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A Vindication of the Rights of Men

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For about a year now, I have been working on a series of articles about Mary Wollstonecraft so that I can submit a featured topic about her. All of the other articles on her works are already FA or on their way to FAC - this is the last one that needs to be prepped. I would therefore appreciate constructive criticism regarding this article's organization, prose, and accessibility. Thanks. Awadewit | talk 11:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • What can I say, you've got writing FA's down to a a science. :-) I have no doubt this will pass, it's excellent. But I can still suggest a few tweaks:
    • I'd wikilink "constitutional monarchy" in the header
    • Most of Burke's detractors deplored his support of the French queen ... Wollstonecraft, however, - This is not clear that Wollstonecraft attacked his support of the queen too; when I first read it, I thought she didn't bother with that. The Burke quote occupies too much space in the header, I'd move it down to the text body. Since that quote isn't the main focus of Wollstonecraft's attack, or even the part that makes her text unique among the 70 or so others you mention later, I think the quote is an unnecessary extra in the header. You can put one sentence that she does attack Burke's support of monarchy too, but one reasonable possibility for the header is going straight from "the language that Burke used to defend and elevate it" to "By redefining the sublime and the beautiful".
      • I have removed the 'however" to avoid confusion. Wollstonecraft does attack the queen passages quite a bit (this was supposed to be conveyed in the "Sensibility" section), so I'd like to leave that quotation in, particularly so readers can get a flavor of Burke's writing right away. It's only 1.5 lines. It is Burke's treatment of Antoinette that galvanizes Wollstonecraft's feminist response. Awadewit | talk 22:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • she believed in progress and derides Burke - same tense probably better. Maybe "supports progress"?
      • The past tense goes with "influenced by Enlightenment thinkers" - she no longer believes, since she is dead, but she derides in the book, because we can still read it (it is called the "literary present"). Somehow, the other way just doesn't sound right to me. Maybe I should just redo the whole sentence to avoid the problem? Awadewit | talk 22:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • opposed to government corruption and war because it only profited ; critiqued monarchy and aristocracy because they believed it drew power away - unfortunately, "monarchy and aristocracy" or "corruption and war" are two subjects joined by an "and", so can't be "it". "they believed these", perhaps, or even a different phrasing?
    • the English civil war - needs capitalization to differentiate; there were lots of English civil wars, but you seem to be referring to the one with the Cavaliers and Roundheads, which is the English Civil War.
    • Wollstonecraft wrote frantically while her publisher Joseph Johnson printed the pages. Halfway through the work, however, - This is confusing, I'm not sure what you mean by "printed". Did he really typeset the plates and make thousands of copies while the latter pages were not even written yet? Why? Did he release the earlier pages separately from the later ones? Or if you mean something else, please specify.
      • Yes he really did print the pages - this is how political pamphlets were written and printed at the time. It was important to print them fast, so they were printed as they were written. They were not released as they were printed, however. You read the passage correctly. How can I make this meaning clearer? Awadewit | talk 22:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Godwin, in his Memoirs of Wollstonecraft, describes it as “a temporary fit of torpor and indolence” - but later you write "William Godwin... in his Memoirs of Wollstonecraft, he dedicated only a paragraph to the work" -- is that really correct? He didn't describe the book much, but did describe the pause in its writing?
      • Yes, Godwin spends more space describing the writing of the book than the actual contents of the book. He says that what will interest the reader is this story about her stopping in the middle, etc. Awadewit | talk 22:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • 18 December - wikilink so {{WP:DATE]] will work consistently. I have my date preferences set to American style, so to me the text shows: "Published anonymously on November 29, 1790,... Only three weeks later, on 18 December".
    • "criticizing hypocritical liberal who talk" - liberals, perhaps? Or (sic).
    • the most famous reply, Paine's Rights of Man - was this at all influenced by Rights of Men? Were they compared? The title seems rather similar.
      • Paine's book may have been influenced by Wollstonecraft's - Paine and Wollstonecraft knew each other through their publisher, Johnson. The phrase was common at the time. The scholarship on Wollstonecraft's book does not emphasize the comparison, however. Awadewit | talk 22:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • mirroring Burke's Reflections, the text follows the associations between topics made by the author - which author? Does it follow Burke's Reflections, topic by topic, or does Wollstonecraft have her own pattern of topics that has little to do with Burke's ordering of them?
    • endorses a commercial society ... For her, commercialism... However, several years later, she would question the ultimate value of commercialism- can you find a wikilink to an article that goes in greater depth on what "commercialism" and "commercial society" means? It seems an important concept to this article, yet demanding more scope than can be afforded here, so crying out for a wikilink.
    • Although not a communist, she did desire a more equitable distribution of wealth - ouch, that's a heavily charged sentence, and ahistorical. Surely the concept of communism as such wasn't in discussion at the time, so I doubt anyone would have asked her whether or not she was one. Perhaps you mean anarchist, or some other older concept?
      • Sapiro, my source, uses the word "communist" - it's not "Communist". "Anarchist" is quite different than communist - the thrust of the sentence is that she didn't want land to be divided perfectly equally. Awadewit | talk 22:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • The Sensibility section seems very similar to the Political Theory section. They each discuss Wollstonecraft's attacks on Marie Antoinette, her support of Richard Price, "false feeling" in one and "insincerity" in the other... Duplicate repetitive unnecessary redundancy repeated over again? :-) Either emphasize the differences, or combine. By the way, I like the contrast of the two pictures, of Marie Antoinette, smiling, in a beautiful gown with feathers and roses, and immediately below, of Wollstonecraft, merely serious, but in contrast almost scowling, in plain and dark clothes, crouched over a book.
      • They do use the same examples, but I do not feel that they are discussing precisely the same topics. The "Political theory" section uses Antoinette to discuss Burke's defense of aristocracy and uses Price to discuss Wollstonecraft's defense of the middle class. The "Sensibility" section uses Antoinette to discuss the "false" vs. "true" feeling binary, a major point in the text, which is related to, but not the same as Wollstonecraft's promotion of a society constructed around "universal benevolence" (something she gets from Price, as I mention). The themes of this book overlap quite a bit, but I think that these are separated enough to be distinguishable. I actually chose to use the same examples to try and make them clearer. Perhaps that was not the best choice. Awadewit | talk 22:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • After the first edition sold out, - any information on how many copies sold, either total or in the first edition? To compare to Burke's 30,000 copies in two years, and Thomas Paine's 200,000?
    • While most of the early reviewers of the Rights of Men ... criticized the work's emotionalism - Did they only criticize emotionalism after finding out the author was female, or were there any criticisms in that vein even when the author was anonymous? "Early" seems to imply the latter, but other parts in the article would seem to imply the former.
    • as Johnson contends, - you probably need to specify Johnsons here, as one was her publisher who drove her to write the second part under discussion, and another seems to be a modern feminist reviewer.

--AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from WillowW

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Hi Awadewit,

I've had only a little time to brood over A Vindication of the Rights of Men, so these will be just preliminary pensives. I really liked the article the first time I read it, but now I'm beginning to fear that this will be a tricky article. I hope that won't be true but in any case I'll try to help out as (if) I can.

  • I agree that VRM is tricky - that is why I left it to the end. I wanted to have a lot of practice before I started it. However, now I am thinking that was not a wise decision. I should have started the article long ago. Awadewit | talk 05:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The present article describes Wollstonecraft's arguments very well; I wouldn't change those parts, but I think they would benefit from being organized more strongly and set off with other material. In particular, I feel that the chronology of the French Revolution, other responses to Burke, and Burke's arguments should be described more fully. You often introduce Burke's arguments by juxtaposing them with Wollstonecraft's; I wouldn't change that, but I would include a section dedicated to outlining Burke's arguments all in one place — twice told is thrice learned, no? The other responses to Burke and various people's responses as the French Revolution evolved might make a good final section, returning to the opening historical perspective and closing the circle. The present article is relatively short (~34 kb), so it has some room to grow.

  • What you are describing is the article I plan to write (sans focus on Wollstonecraft) for the Revolution Controversy, but I agree that this article needs more of a focus on Burke. I am thinking that the "Historical context" section should be restructured:
  • Revolution controversy
  • Burke's Reflections
  • Composition and publication of the Rights of Men
That will give me more space to expand on the larger debates as well as Burke's argument. I think that trying to outline the French Revolution is just too much. That is the glory of wikilinks. What do you think? Awadewit | talk 05:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This seems good! I'm just worried that many people might not remember the course of the French revolution, and the descent into the Terror. It seems as though the Revolution controversy was, at one level, an argument between two visions of human motivations and the practicalities of government. It's be nice to depict that argument, perhaps with a stray reference here and there to older works on both sides of that topic — say, Machiavelli's observation that democracies are short-lived or some insights from Socrates and Aristotle — which might enliven the article and place the controversy in a broader context. It's just a thought — it just occurred to me that other people might find references to the Greeks boring and arcane! :(
If they don't know the history of the French Revolution, I don't think that I can tell it all to them, though. That is what French Revolution is for. Also, I agree that I need to discuss the Revolution Controversy in the VRM article, but I'm not sure that I need to go into the level of detail that you are suggesting. The amount of scholarship on the Revolution Controversy is enormous. I've read a bit of it, but there are hundreds if not thousands of books on it. It cannot be easily outlined here. That is why it has its own article. I think the question should be whether the section in the article on A Vindication of the Rights of Men provides enough context to understand the work. I think that the new, expanded section does. It does not tell the reader everything about the French Revolution or the Revolution Controversy, but that is impossible. (I don't think the references to the Greeks are boring and arcane - the question is, as always, do scholars think they are important connections?) Awadewit | talk 06:42, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a humbly offered suggestion that might clarify what I was thinking of. You might structure the "Historical context" section with a converging funnel shape au Billy Budd, beginning by sketching the big picture of England and France in the 1780s, with their traditions and power structures, then confining attention to the French Revolution and its chronology (say, up to Napoleon's 18 Brumaire), then confining still further to Burke, e.g., "Burke wrote his pamphlet,..., near the beginning of the revolution (1790), as a letter to a young man X who had asked his opinion of the French Revolution...", then outline the letter's major arguments and tenor. My basic concern is that the present article doesn't really describe what Wollstonecraft was responding to; it seems like fighting with shadows. Admittedly, I haven't finished reading Burke's letter. I just started reading it yesterday and couldn't finish it before falling asleep; I was tired!

  • I'm not really sure what you are referring to in Billy Budd - I don't see any figurative funnels there. I think that your idea sounds wonderful - if I had 100-200 pages or more. I've actually read a lot of examples of what you are talking about (this period in history fascinates me) - there is simply no way to discuss all of it concisely as well as VRM. Entire books cannot even do it justice. Let's work on getting the immediate historical context fleshed out before getting to Napoleon (who came to power after Wollstonecraft died)! (By the way, teaching these texts is very difficult, because you have to provide so much historical context to the students. The first time I read them, I was a bit adrift. I'm not sure there is any way to completely avoid that - these texts are grounded in historically-specific debates.) Awadewit | talk 05:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe this is just me, but I had a strong sense of an hourglass shape in Billy Budd. I felt as though the scope of the novel became inexorably ever more constricted, beginning with society, then the navy, then a ship, then a room, then a person, until it focused on a single hand; to me, it seemed as though the author was showing the funnel of causes that culminated in the killing. Afterwards, the novel's scope gradually rebroadened to the person, the room, the ship, the navy and the society, as it showed the ever-widening consequences provoked by the killing. To me it seemed like the work of an old person, being so formal in structure. I usually don't think consciously about novels I read, beyond trying to understand the feelings and motivations of the characters, but Billy Budd was an exception.
Yes, let's work together on it, although I'm afraid that you won't be able to rely on me to contribute much. I'll do my best! :) By "sketch", I really meant tracing the great tides of the revolution; we might mention the royals, since their fate is so central, but others such as Robespierre needn't be mentioned to keep it short. I also agree that Burke deserves the "primo don" position, and we should lavish space on his arguments. Some pertinent ones to the responses (in the short section I read) might be
  • his repeated and scornful caricature of Price et alii as academic theoreticians of government who have no practical understanding of what motivates people, what it takes to run a government, and what some of the common pitfalls to be avoided are;
  • his criteria for the success of a revolution; and
  • his apodictic rejection that royalty derives its powers from the people governed. Willow 19:37, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What I meant by "we" was me writing and you reviewing. :) With Burke's argument, I have tried to give the outlines as I have seen it summarized. I have used Butler's book, but as I read about Wollstonecraft I took note of Burkean summaries and this is pretty accurate consensus summary, in my opinion. Someday I will work on the Reflections on the Revolution in France article - perhaps then I can write an even better summary. Awadewit | talk 06:42, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's one other point that I need to mention as a sincere reviewer, although I can't really suggest anything specific to change. For me, the present article has an air of being perhaps too sympathetic to Wollstonecraft. I didn't notice it at first, perhaps because it matches my own thinking, but I seem to sense it now and worry that others will think likewise. It might be just me, though, since I was conscious of being overly sympathetic to Dorothy Wrinch in the Cyclol article, which feels somehow parallel.

  • I will go back and look for that. Like you, I am sympathetic to Wollstonecraft's position rather than Burke's. That may have come through. Most scholars are as well and they can say so! Awadewit | talk 05:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I changed a bit of diction here and there, but I honestly couldn't find much. Perhaps you could point me to some spots? I did everything I could to actually quote the most flattering passages. :) Awadewit | talk 06:53, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Trying my best to give you a thoughtful review, Willow 15:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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