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Enlightenment and Culture Diversity
During the unit 2 and 3, different literatures are read. All the readings are revolved around the enlightenment and diversity. In the article entitled, “Vindication of the rights of women” by Mary Wollstonecraft is undoubtedly one of the references for modern feminism. Her life and work laid the foundations for the ideas in favor of gender equality defended by feminists of later centuries. Mary lived in the times of the French Revolution, convulsive moments in which the rights of man and citizen were defended, forgetting women in all the demands that were made (Wollstonecraft).
Mary, like other women of her time, believed that they should obtain the same rights for which men and women also fought. Of all his thought, the work Vindication of the rights of women supposes a magnificent plea in favor of including half of the human race in the same fight as the other half. It was written in the year 1792, the work of Mary Wollstonecraft is a response to a text by the French politician Talleyrand. Former bishop of Autun, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand was a diplomat who had an active partition in the French Revolution. In 1791, the Constituent Assembly commissioned him to write a public education project that guaranteed the education of children but not girls (Wollstonecraft).
In the first chapter of Vindication of the rights of women, the author shows in several ways that the education of women is important, and that finally, it is not useless. One of his arguments, which will have made me smile a lot, is that to develop the intellect and the virtue of women, it is also finally (I make you short, go read the development) to prevent your wife from ending to deceive you, since there can be no morality without education.
The central point of Mary Wollstonecraft's reasoning is education, which can also be found in contemporary feminists. This is a theme for which the author has learned a lot. She had already published in 1786 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters.Mary Wollstonecraft regrets that the education given to women in her day is finally satisfied only to make them ready for marriage, submissive and weak people who are only there to meet the needs of their husbands (an idea not very finally removed from dystopia The Handmaid's Tale , where women are only there to serve men in one way or another). The author asks herself, "Are these women, who are brought up early in passive obedience, are they well fit for the care of a family, for the education of children? Do they have enough education to fulfill these duties? (Wollstonecraft) "
In the second chapter here (but perhaps not the original), Mary Wollstonecraft continues her reasoning by pointing out that by not giving women the tools to develop intellect and virtue, she remains dependent on the man. "The man placed between it and reason, it will be necessary for it to refer to it on all things without being able to judge for itself." Many of the author's contemporaries believe that a woman cannot reason, and that she can only react with her senses and feelings. Mary Wollstonecraft will apply, throughout her book, that the woman is also endowed with reason and that it would be good to feed her by educating her so that she can use this reason as best as possible. He opposes the education of girls, and Mary Wollstonecraft does not hesitate to express her disagreement with this position. It's interesting to have a contrast with another reference book that is "only" thirty years older, and finally having a speech from another extreme.
“Dream in the red pavilion” tells the story of a powerful family clan during the last century of splendor of the Qing Dynasty. The central axis of the novel is the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and her cousin Lin Daiyu, two young people who reject everything that is expected of them according to rigid feudal morality. Baoyu is smart and impetuous, Daiyu is beautiful and fragile. Their souls are destined to find themselves in a world of intrigue, luxury and pleasure when the arrogant imperial aristocracy begins to show its decline. Cao Xueqin died without suspecting the great importance that his work was going to have. He was a humanist who knew in his childhood the silks and gold of the mansions and spent his last years in misery: life gave him the material to create a unique novel for its beauty and the dazzling psychological depth of its characters. "Whoever knows the earthly affairs thoroughly will obtain wisdom, who deeply captures human feelings” (Shan-he).
This is the great classic of Chinese literature, "the most famous novel of a literature almost three thousand years old", as Borges affirmed, an imperishable book. The beautiful and tragic tale of the love affairs of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu in eighteenth-century China, in the twilight of a feudal splendor that is no more than a dream. Until before its printed publication in 1791, the novel circulated in handwritten copies with different titles. It is also known as History of the Stone.
Works Cited
Shan-he, X. U. "Red Pavilion Dream” is A Work of Warning About the “Dream” of the “Red Pavilion Dream”[J]." Xiangtan University Journal of Philosohp & Social Sciences Edition 5 (2001).
Wollstonecraft, Mary. "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1792." The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft 5 (1992): 79-266.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, with Strictures on Political and Moral Subject. T. Fisher, 1891.
Zhou, Ruchang. Between Noble and Humble: Cao Xueqin and the Dream of the Red Chamber. Vol. 62. Peter Lang, 2009.
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