Reason and Sensibility: The Ideal of Women's Self-Governance in die Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft |
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Authors: | Catriona Mackenzie |
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Abstract: | It is standard in feminist commentaries to argue that Wollstonecraft's feminism is vitiated by her commitment to a liberal philosophical framework, relying on a valuation of reason over passion and on the notion of a sex-neutral self. I challenge this interpretation of Wollstonecraft's feminism and argue that her attempt to articulate an ideal of self-governance for women was an attempt to diagnose and resolve some of the tensions and inadequacies within traditional liberal thought. 1 1 I use the terms “autonomy” and “self-governance” interchangeably in this article, although only the latter term was used by Wollstonecraft. My tendency, however, is to stick with Wollstonecraft's own term.
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