Effeminate Edmund Burke and the masculine voice of Mary Wollstonecraft

This article focuses on the gendered and nationalist rhetorical strategies Mary Wollstonecraft used in her work The Vindication of the Rights of Man which was written as an open letter of response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France . While a number of scholars note Wollst...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of gender studies Vol. 28; no. 7; pp. 789 - 801
Main Author O'Donnell, Katherine
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 03.10.2019
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Attention
Burke
Catholics
effeminate
John Bull
masculine
Masculinity
Middle class
Nationalism
Politics
public sphere
Voice
Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Womens rights
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Summary:This article focuses on the gendered and nationalist rhetorical strategies Mary Wollstonecraft used in her work The Vindication of the Rights of Man which was written as an open letter of response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France . While a number of scholars note Wollstonecraft's adoption of a masculine voice in her systematic feminizing of Burke, this article also pays attention to the ways in which Wollstonecraft impugns Burke with the taints of being crypto-Catholic, Irish, and quasi-French. We notice how Wollstonecraft's masculine voice is rational, combative, righteously passionate, middle-class, patriotically English and critically Protestant. We compare the fashioning of Wollstonecraft's voice with contemporary political caricatures of John Bull and the cartoon depictions of Edmund Burke that appeared as Wollstonecraft was composing her VRM. Wollstonecraft's VRM gained her considered attention and her critique of Burke's character, (and what this article claims is her misreading of his aesthetic treatise), have been remarkably influential even to the present day. The characteristics of the distinct voice created in Wollstonecraft's first Vindication are also evident in her second and more famous Vindication of the Rights of Woman. However, the rhetorical commitments entailed in Wollstonecraft's public voice created challenges for her arguments in the second Vindication that demand careful attention.
ISSN:0958-9236
1465-3869
DOI:10.1080/09589236.2019.1660151