Naomi Wolf and Mary Wollstonecraft

Naomi Wolfe and Mary Wollstonecraft live in very different time periods. One lives in a time before the female rights movements of the 20^th century and the other after both. They both demand the education of women, their liberty from both themselves and the expectations put towards them in society. Although living in different time periods I’m sure that both women would’ve gotten along famously if they ever met. They both agree on so many subjects relating to women’s rights that I felt it necessary to write about it.

Wollstonecraft talks about society’s effect on women when she says in her book that women are, “Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.” (Wollstonecraft 71). According to Wollstonecraft, British women consider beauty above all else in society, as they treat it as their way of getting ahead in life. Although not the focus of women’s lives in our day and age, women’s pursuit of beauty is still an issue. Wolf says that, “Many are ashamed to admit that such trivial concerns—to do with physical appearance, bodies, faces, hair, clothes—matter so much.” (Wolf 9).

Their views on beauty’s role in women’s lives do seem parallel but what is more outstanding is their opinion on how we can move onward and progress the rights of women. Both of them believe in a system of education that promotes women as equals to men and counters the negativity directed at women. Wollstonecraft says that, ”Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.” (Wollstonecraft 84). Where Wollstonecraft talks of education, Wolfe talks about a change in mentality,

“A woman wins by giving herself and other women permission—to eat; to be sexual; to age; to wear overalls, a paste tiara, a Balenciaga gown, a secondhand opera cloak, or combat boots; to cover up or to go practically naked; to do whatever we choose in following—or ignoring—our own aesthetic.” (Wolf 290)

            They are two authors that have never met and never will. They’ve both impacted the people around them and both are heavy contributors to the women’s rights movement of the 70’s and 80’s.