Rousseau Motherhood

Mothers need education like babies need milk

Men incorrectly view women as naturally weak and therefore only capable of serving the male citizens, “being the greatest charm of society”, and not needing any masculine qualities like education or physical strength (Rousseau, 262). Women are ill taught by men to believe these social stigmas assigned to them, which are obedience, chastity to the family, and subservience to men, their family, and society. This view of motherhood is thought to benefit the men, where as women will be their pleasing servants as wives, their children’s tutor after motherhood, and their chaste civil companion. But to this view, which Rousseau wrote a chauvinistic book about, Wollstonecraft wrote an objective book against.
Wollstonecraft argues that women are not naturally weak nor are they confined to their natural role of being a mother, women are just as capable of being mothers as citizens, but they need an education. While Rousseau views the social function of motherhood to be the only duty women are capable of doing to contribute to society, a role which requires little education because he believes it to be inherent, Wollstonecraft endeavors to prove that women are equally competent citizens as men and mothers have the same natural rights to education and citizenship as men.
This male dominated society restrains women from reaching her rational, intellectual, and human rights. By denying women the freedom to “exercise their bodies and minds”, men are not allowing women to “acquire that mental activity so necessary in the maternal character” (Wollstonecraft 221). Olympe de Gouges also wrote a book on men’s need for a social contract of fidelity between man and women. Men see women as able to corrupt society with illegitimate children but de Gouges stresses the importance of compassionate human rights and a mother’s natural rights to her child and his natural father regardless of the marriage contract between the man and the women. De Gouges says that if man and woman had equal experiences, in society, education, and rights, they would be united and therefore able to “make a good household” (de Gouges 5). Therefore, men are the reason for women’s current state of folly and ignorance because they deny women the opportunity to use their natural capacities, talents, and intellect; all characteristics mothers need to make rational decisions for herself and her child who will become a future citizen of society.
But Rousseau’s folly is given solutions by de Gouges and Wollstonecraft. Since
“men are unwilling to place women in situations proper to enable them to acquire sufficient understanding to know how even to nurse their babes” they should be warned that “the weakness of the mother will be visited on the children!” (Wollstonecraft 220). But “to guard against the errors of ignorance, [women] should be taught the elements of anatomy and medicine, not only to enable them to take proper care of their own health, but to make them rational nurses of their infants, parents, and husband. Likewise proper in a domestic view, to make women acquainted with the anatomy of the min, by allowing the sexes to associate together (Wollstonecraft, 221). For women, the family “might also be called a state” so if men are to be prepared for the civil state of society through education, women should too (Wollstonecraft 221). Wollstonecraft’s view on motherhood is to show that mothers are women who are best able to contribute positively to society when they have been prepared with knowledge for their role.

Rousseau believes that motherhood is a duty of nature; women owe chastity to her husband so he is secure in his belief that the child is his and women only need a bare minimum education to entertain the husband and guide the child till he is of age to attend school. He believes that women should be educated relative to men so that they can better “please them, be useful to them, make themselves loved and honored by them, educate them when young, care for them when frown, counsel them, console them, and make like agreeable and sweet to them-these are the duties of women at all times, and what should be taught to them from their infancy” (Rousseau, 263). As the weaker sex women should be confined to the private sphere of tending to the house, family, and young. Education is unnecessary and moreover, useless since Rousseau believes that women are incapable of comprehending abstract reasoning.
Wollstonecraft writes to prove women are equally responsible and capable in contributing to society as men. They were stigmatized and molded by their society, the environment in which they live and learn in, to believe that they are inferior and should naturally be denied education. Wollstonecraft tells women that they are naturally destined to be mothers but not to be slaves to a patriarchal family or society, and that to counter and reform their current situation, women need to put down their mirrors and step away from the shallow world of fashion and into the world of intellect to seek to cultivate their talents. As a firm supporter of the natural capacities of women to learn and think independently, Wollstonecraft blames society for sheltering women and treating them like girls all their lives without a fair shot at education and cultivation of their minds over their bodies. For their current behavior, women cannot and should not be criticized because their folly is the result of “the passions that occupy those uncivilized beings who have not learned to think” because they were allowed proper education, experience, or principles (Wollstonecraft, 234). On the topic of Rousseau’s fear that women’s ability to give men illegitimate children, Wollstonecraft reasons that with proper education, women will respect themselves and understand that “the married women, breaks a most sacred engagement, and becomes a cruel mother when she is a false and faithless wife” (Wollstonecraft, 165).
An uneducated girl who is not properly education is “polluted for ever” and violates “the duty of respecting herself” (165). If a women can not respect herself, she will not function to the best of her abilities and therefore she will not respect society and customs like the sanctity of marriage, therefore men have more to fear in the chastity of a uneducated women than in an equally educated counterpart.
Wollstonecraft tells society that should they educate women they would be educating women into become better mothers, citizens, and wives. Wollstonecraft asked that the “enlightened nation try to bring [women}] back to nature, and their duty; and allow them to share the advantaged of education and government with man, see whether they will become better, as they grow wiser and become free” (208-209). She argues that women cannot be further injured in this test because man does not have the power to “render [women] more insignificant than they are at present”, since women have already been so debased and degraded
(209).

To avoid any distinction, “girls and boys, should meet together” to be educated since “virtues of both sexes are founded on reason…[and] mutual duties” which education and experience can set the foundation for (209, 206). The reason for “women’s notorious fondness of pleasure” is because they lack judgment and understanding (207). “The wife, mother, and human creature, were all swallowed up by the factitious character which an improper education and the selfish vanity of beauty had produced” (215). Wollstonecraft warns men in a biblical way “to render mankind more virtuous and happier, and to render the social compact truly equitable, and in order to spread those enlightening principles, which alone can meliorate the fate of man, women must be allowed to found their virtue on knowledge”, not beauty and vanity which requires that they be “educated by the same pursuits as men” (216).
Not only should they be educated equally but they should, in de Gouges’s view belong in the world together so that they may “cooperate in harmony” (5). The ignorance bestowed upon women was the act of corrupt government, which took away “the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights” the human race, and declared them to be reserved for men only. The natural rights are for humans to fully possess and cultivate one’s intellectual faculties and the rights to equality in society. The pure fact that women are of “the sex that is as superior in beauty as it is in courage during the suffering of maternity” should be recognized and exalted by humankind. The very act of motherhood should be respected and therefore, mothers can be married women and can be unmarried women yet both deserve every right to honor for they are mothers. De Gouges says, “marriage is the tomb of trust and love” therefore if a married women gives bastards to her husband it is because society warped her through a lack of education and affection in her environment of paternal rule, and therefore the children should not suffer for their mother’s act which was affected by a corrupt society, and the children should still be entitled to receive from their mother, “the right to the name and the wealth of their father” (page 5).
Rousseau wrongly believes that a difference in physical strength equates to a difference in mental capability and to this Wollstonecraft argues against and de Gouges offers a solution on. Rousseau believes that men and women have different roles in society, men are in the public civil light and women are in the private sphere of motherhood. Wollstonecraft attributes mothers with higher regards than Rousseau and de Gouges supports that line of though, offering her opinion that women are “born free and live equal to man in her rights” and “in the eyes of the law” are able to give “her children the right to the name and the wealth of their father” (The Rights of Women, Olympe de Gouges, article 1,6, and page 5). Both Wollstonecraft and de Gouges believe that the first step to endeavor to promote equality among women and men, must start with equal education opportunities. If women are not able to cultivate their minds past their labor of motherhood, there is nothing left for them after “the short-lived bloom of beauty is over” (Wollstonecraft, 15).
Rousseau sees “motherhood” as women’s sole duty in life where as Wollstonecraft sees it as an extra virtue and responsibility which women were blessed with and which makes them that much more, if not equal to, superior than men in their contributions to civil society.
Rousseau only recognizes man’s rights and needs as citizens to have an obedient and chaste wife and to be formally educated in order to be most productive and capable in civil society but does not extend this right to women and justifies the absence of the extension due to the weak nature of women. Yet, mothers are responsible for the birth of future citizens of our society, for the education of children before they are formally educated in school, and for the role as wife in their family. At this time period, mothers were not individuals allowed to hone their talents and capabilities; they were only servants of the patriarchal family. Wollstonecraft comments that women, as they are to become mothers, have the same natural rights to education, which are given to men. Rousseau justified denying women these rights through his book Emile, in which he says that women only need the bare minimum education to banter and amuse men through “developing their personal charm”, and they don’t need much education in order to teach their children before they are properly educated in school (264). “Since the body is born, before the soul, the fist culture ought to be that of the body”; women are thus able to teach their children of the body without having any education themselves (264). Rousseau also says that a good mother has to provide “the early education of men” their sons, “thus the whole education of women ought to be relative to men” (265).
Wollstonecraft questions, how can women be expected to give her child “the first lesson of independence” when they themselves are dependent on men (237)? Wollstonecraft criticizes and satirizes how “it would be as wise to expect corn from tares, or figs from thistles, as that a foolish ignorant woman should be a good mother” (238). Good mothers are the products of educated experience independent women who were able to cultivate their own knowledge and have an understanding of the world in which they are to give birth to children, the future of society.
Wollstonecraft’s point on how husbands and wives need sentiments in common, confidence in each other’s fidelity, and tender natural intimacy, is similar to de Gouges’ point on how reason and humanity need to join together so that women who are wronged by men have authority and rights by law to: an indemnity equal to his wealth” but more importantly that there be a strong social contract between man and women to share and live in harmony together (page 5). Wollstonecraft reasons, “Children will never be properly educated till friendship subsists between parents. Virtue flies from a house divided against itself- and a whole legion of devils take up their residence there” (Wollstonecraft, 240).
Rousseau shows his opinion of a good mother through his depiction of Sophie, the ideal woman, in his book Emile. The psychological traits given to Sophie are those of submission, gentle subservience, and dependence. “Women are especially constituted to please men” (Rousseau, 260). Women were to sacrifice themselves “in order to form conventional ties”, marriage, “man and women are not and ought not to be constitutes in the same way…it follows that they ought not to have the same education” (Rousseau, 261). Rousseau does not properly justify the reason for women’s need to unnaturally sacrifice her mind for keeping the socially artificial constitution of marriage together and de Gouges would probably argue that women have already sacrificed their bodies to giving birth to, as Wollstonecraft would call, the future citizens of society.
Since “public virtue is only an aggregate of private”, our children and future citizens need a pure and natural foundation of family values, wide range of knowledge, and true familial experiences, which teach them moral rationality (Wollstonecraft, 239). In my opinion, if you start with children brought up in a good family, good virtues have been instilled and therefore you get good citizens. The best citizens are the open-minded, rational, objective citizens. If the men in the political public sphere of society would listen to the righteous cries of the constricted and constrained women, they would see that Wollstonecraft, de Gouges, and Okin have valid points which if affected and considered would benefit society as a whole. Men and women, Fathers and Mothers, boys and girls, should live in natural harmony together, sharing the roles, duties, and rights of the public political civil sphere and private neither paternal nor maternal familial sphere. In order “to render women truly useful members of society…{women should have] understandings cultivated on a large scale, to acquire a rational affection of their country, founded on knowledge, because it is obvious that we are little interested about what we do not understand” (Wollstonecraft, 239). Educate or don’t expect or judge. Those who are ignorant should neither be judged nor relied upon for they have no background knowledge nor previous experience. Speaking as a women endowed with rationality, instinct, and reason, I would want to be a good mother in order to raise rational, capable, intellectual children who can continue on in life and society to affect productive changes when I am gone and no longer able to cultivate my mind.