Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and Rabindranath Tagore’s Punishment all serve as pieces of social commentary, painting the struggles women and slaves hold as oppressed parties against their oppressors: men and white slaveholders. In each text, there are presumed advantages the oppressed groups hold, adding complexity to the relationship between oppressor and oppressed as there are times where these advantages serve as a hindrance and liability to the well-being of its holder. A perceived advantage held by an oppressed people becomes a liability when the advantage fails to surpass or even equal basic rights held by a non-oppressed people. As
Used as a ploy to disempower, oppressor’s purposefully hinder social equality, causing the perceived advantage to become a liability through control of the oppressed. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, men explicitly maintain suppression through knowingly placing value within teaching women sensibility rather than academic education. Ironically enough, however; “‘Educate women like men,’ says Rousseau, ‘and the more they resemble our sex the less power they will have over us.’” (Wollstonecraft 179). If a woman were to be educated like a man, she would lose her blind faith in sensibility, the ignorance of her delicacy as she gained the ability to discern truth. This would disintegrate the perceived advantage of sensibility, yes, reducing some aspect of perceived power, but be providing her with a much more substantial kind of competence. Empowered by both intellect and sensuality in society, rather than just the latter, a woman would hold real power over men, rather than just physical attractiveness. This would mean that a man, in direct comparison, would “lose” societal privilege to manipulate and release his status as a superior and oppressor. The perceived advantage of sensibility becomes a liability for women’s equality because of men’s fear of losing the idea that “a king is always a king— and a woman always a woman.”(Wollstonecraft
Fear and manipulation are utilized by oppressors to give the oppressed interpreted advantages to dedicate their time and effort towards, while oppressors reap the true reward of maintaining power and social inequality. Despite the potential to manipulate this kind of power in positive ways, oppressors maintain purely self-serving motivations for manipulating the value of perceived assets. Due to their fear of being overthrown, oppressors ensure a perceived advantage not only becomes, but remains a liability through the utilization of their ability to manipulate as a ploy to maintain suppression. Knowing this, the power imbalance between men and women and slave and slaveholder grows more complicated, as the oppressors attempt a kind of cat-and-mouse-like distraction through perceived advantages to make the oppressed feel falsely empowered, when in reality, they are cemented in their