Compare And Contrast Wollstonecraft And Young

Wollstonecraft and Young are two feminists from different times. Wollstonecraft speaks her view from the 1700’s, while Young speaks hers from the late 1990’s. Their contrasting ideas show the change in feminism over the years. Wollstonecraft’s main point is how society teaches women to behave. She states that “..., women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue” (Wollstonecraft 1). She is saying that women are not given the resources from society to go after what they truly want. This emphasizes the gender roles in society. Men are given all the resources to achieve their goals and the women are expected to stay home to do the housework and be pretty. This goes hand in hand with Young’s point of view when she says “..., the proposed solution was always for men to be payed more and for women to spend more time at home, not for men to pitch in with domestic chores” (Young 6). Women were seen as the weak links that weren’t capable of much. In Young’s time, women were seen as much more than that. Young states that she “...joined the first generation of American women who had grown up assuming not only that they would work most of their lives but also that they were the equals of men and that they could be anything they wanted to be...” (Young 9). This statement greatly contrasts Wollstonecraft’s struggles in her time period. Women were finally able to have the ambition that the women in Wollstonecraft’s time were not taught or allowed to have. They were finally given the resources to achieve their goals. Now the main problem in Young’s time was the
Women weren’t taught to have the ability to achieve their goals. In Young’s time, women were harassed and their fears were dismissed. These two different points of view show how greatly the times can change an important