Rousseau and Wollstonecraft on Women

Women, who make up in estimates, one-half of humanity, have always been a source of fascination. From the early days of Plato, the roles of women have been debated, what were their proper roles, and could they work beside men, in areas distinctly characterized to be men’s work? Jean Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft, both writers of the 18th century, take it upon themselves to write about how to achieve the ideal women through education. However, their relations stop there, for both recommend different forms of education, and both envision diverging views of how the ideal women functions. For the 18th century, Rousseau may have perhaps expressed the common outlook on women for the time, and Wollstonecraft may have appeared more revolutionary, but neither expressed views on women that would be socially sanctioned at present times in the western world. Before analyzing the works of Rousseau and Wollstonecraft on women, it is necessary to understand the basic premises of their arguments. In the chapter, “Sophie, or Women” found in Rousseau’s book, “Women, Love, and Family,” Rousseau states that the main function of a woman is to please her male counterpart, and her education should be situated towards that goal. He believed that because by nature, both genders are inherently different, they naturally had different duties. For Rousseau, education was to serve the function of providing that knowledge to perform those duties prescribed to the individual sexes, and from thereon, was to consist of nothing more. Wollstonecraft, who writes her piece after Rousseau, criticizes Rousseau’s work and assumes a different approach in educating women in “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” For her, she believed that to perfect the women, women must be educated under the same guidelines as their male peers. Only then, would most women give up their vanity and propensity to seek desirability. With an equal education, women would become spouses that are