The Role of Women in the Late 18th and Early 19th Century

Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1795) discusses the role of the average middle class white woman in the 19^th century.  She argues that this group of women are shallow, vain, and petty.  They seem to exist only to look nice and to entertain men.  She writes that women should be educated so that they will be able to make better wives and mothers.  Jane Austen seems to be advocating for something similar in her novel Pride and Prejudice (1813).  This book was written a few decades after “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.”  It features a protagonist named Elizabeth Bennet who is a middle class white woman. 

Elizabeth enjoys improving her body as well as her mind.  Wollstonecraft writes that women would not be so childish “if girls were allowed to take sufficient exercise, and not confined in close rooms till their muscles are relaxed, and their powers of digestion destroyed” (Wollstonecraft 234).  Girls would be much better and stronger women if they were allowed to improve their bodies the way boys could.  In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth walks to a friend’s house in order to see her sick sister.  Elizabeth enjoys the exercise, but the other women she encounters look down on her for this (Movie depictions of this scene can be found here and here). 

In fact, Elizabeth encounters many different individuals who are very similar to those that Mary Wollstonecraft described.  A woman named Caroline Bingley tells Elizabeth that “a woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages…she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions” (Austen 25).  Miss Bingley’s idea of a good woman is entirely made up of talents or traits that would appeal to men, but contains nothing that would help to improve a woman’s mind (This scene from the movie can be found here).  Elizabeth, however, enjoys reading, walking, and intelligent conversation.  She is much closer to Wollstonecraft’s idea of what women should strive to be and ends up having a happy and successful life because of it. 

Sources:

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2011. Print.

Wollstonecraft. Mary. “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” The Norton Anthology English Literature: The Romantic Period. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, 2012. 211-239. Print.