Personal happiness and social obligation are always on the opposing end of the spectrum. They can also be one in the same. Literatures written over time express social obligation over personal happiness or personal happiness over social obligation, such works include “The Love Suicides of Amijima” by Chikamatsu Monzaemon and an excerpt from Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A vindication of the rights of woman”. These two stories are distinctly different in which they show more favoritism towards. Monzaemon’s play has a perpetual sadness issued by the fact that personal happiness caused the downfall of many characters. Wollstonecraft’s on the other hand centers around how personal happiness is better over social obligation because the social obligation of woman is what will cause their downfall into being nothing more than lessee beings than their male counterparts. These opposing forces leave major conflicts, conundrums and despair in their place when left with a choice between the two. What is personal happiness? Personal happiness is when you can lay down on the grass in white jeans, feeling the sun while not worrying about stains. Personal happiness is when you find the most alluring and profound beauty in all the negative spaces of your life and mentality; it’s beating your own record in a game, getting the person of your dreams, the bonus and promotion from your job. Personal happiness is your happiness, it is what makes you happy, what makes your heart yearn for the next
There are women all around the world who are being continually treated as objects, and the majority of them are being forced to live lives that aren’t their own, lives that were devised for them. Elizabeth, a woman in the short story, “The Leaving” by Budge Wilson, was treated her entire life like a maid; she even began to believe that her only purpose was to wait on her family and get the daily chores done. Not once in her entire life was she ever thanked for the hours of labor she completed from day to day in order to benefit her family. On the other hand, Samia from the short story, “Another Evening at the Club” by Alifa Rifaat, was forced to go along with an arranged marriage, the man she married being wealthy and from a well-known, high-reputation family. However, during this marriage, Samia makes a mistake by accusing an innocent girl of something that Samia later realizes she did herself.
The main argument was woman can everything man can do. The purpose it was written was the failure of the French Constitution to give woman rights. Wollstonecraft saying that woman need to educate their children and be the best wife to their husband as can be. Wollstonecraft wrote, “But few parents are willing to receive the respectful affection of their offspring on such terms. They demand blind obedience, because they do not merit a reasonable service: and to render these demands of weakness and ignorance more binding, a mysterious sanctity is spread round the most arbitrary principle;”(CH 11) (Pg 2) Wollstonecraft is advocating that if woman do not have an education they will feel like they don’t have anything quality to teach her children, so then her children will not respect her.
This is the major object Wollstonecraft recognizes concerning why women are secondary to men: every side of their background from the instant they arrive the world is positioned toward making them feeble, passive, and reliant on upon men. Women are entertained to only want to be attractive so they can appeal men. They take pleasure in their own humbleness and weakened physical strength. They partake in covetousness with other ladies. Since they are so restricted and restrained to the secluded domain, they become absorbed on no other responsibilities.
These two literary works captured how women really felt about their everyday lives. They displayed that women were often unhappy and felt unfulfilled regardless that they were living the lifestyle
They say that you will never truly understand the beauty of life until you experience it yourself. You won’t be able to discover what it is that you love until you have done the things that you have imagined. You would get a large variety of answers if you asked everyone what the definition of happiness was. However, they would most likely be something similar to living a long, healthy, and blissful life. Our own meanings of happiness are bound to be diverse because we’re all so different.
She also gives an example of a social contract between a man and a woman. In this social contract she states that every thing should be equal and in the case of a divorce everything should be divided equally. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Wollstonecraft has similar views to those of de Gouges. However Wollstonecraft’s concerns were with the rights of women against the claims of society and law. “To render this practicable, day schools, for particular ages, should be established by government, in which boys and girls might be educated together.”
Mary proposes that women should be let free to do anything they need to do to reach their specific goals. “... the only method of leading women to fulfil their peculiar duties is to free them from all restraint …”. Wollstonecraft also believes that men and women should be able to do the same things and pursue the same goals if they desire. “...both sexes must ast from the same principle…”. She had reached all these conclusions by her experience and reason.
Station Eleven and I: What is Happiness? Happiness is being around your self-chosen family with a career in a profession that simultaneously gives you purpose and help improve our society. It is the feeling of comfort and being considerate of others. The novel Station Eleven has many different definitions of happiness as defined by various characters within the book.
She supported the belief that motherhood in itself was not derogatory or damaging. But when women do not acquire proper formal education, because of then duty as mother or wives then they suffer from loss of self-esteem and dignity. Wollstonecraft states that women should not sacrifice themselves at the altar of motherhood. Wollstonecraft says, “To be a mother a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few woman possess, who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands.
Station Eleven and I: What is Happiness? Happiness is being around your self-chosen family with a career in a professional that simultaneously gives you purpose and help improve our society. It is the feeling of comfort and being considerate of others. The novel Station Eleven has many different definitions of happiness as defined by various characters within the book.
This is because when Wollstonecraft discussed about the upbringing of children, she focused her discussion on the roles of women primarily. To clarify, when discussing about caring for children, Wollstonecraft seemed to hint that the ability to care for children, belonged to women by nature. This contradicted her points not only regarding femininity but also natural rights. If women, as emphasised by Wollstonecraft, were not distinctive in nature then men, then why were women expected to care for the child? This question also introduces a final contradiction to Wollstonecraft because if there is no distinctive nature between men and women, then how was the institution of marriage supposed to remain intact?
In her document she claims that, “Women must be allowed to found their virtue on knowledge, which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same pursuits as men”(Wollstonecraft, On National Education). Wollstonecraft dynamically argued that if women had the right to study, they’d be able to prove they aren’t inferior by ignorance and low desires. Despite the fact that these four philosophers had contrasting ideas on how to enhance daily life, they all concentrated the same central idea. They each contributed something unique to their society, which has influenced our daily
In the book of vindication of the right of a woman, Wollstonecraft brings out clearly the roles of a woman in her society and how it has led to oppression of women (Wollstonecraft 22). Wollstonecraft believes that men and women are equal given the same environment and empowerment, women can do anything a man can do. In her society, education for women is only aimed at making her look pleasing to men. Women are treated as inferior being and used by men as sex objects. Wollstonecraft believed that the quality of mind of women is the same with that of men, and therefore women should not be denied a chance for formal education that will empower them to be equal with men.
… Suicide is more respectable.” Virginia Woolf admired Austen in some respect but not in the sense of literature, her critic of Jane Austen was that “The chief reason why she does not appeal to us as some inferior writers do is that she has too little of the rebel in her composition, too little discontent, and of the vision with is the cause and the reward of discontent. She seems at times to have accepted life too calmly as she found it, and to anyone who reads her biographer or letters it is plain that life showed her a great deal that was smug, commonplace, and, in a bad sense of the word, artificial…. It happens very seldom, but still it does happen, that we feel that the play of her spirit has been hampered by such obstacles; that she believes in them as well as laughs at them, and that she is debarred from the most profound insight into human nature by the respect which she pays to some unnatural convention.” WORK CITED "Jane Austen.
Happiness has nothing to do with your own personal gain because guess what it’s not all about