Comparison essay of "A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft and "A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift
For many years, women in different societies in the world have been undergoing a lot of discrimination and believe that they are lesser beings in comparison to their male counterparts. Many authors have been raising the issue by trying to compare the capabilities of the two individuals as a way of justifying the belief that people have since they are young that the women are weaker than the men in terms of reasoning and may be physical. The two authors Mary Wollstonecraft and Jonathan Swift have managed to focus on the social and political problems that the women go through in different societies in different parts of the world. The primary audiences of the authors are generally the societies that do not value women and subjects them to discrimination forcing them to be slaves of men both psychologically and physically. The two authors argue that all the people in the world have equal rights regardless of gender. Women, in this case, deserve their rights just as any other human being and their societies should change their negative attitudes towards women regarding them as weak and vulnerable.
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"A Vindication of the Rights of Women" by Mary Wollstonecraft focuses on the Kant's argument that individuals rely on guidance from others other than their reasoning because they are lazy and cowards (James, 1978). An individual must have a strong mind to help in making sound reasoning and principles, but the general cowardice forces them not to undertake the activity. The existing believe that women are weak makes people especially men to think that women cannot reason for themselves prejudicing women as soft and sensitive creatures (Wollstonecraft, 1992). Both men and women in most of the societies admit that women are irrational and weak minded and therefore depends on the men for most of their livelihoods and other activities. Many societies teach the community from an early age that women have weaker minds in comparison to that of men justifying it by comparing the body of a woman to be weaker than that of the man. The conclusion is plausible because reasoning does not require brutal strength and therefore women can reason in the same capacity as men.
"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift, on the other hand, focuses on Irish who are struggling to feed their children because of the high poverty level. Swift manage to argue that the solution to the Irish problem of inability to feed their families is women to fatten their children and sell them to the rich people for food and in return get money that will help them improve their social lives. Swift managed to propose that children should be sold to the meat market as early as one year old therefore reducing the burden of feeding many children and in return get more income that they need. Selling 100000 children out of 120000 that are born in Ireland every year will help in solving the problem of unemployment and overpopulation, therefore, providing an adequate environment of boosting the economy of the country. According to swift the practice of selling children to the rich for meat will not only make them earn extra money, but it will also play a significant role in making men respect their wives helping many families from issues to do with domestic conflicts (Barnett, 2007).
Men have power over women, but according to Mary Wollstonecraft, women have an equal capacity of reasoning in comparison to men, and therefore each should have equal rights and freedom to express their feeling. Swift, on the other hand, argues that men have power over women by justifying that if women agree to sell their children to the rich, that is when they will receive respect from their husbands, but if not, their families will be full of conflicts. The two authors use women as a point of interest, but the difference is that on the swift story it focuses on women as the primary cause of poverty by giving birth to so many children that they cannot feed them. However, the story of Wollstonecraft focuses on the rights of woman that they can reason for themselves and have equal rights as men.
References
Barnett, L. (2007). J onathan Swift in the Company of Women. New York: Oxford University Press.
James, R. M. (1978). On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. J ournal of the History of Ideas, 39(2) , 293-302.
Wollstonecraft, M. (1992). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, 5 , 79-266.
