Resistance to Domesticity in Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall: A Feminist Viewpoint (original) (raw)
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HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. The Representation of Women’s Status in domestic and political Patriarchy in Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft Guyonne Leduc
In this short essay, I aim to discuss the different ways in which Mary Wollstonecraft challenges the patriarchal ideas in A Vindication of The Rights of Women. Although Wollstonecraft explains and destroys several norms of societies, I will explain only a few. According to her arguments, the main problem of gender issues and artificial hierarchy is the lack of education. In contrast to the ideas of some famous writers such as Milton; Wollstonecraft doesn’t accept the “artificial” characteristic of gender roles (which are also defined only by the language of men), the hierarchy that is argued to be “natural” by many and the obligation to stay inside the domestic prison.
'Domestication " is the turning of Feminism into a discourse which, rather than challenging and transforming the existing status quo, and particularly the capitalistic mode of production and the whole of practices and ideologies connected to this latter, serves as its support. Why and with what results, such a turning towards Domestication has taken place? This article contributes to this largely debated issue by proposing to think that the Domestication of Feminism is linked to the domination of " Gender " as an analytical and political tool. Words (including footnotes): 5683 1. 'Domesticated' Feminism: roots and outcomes. Domestic is the dog: not only a friendly inhabitant, but the most fierce defender of the master's house, very aggressive in case of need. Accordingly, 'Domestication " is the turning of Feminism into a discourse which, instead of challenging and transforming the existing status quo, and particularly the capitalistic mode of production and the whole of practices and ideologies connected to this latter, serves as it support. However, nor the whole of Feminism is 'domesticated, neither is 'domestication' its destiny or fate. In its history however, Feminism has bore as well the creative mark of un-domestication, which means a profound and constant critique to the status quo. Why then, and with what results, such a turning towards Domestication has taken place? To this largely debated issue these pages modestly contribute by proposing to think that the Domestication of Feminism is linked to the domination of Gender as an analytical and political tool. Thinking like so implies that the bifurcation between domesticated and 'un-domesticable' Feminism(s) corresponds to two conflicting ways of interpreting the relationship between the 'Female' and the 'Natural'. And explains why Domestication results into a violent attack against the idea that being a women is a valuable and positive chance for humans. Due to the link between the female body-maternal, fertile-and reproduction, the relationship between Women and Nature is constitutively inherent to the capitalist structuring of our social world. Furthermore it is – I contend-at the core of the fork between un-political, domesticated Feminism, on the one hand, and un-domesticable political Feminism(s), on the other hand. The former, raising the shield of gender neutrality against the idea itself that humans are differently sexed beings, have aimed to hinder, conceal and extinguish the subversive force of the discourse about nature 1. 'Gender' is indeed nothing but the stipulation – typically 1 As a jurist, I am interested in the parallel between the trajectory of Feminism as discourse against Nature and the disappearance of the references to Nature in the juridical discourse. As the Italian Philosopher of Law Giuseppe Capograssi once wrote, if 'Nature' is the victim of modernity, and of the correspondent rational and formalistic understandings of law, it is because that word has historically played as the argumentative and imaginative tool bridging the ideas of personal liberty and societal autonomy (G.