Equality Of Women: Mary Wollstonecraft And Elizabeth Stanton

Throughout this course we have discussed many ideas that contributed to the equality of women. Two authors who were the most impacting to me were Mary Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Stanton. Mary Wollstonecraft who was an English writer, and philosopher was encouraging women to fight for their rights and equality. She also, was arguing to see a woman in a place where she gets more respected and not treated less than man. Moreover, she argued that women should have an education that proportionate to their position. As for Elizabeth Stanton who was an American suffragist, social activist, and a leading figure of the early women’s rights movement, she was fighting for women’s rights and she addressed the idea of man superiority intellectually, and …show more content…
In Wollstonecraft’s life, men were held as independent because of their power. According to Wollstonecraft, “Man has been held out as independent of his power who made him, or as a lawless planet darting from its orbit to steal the celestial fire of reason” (Wollstonecraft, 12). What she means is that what gets in the way of women’s equality is that men are dominat and they are independent and lawless. She did not state specifically that men and are equal; however, she means that women should be equal to men in …show more content…
Stanton believes that there are rights between them, which are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Her idea of man’s superiority is that men always believe that they are outstanding more than women, and men are intellectually and physically superior. First regarding men’s superior intellectual, according to Stanton “Men bless their innocence are fond of representing themselves as beings of reason—of intellect— while women are mere creatures of the affections”(Stanton, 7). She argues that men who believe that they are intellectually better than women are representing themselves as smarter, and women were just creatures of love. The second idea is that men are superior physically, the body of a man as we know is larger than a woman, and we know that the body strength depends on the power of will, according to Stanton. She states that “But the perfection of the physique is great power combined with endurance. Now your strongest men are not always the tallest men, nor the broadest, nor the most corpulent, but very often the small man who is well built, tightly put together and possessed of an indomitable will”(Stanton,8). She means that not all men are powerful, even the tallest men or the strongest, but the youngest men who have the power of will and indomitable