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Difference Between Rousseau And Wollstonecraft

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To what extent do Rousseau and Wollstonecraft agree and disagree

Wollstonecraft assumes that either there is a difference between men and women, or history has just been unfair with women. She reaches the conclusion that women’s lack of good education is the cause of misery in the world, Wollstonecraft’s gender equality ideas, crashed with Rousseau’s. Rousseau is celebrated for the social contract, and his conception of human civilisation, he is one of the best known Enlightenment figures in favour for change, even-though he was progressive, when it came to gender Rousseau was extremely conservative.

Wollstonecraft assumes that in the past, those who were the biggest and strongest, were the ones that ruled over the other, but now she declares …show more content…

This reasoning has given rise to one of the biggest challenge women’s education faces: the belief that they should only be taught skills to please men and kept innocent like children. Wollstonecraft does not think otherwise that children should be kept innocent, but this can not be said for women, as “when the epithet is plied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness”. In another words, Wollstonecraft is appealing to civic rights men own and demanding for women to share the same and the opportunity to educate themselves, because by owing this right they will at least have the chance to prove if they are worthy to “be considered as moral beings, or so weak that they must entirely subjected to the superiority faculties of men”. If Rousseau is so sure that women are inferior, why doesn’t he give them an opportunity, even if it is just to leave the discussion behind. However, if women had the same opportunities as men, according to Wollstonecraft they would be much stronger and active, and would prove men wrong on their assumptions of inferiority and that they should not be treated as

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