Essay:

A comparison of the views of Mary Wollstonecraft and Frederick Engels on the position of women in society and how it might be changed.

© 1996 Franni Vincent

Wollstonecraft and Engels were writing almost a hundred years apart, yet the position of women had probably changed very little. There are similarities in the social conditions, similarities in their own class positions of both writers , yet their approach to the 'problem' of woman's position , and the solution to that problem are different. Wollstonecraft saw the future as one where equality might come, Engels' offering almost guarantees equality will never come.

Taking Wollstonecraft first, her premise was that the natural state of both males and females in infancy was one in which the intelligence had to be developed, drawn out. There was no reason why, given the same treatment as boys, girls should not develop their intellects, but at the end of the C18 barriers existed to ensure that from their birth, women were trained to be weaker in strength in both body and mind. While the Rights of Man were being championed by such as Paine and Rousseau, Wollstonecraft saw the 'natural' position of woman as inferior being repeated. Women were seen as unfit for the duties and obligations of citizenship, their only purpose in life, in Rousseau's view, to please males. The training girl children received at home, or in schools for 'ladies' were, in Wollstonecraft's view, aimed at producing a deformation of femininity.

Women had been created by the society they lived in to be the 'sweeter companion of men' as Rousseau had decreedat the cost of their 'degrading themselves'. Wollstonecraft believed that the solution to this was a transformation not only in the way that girls were trained from birth, but in the values placed by society on the manners which that society demanded from them. Alongside this, she was asking for equal legal and political rights - ie the right to control their own property, equality under civil law and participation in politics. She realistically saw that without a change in the upbringing of girls, the hope of such participation was unlikely to be fulfilled. Finally, she thought that women should, if they wished, be free to pursue alternate goals; rather than being dependent on men, they could train in 'the art of healing...politics...businesses', so that marriage would be a choice, not an economic necessity.

Wollstonecraft, although writing in response and as a reaction to Rousseau, was not claiming that women's inferior position was brought about entirely by men; the family had played a large part, and the goals which women set themselves. Mothers must take their share of blame for the process, having perpetuated the system whereby girls are

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adore its prison.

The hypocrisy of societal values, of virtue, chastity are set by Wollstonecraft against the means women were 'trained' to use to get their goal. The need to replicate a society where docility and cunning are rewarded by husbands gives no obvious route to emancipation. This results in complicity of mothers, the complicity within the family which results in exploitation. The marriages among the bourgeoisie were held up as examples of passion leading from first disillusionment to adultery on both sides, the men with the ubiquitous prostitutes, the women with lovers and rakes. She offers no explanation or arguments about how this version of marriage originated, formulates no myths, but simply gives a description of what is. The description is, essentially ahistorical, probably as true a description of wives in the 1950s as in her own century.

Wollstonecraft argues throughout that women should be made equal, because they are essentially the same as men. She is agreeing with Mary Astell's comments of fifty years before, in that women's souls are worth as much as men's. If half of the human race (or in this case, half the middle class) are treated as if this world were all that there was they are being denied their opportunity to become more like their Creator. This, supposedly, comes from a greater understanding or knowledge, which in the C18th was marked by reason and logical thinking. With the same training, women would attain the same qualities of rationality valued so much in C18th men. Wollstonecraft accepts societal valuation of the 'good' as being male attributes, and seems to negate all those which could be seen as specifically female and therefore 'bad' : education, combined with exercise and fresh air will develop these. Her own case would seem to 'prove' this: the education she received was not adequate, but being comparatively free from the childhood restrictions aimed at keeping women happy in their gilt cages. She would regard herself as one of the 'few extraordinary women... [who] were male spirits' trapped within the cage of a female body: she had escaped by flouting conventions in her own life, in both choosing to support herself and in her relationships.

We can view Wollstonecraft's descriptions as the harm wrought by society on woman's personality; while acknowledging that she is addressing her hopes toward middle class women. She only in passing alludes to the greater hardship suffered by the mass of women but has as her end goal that all would be

raised sufficiently above abject poverty not to be obliged to weigh the consequence of every farthing they spend...which narrows both heart and mind.

Unfortunately, she sees this being accomplished with the aid of 'merely a servant-maid to take off her hands' any too distasteful domestic tasks. The concept of equal opportunity for women of all classes was an idea whose time had obviously not yet come. Wollstonecraft's chooses to ignore the power differentials which result from aspects of the family relationship other than the difference in 'virtue' which comes from the inequalities of education. For her, life would be bearable if these inequalities were eradicated:

Let woman share the rights, and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated

Emancipation, she saw was in the gift of men, rather than something women might seize for themselves. Asserting that women would still be 'dutiful wives', more faithful than before 'if men but generously snap our chains' was an assertion men obviously had no reason to want to test. As far as they were concerned, women could carry on using their reason to 'burnish' those same chains.

Engels explanation of women's position tends towards the macro. He looked at the position of the family, women's place in it, and the effect this has on society. He sees the bourgeois family, (as does Wollstonecraft), as a less than ideal institution, but his main objection is to the exploitative relationships of the wider capitalist society that are reflected within it. Whereas Wollstonecraft does not theorise on the origins of the deformation of woman's character, but gives sufficient examples to convince us that this is not only her reality, but our mother's too (and if we choose not to heed the warning, our own) Engels gives us chapter upon chapter of justification for how this exploitation has come about.

Engels takes as the starting point a supposedly former, pre-industrial familial existence where women had some sort of equality. If we start by examining the Communist Manifesto's explanation of that

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal , idyllic relations

we have the first indication of this mythical 'idyllic' life that Engels later describes in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Engels assumption is that the original human relationships were based primitive collectives, with no personal property, the only production carried out for 'direct consumption' and promiscuity in sexual relationships. With little evidence , he postulates a group marriage, with matrilineality as the norm as only the child's mother would be known. Kinship terms in current pre industrial tribal societies, both in Australia and North America, where the child might call uncles on his fathers side "father", or aunts on his mother's side "mother" are cited as reasons to suppose a previous system of group marriage. The position of women in such societies was supposedly equal to men, although their would have been a sexual division of labour.

Once some property had come into being, marking the first transition from 'savagery' to 'barbarism' , it brought about a more formal group relationship. Offspring might still belong to the group or clan, but gradually the first incest taboos were brought into effect. This resulted in exclusion of categories of women relatives from those who could be married into the group and/or slept with; women became a resource, their position changed from one of equality to one of slavery, as they could be exchanged, or stolen just as any other property. As the amount of individually owned property increased, more pairing relationships developed, with kin and parents being involved in the choice of potential mates. The marriages were held together by the 'gifts' which would have been exchanged; these might be cattle, or gifts of lesser value, but would ensure that marriage became a form of contract.

Engels theory is that before the advent of the exploitative class relations of capitalism, woman's position within the family was valued for her labour power; men and women would have worked together, either in food production, or the small scale industrial production carried on in the home. Both were important in there own way, the women not only in childbearing and rearing, but in the production of food, clothes, utensils. However, once the family started producing a surplus which could be bartered, the labour which the males had contributed became valued more than the females contribution. As the paternity became theoretically more certain, 'mother right' changed to 'father right'. Gradually, male supremacy resulted in the nuclear family; one woman and her children dependant on one man. This supposed transition to monogamy, according to Engels, was probably illusory, as male supremacy became coupled with adultery and prostitution. however, he notes this supremacy

created an impulse to exploit this strengthened position in order to overthrow, in favour of his children, the traditional [matriarchal] order of inheritance´´

The change from 'mother right' to 'father right' marks, for Engels 'the world historic defeat of the female sex' just as the rise of the nuclear family, the family pattern which best 'fit' the needs of the rising industrial capitalism marked the shift from simply downgraded labour value to absolute exploitation in the home for woman. Rights which had existed were taken away, and, according to Engels'

the peculiar character of the supremacy of the husband over the wife in the modern family... will only be seen in the clear light of day when both possess legally complete equality or rights.

There is, perhaps, little point in taking issue with the 'myth' of 'Mutterecht', which Engels had perhaps swallowed whole from contemporary accounts. Just as all accounts depend on a belief in an equally dubious myth of European supremacy, we must take the 'evidence' of more ancient writings with the same quantity of salt. 'Barbarian's' habits culled from the writings of Roman military commandeers, or the compilers of Biblical writings are hardly a good objectively accurate source... Caesar declaring that the barbarians had 10 or 12 wives in common may be as 'true' as the circumnavigators of the C15 tales of the variety in human shape... But without sharing Engels belief in the myth, we cannot accept his view that monogamy was perhaps a step back. He does, however, emphasise that there has always been a difference between men and women, 'the first division of labour is that between man and woman for the propagation of children'

Wollstonecraft gives us no comparable explanation as to how the contemporary position of woman had arisen, but she and Engels at this point have a comparable scenario of exploitation. For Wollstonecraft, it is the grinding poverty of the females of the poorer classes which is to be pitied; Engels, however sees the females of the proletariat as less exploited in comparison. Bourgeois marriage is, for him, the mirror of the exploitation rife in society as a whole where

prosperity and development for some is won through the misery and frustration of others.

Both are in agreement about property causing some of the problem:

From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind

Both agree that the state of so called monogamous marriage is the site of hypocrisy. Engels cites the 'hetaerism' of the average bourgeois male, Wollstonecraft the differing values advocated for both sexes, chastity prized by women while despised by men 'and the two extremes are equally destructive to morality'

Wollstonecraft's suggestion that

men ought to maintain the women whom they have seduced... stopping an abuse that has an equally fatal effect on population and morals

is possibly a more realistic suggestion to alleviate the exploitation of the women concerned than any idealistic hope that Engels puts forward. Wollstonecraft expresses the 'wild wish' that it would only be in love that there would be any distinction between the sexes; she does, however seemingly accept the possibility that a few women might chose to avoid marriage altogether once equality has been achieved. Engels seems to believe that once the magic wand of equality in the sphere of production has been waved over woman, she would still chose to participate in for monogamous marriage. Given that

private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry

why should any women choose to 'give' themselves to any man in any form of marriage, if she no longer has to care for his home or his children? Even if Engels' prophesy that monogamy would become man's choice too were true? How can a system of exploitation in the private sphere where

...the woman was degraded and reduced to servitude: she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument for the production of children

be transformed by mere revolution in the public sphere? Engels is unable to see the possible consequences of his feeling that , after the revolution women in particular

...will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual - and that will be the end of it

That they have chosen to carry on participating in 'families' for so long is fortunate for men. Wollstonecraft foresaw that women might choose not to marry, that they might 'escape...from servitude'. But despite Shulamith Firestone's recognition that Marx and Engels stopped short of digging into the 'psycho sexual roots of class', despite the suggestions from Simone de Beauvoir that women too can buy sex, women have chosen to continue playing the same role.

Education is obviously a necessary step towards transforming the relationship between the sexes. Although Engels and Marx in the Communist Manifesto echoed Wollstonecraft's view that education should be carried out in a social context, rather than either in the home or boarding schools, they do not emphasise its importance. it would be the main step needed on the road to emancipation as Wollstonecraft saw it. Equality in education has been far longer in coming than Engels solution of women's participation in production. If they were both right, and the interaction of the differential education plus the restriction of their opportunity to participate in production were at the root of women's subordinate position, then the women in 1990s Britain would be showing more evidence of their equality.... After all, the Equal Opportunities Commission has been in place since the early 1970s, we have legislated for equality, why therefore is there still the feeling that Wollstonecraft's 'wild wish' has not yet come about?

Possibly the answer is twofold: the majority of women alive have had the education Wollstonecraft described. They were given enough education to enable them to work at a job long enough to catch their meal ticket, or the first of a series of husbands... We can look at work in the sociology of education in the late 1970s, early 1980s (Glenys Lobban, Sara Delamont, Dale Spender, Michelle Stanworth ) to see that even if lip service was paid to equality, the scales were still even then weighed against girls gaining the same education as boys, even within the same school, the same classroom, or sitting next to each other at the same desk. Attitudes and expectations about what girls could and would want to achieve persisted. A similar situation persisted in the working environment: women participate in the workforce, but still in the West mainly in separate types of jobs , or minimally represented at director and management level. The National Curriculum will change little, but the fact is that once seeking employment in some groups, such as young Afro-Caribbean's, girls are viewed at 16 as far more employable than boys. This may produce the shift that Wollstonecraft saw: once those girls choose to reject unemployed and unemployable men as husbands, there may be a transformation from the bottom up. And Engels: the success of his solution is more problematic. The former Soviet Bloc countries had women participating in the workforce at a greater level than Western Countries, with child care carried out in State nurseries, yet for women the revolution in men's attitudes never quite arrived.

We could look at their respective writings, conclude their solutions have been tried and have both failed. On that dismal note, is there any point in looking at the different explanations both offered?There is if both are taken as starting points for the development of the later, more active movements which have endeavoured to bring about equality for women. Neither Wollstonecraft nor Engels foresaw a time when women would be celebrating their differences, regarding them as a source of pride, or would be calling for women to give up heterosexual sex altogether. Ann Oakley has said that all histories of feminism start with Vindication , but this may be more true in the collective subconscious of women than in the written texts. Engels writings mark acceptance by a man that 'domestic bliss' is a sham as far as women are concerned. Both were powerful foundations on which the women's movement was built and continues to work.

© 1996 Franni Vincent

Bibliography

F Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. (1972 edition) Lawrence & Wishart

M Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (penguin ed 1975)

(ed) Mary Evans The Woman Question: readings on the subordination of women. (1982)

Barbara Taylor 'Mary Wollstonecraft & the Wild Wish of Early Feminism' in History Workshop Journal No 33

Footnotes

Engels' income during Marx's exile in England 'does not appear to have exceeded £100 , with which, as his father's representative, he had to keep up a respectable establishment' Isiah Berlin Karl Marx p144

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Engels' income during Marx's exile in England 'does not appear to have exceeded £100 , with which, as his father's representative, he had to keep up a respectable establishment' Isiah Berlin Karl Marx p144

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ibid. p266

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Introduction to Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman p32

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Wollstonecraft p260(penguin ed.)

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ibid. p260

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Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman p319(pelican ed.)

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ibid. p269 (penguin ed.)

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Marx & Engels Communist Manifesto p35

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Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. p233

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ie other than kinship terms imperfectly understood: intergenerational 'respect' terms as in current Hindi, rather than evidence of former sexual linkages?

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ibid. p138

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ibid. p29

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ibid. p119

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ibid. p120 [thus endeth the myth??]

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ibid. p137

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ibid. p 79 - Bachofenns (1861), or the early anthropological works such as LH Morgan(1871)

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ibid. p129

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ibid. p129

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Wollstonecraft p257(penguin ed.)

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Wollstonecraft p 252 (pelican ed.)

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ibid. p255 (pelican ed.)

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Engels p145

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Engels p121

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ibid.

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Wollstonecraft p267

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Firestone Dialectic of Sex

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whether clustered in separate industries, or in mainly part-time employment in 'male' industries.

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Oakley Subject Women [1981] - p4

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