equal to that of Rights of Men, in that because human beings
are rational they will create a rational society. In essence, that a
social compact will be created because man is rational and as such must
see the inherent rights of mankind. Furthermore, since humans are by
nature rational beings, society should promote the growth of the all
individuals. Wollstonecraft challenged the cultural tradition that
women had no sense and were only creatures of sensation. Women were
viewed as emotional and less rational then men, hence they understood
less about moral ethics and logic, and as such were only useful as
domestic companions. Wollstonecraft argues that women were not
receiving an education equal to that of men, so how can women be
expected to be mans equal? Women became what their patriarchal society
wants them to be because they are trained to be that way. She argues,
"Novels, music, poetry, and gallantry, all tend to make women creatures
of sensation, and their character is thus formed in the mould of folly"
(Rights of Women 186).
She continues with the logical argument that since men and women are
held to the same moral and legal standards by the government, church,
and society, they must possess an equal amount of moral and rational
capacities. Therefore, the cultural view of women's inferiority and
subsequent subservience to men is a position thrust upon women, and is
not their natural state.
"Contending for the rights of women..." she wrote, "...my main
argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared
by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress
of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be
inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice."
Simply stated, women have equal intellects, to not allow their growth
is morally reprehensible, a denigration of the truth, and slows down
the progress of mankind.
In an attempt to make her arguments more palatable to her readers she
notes that women would be better companions for their mates if they
were educated in a similar manner to men. She also states that an
educated woman would be a better wife, mother, and citizen. Although
this was probably not enough of an incentive for many readers,
especially since she also called for additionally radical steps to
sexual equality such as the female, and an economically universal,
right to vote, and equal financial and governmental power among the
sexes. Also, she may have insulted many readers by commenting on the
intellectually brutal demeanors of men, and with statements that
society was training women to be cunning, mean, and selfish since they
had no real powers other than the ability to apply social
pressure.
Burke may have conceded some of these points, although that is entirely
my conjecture. One can say without trepidation that if he did agree
with any of Wollstonecraft's points, he would have advocated a slow
implementation of social change to avoid the disasters he saw inherent
in the French Revolution, namely, the rule of emotion through an angry
mob, without a practical concept of what they were changing, or what to
replace it with. Or as he said in a speech regarding the American
Colonies, "Man acts from motives relative to his interests; and not on
metaphysical speculations." (qtd. in Seldes 59).
Finally I would like to ponder out loud, or in this case on paper, on
Wollstonecraft's travels to France in 1792 to witness the effects of
the French Revolution. She herself then witnessed blood spilt in the
streets during the recklessness that was the infancy of the Reign of
Terror. She was also witness to King Louis XVI death march en route to
his trial for treason. I would have to say that this was, at least
partially, responsible for her descent into depression and suicidal
tendencies. She believed deeply and with great sincerity in the French
Revolution. And when she saw the dismal, bloody, failure it had in
reality been, she, I believe, partially lost her grip on reality, and
became dependent on the questionable male counterparts that would lead
to her slow demise in the public eye, and her eventual death in
1797.

Works Cited
Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. 1790. 10 June,
2002
http://www.pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/ref.pdf.
Matlak, Richard and Anne K. Mellor, eds. British Literature
1280-1830.
USA: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1996.
Burke, Edmund. "Reflections on the Revolution in France." Matlack
9-19.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. "A Vindication of the Rights of Men." Matlack
20-24.
---. "A Vindication of the Rights of Women." Matlack 366-412.
Seldes, George. Ed. The Great Thoughts. New York: Ballantine Books,
1985.
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 3rd
Edition, Volume 2.
New York: W.W. Norton &; Co., 1974
Wollstonecraft, Mary. "A Vindication of the Rights of Men." Abrams
128-133
---. "A Vindication of the Rights of Women." Abrams 163-192