Feminisms

In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Mary Wollstonecraft's Thought's on the Education of Daughters and Vindication of the Rights of Women, there is a wealth of reaction to the education practices and behavior expectations laid out in the conduct manuals. Wollstonecraft's reactions are seen by some as extreme, whereas Austen taught the practices on the same page which she made fun of them.

Fanny Price, a young woman who was not a part of the country gentry, found herself immersed in it's traditions and practices at the age of ten. She was sent off by her family to live there with her wealthy relatives. Her mother had hoped that this would give her the opportunity to learn proper manners. She met immediately "the Miss Bertrams [who, in the country] continued to excercise their memories, practise their duets, and grow tall and womanly" (p.37, Austen). The Miss Bertrams noticed almost as quickly that their young cousin had not been as well educated as themselves. With this realization they told their mother, "my cousin cannot tell the principal rivers in Russia-or she had never heard of Asia Minor-or does she know the difference between water-colours and crayons!...Did you ever hear of anything so stupid?"(p. 35).

As Austen has the Bertrams posing this question, she is teaching her readers what a proper young woman needs to know; painting, drawing, and geography seem to be essential knowledge at this time. But at the same time it seems that Austen could be poking fun at their trivial, useless education.

Of what real importance is understanding the difference between art mediums to a woman who will one day run a household?

As Miss Price grew with the influences of polite society she did become a lady. This process and the important virtues that she learned are shown to the reader. On example of this is when we see the importance of Fanny's leisure time. She was scolded by her Aunt Norris for "idling away all the evening upon a sofa" (p.79). She was then offered a basket of sewing materials so the she could make use of her spare time. Later in the book, when all of the young people of Mansfield Park have a large amount of idle time to fill, that theater is considered a productive way to occupy their hours. This issue of spare time, like that of education, is one where Austen can teach her readers proper ways to occupy themselves. Simlutaneously, these activities seem trivial and as pointless as wasting away on the couch.

There are moments in the novel where Austen is more directly poking fun at the rules of her own society. She remarks, when Edumund is left by Mary Crawford to join the other young ladies in displaying their accomplishments, that he was "left looking after her in ecstacy and admiration of all of her many virtues, from her obliging manners down to her light and graceful tread" (p. 112). It seems a little silly that this young man would look at a young woman in ecstacy over her manners. I can see that he may find her beautiful and that he may be pleased to be in the presence of such a well-mannered lady, but ecstacy seems to be extreme vocabulary, in reference to manners.

Another example of this direct mocking is found when Julia is forced to walk with Mrs. Rushworth as they toured the gardens at Southerton.

"The politeness which she had been brought up to practise as a duty, made it impossible for her to escape; while the want of that higher species of self-command, that just consideration of others, that knowledge of her own heart, the principle of right which had not formed any essential part of her education, made her miserable under it" (p. 94).

It seems this lack of understanding, is where Mary Wollstonecraft's concerns are coming from.

Wollstonecraft's strongest sentiments center around women's education and morality. She argues that if women "are not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue" (p. 371, Mellor). She acknowledges that the woman's sphere of influence is in the household; work such as raising children and performing the duties of hostess are what a woman needs to do for her husband. At one point in her work, "On the Education of Daughters", she says, "No employment of the mind is sufficient excuse for neglecting domestic duties" (p. 370). To this ideas she adds that these duties and the improvement of the mind are not pursuits which are "incompatible".

Along the same lines of domestic and mental improvement, Wollstonecraft contends that women cannot be expected to cooperate with these duties, which society imparts, unless they know why they ought to be (p. 371). This is where her work connects directly with the trouble that Julia Bertram was having at Southerton in Mansfield Park. Insuffiecient education was leaving women of the time with only a conduct manual education. Their true virtues, beyond beauty and chastity, those which require mental ability are not being developed. She includes with this, perhaps to enhance the appeal of her arguments to men, her belief that "the more understanding women acquire, the more they will be attatched to their duty" (p. 372).

In Wollstonecraft's perception these conduct manuals are insufficient because they fail to provide women with the information they need. They serve merely as a

"false system of education, gathered from the books written... by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers" (p. 373, Mellor).

The woman who has only been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much effect on her husband's heart, when they are seen everyday. (p. 384)

Edmund Bertram regards Mary Crawford's manners and accomplishments in Mansfield Park in this same fashion which cannot last. Wollstonecraft believes that the allure of simple accomplishments is emphemeral; she wants to alter the standard curriculum for women, so that they gain knowledge that will enhance their reason and understanding. She sees that "over stretched sensibility naturally relaxes the other powers of the mind, and prevents intellect from attaining that soverignity which it ought to attain to render a rational creature useful to others, and content with its own station" (p. 395). She wants young women to have an education which will allow them to be partners with their husbands, to be compainions, not merely servant and master. She feels that a developed sense of reason will be a more valuable characteristic, and thus will have a positive impact on women's lives and marital relations.

Austen's characters are usually a female who is, "rational and possessed of a refined sensibility,... [who] learns, by regulating her expectations and desires, to conform to traditional conduct-book manners and and embody the passive virtues" expected by society (p. 189, Stevenson). Despite the fact that Austen is making fun of their trivial behaviors, she teaches her readers that these are the values acceptable by society. Contrary to these methods, Wollstonecraft is concerned about "How much feebleness of constitution has been acquired, by forming a false idea of female excellence" (p. 112, Jones). Women in her mind are deserving of praise, but she feels that conduct manuals and methods taught by thier authors and others like Austen, are perpetuating the degraded concept of a desireable female.

Her reasoning behind works like "Vindications" is that, until "society be differently constitiuted, much can not be expected from education" (p. 381, Matlak). With these works she is attempting to change society, so that women may be given the right to an equal education. She also hopes that women will not perpetually be subjected to conduct manual type regulations on socially acceptable behavior.

Return to the opening page of this site.

Take a visit to the University of Texas' Jane Austen home page.

You can also visit a web page created by Jodi Thompson, another student in my class. Her focus on on Mary Wollstonecraft.