Representation and Reclamation
in Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Browning’s Aurora Leigh

Mary Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning both criticise women’s education in England as an inadequate and suppressive system. Both writers argue that women’s education, or ‘accomplishments,’ focus primarily on vanity and domesticity. They argue that the suppression of women’s individual intellectual and social capabilities is a hindrance to society because it denies society the possibility to experience the innovation and potential women can bring to the world if empowered. Both writers explore these arguments by making allusions to contemporary intellectual knowledge. This essay investigates two particular allusions, first to Shakespeare and literary traditions that compared women to flowers, and secondly, to contemporary conduct books. Wollstonecraft utilizes the technique of allusion to reclaim literary diminishment of women and use it to empower women, whereas Browning uses allusion to facilitate empathy and detail an accurate representation of women’s experience being educated according to contemporary conduct. 

Wollstonecraft and Browning both allude to the literary tradition of women being equated to flowers to criticize the assumption that women have a limited capacity for growth or education. Shakespeare, in Midsummer Night's Dream, compares nuns and women’s happiness to roses that are plucked, crushed, ripped, boiled, and used as an oil to preserve its qualities, all while the rose and its root die (Shakespeare 1.1). Wollstonecraft alludes to the neglected consequence of women being treated like flowers that are “planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty” and is “disregarded on the stalk, long before… they ought to have arrived at maturity” (Wollstonecraft 1169). This “barren blooming” and “false system of education” exploits women from an age too young to understand its consequences (1169). A flower, in male literary tradition like Shakespeare’s work, only represents the delicacy, fragility, or beauty of a woman rather than the strength and value it brings to the environment. Whatever liminal qualities they attribute to women, are used and abused to the point where women do not understand the value of their own potential. Therefore, Wollstonecraft argues that the ‘strength and usefulness’ that flowers provide, in its root and stalk, are ‘sacrificed’ for the sake of creating “alluring mistresses'' that are hyper aware of their limited capacity and functionality on a surface level (1169). If women were to realise the strength of their foundation through a proper system of education, they would be able to demonstrate the full potential of the entire flower rather than just its petals. Wollstonecraft not only shows awareness of literary devices that male writers like Shakespeare have used, but uses it in her own writing to show that women can reclaim metaphors and literature that limit them and turn them into their own metaphors of strength and potential. 

In addition, Browning uses the metaphor of the flower to describe the lack of life women are reduced to live. Male literary usage of flowers to compare women were primarily used to describe the fleeting beauty, or the way they are able to colour dark situations with their brightness, or the usefulness of their petals, like in the distilled oil in Midsummer Night's Dream. However, Browning uses the flower metaphor to show the lack of colour and life in a woman’s lived experience, alluding to the superficial male understanding of women’s role in society in literature. She describes Aurora to not have “a single bloom” and that her aunt lived a life “of perished summers, like a rose in a book” that is “fading” (Browning 58, 286-289). While male writers have written about women’s fleeting beauty, that fades over time, valuing youth over age, Browning uses that same language to describe how a woman’s life and potential ‘fades’ before her eyes and she is unable to do anything about it. The image of a ‘rose in a book’ describes the locked and crushed life a woman leads where the colour and beauty she could offer to the world is hidden and suppressed to the point it no longer carries any life. The education system set up for women prepares them for a life locked at home, like her aunt, without any chance to explore the contributions they can make. Their hopes are killed every day, but never fully to the point of death because they are in a constant state of being crushed in a book. Women live a “quiet life, which was not life at all,” as though they are kept in a state between life and death, unable to reach either (292).   

Both writers allude to contemporary conduct book literature to explicitly partake in improper conduct in their writing. Wollstonecraft directly references Dr John Gregory and his text A Fathers Legacy to His Daughters about women’s conduct that “render women more artificial, weak characters than they would otherwise have been, and consequently more useless members of society” (Wollstonecraft 1174). Women were trained in ‘accomplishments’ where they learnt certain domestic and indoor activities such as singing, dancing, painting, needlework and instrument playing to distinguish themselves from other women. Wollstonecraft argues that “the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment” (1174). And so, instead of demonstrating the vain accomplishments women are taught and irrational language women learn that is seen as cause for denying intellectual education, Wollstonecraft uses the language men use to make her argument for proper education. She states that she will “avoid that flowery diction” associated with the relatively improper genre of novels and that she will “persuade by the force of [her] arguments” (1171). Here, she is alluding to the association of the novel with women and the assumption that women cannot tell fiction from reality, and therefore the novel being considered an improper or lower form of text. She explicitly states that she will defy the expectations men hold of her and will write on equal terms as them using their rationality and language to put forth her argument so that it will be taken seriously, and any prejudice they may have will be exposed to be solely based on her gender rather than her capacity. Which, as a result, will prove her and women’s capability in being intellectually capable on an equal level as men. She is reclaiming the power that was denied to women in language and uses it to empower herself and her demands. 

Moreover, Browning details the torturous experience of learning such accomplishments exposing the level of injustice done towards women by suppressing their capabilities. Aurora was forced to read “books on womanhood /To prove, if women do not think at all” and “sit and darn” which was like “water torture” (Browning 433-34, 445, 475). Aurora is technically the target audience of Dr Gregory’s conduct book, women who lose their mothers at a young age and need to learn how to behave. Writing, or showing emotion too much in reality or on paper was considered improper. Women were taught to hide their feelings and show false modesty, which Wollstonecraft speaks about, under the assumption that if women were to reveal their feelings to the world, they would manipulate people and throw the world into a frenzy (Wollstonecraft 1174). Browning is actively alluding to and engaging in improper social conduct by the act of writing and detailing the emotional turmoil women feel when being taught their limitations and being forced to hide their capabilities in a form of writing that was deemed improper or less than. Women are taught to not think, to simply sit and waste away their intelligence, which Browning is actively defying. She is transforming the passive social condition of women into action. 

One point of notice and criticism in both texts is the assumption of English superiority over the world which suggests both writers to be products of the colonial time period. Wollstonecraft writes that women “in the true style of Mahometanism, they are treated as a kind of subordinate beings, and not as a part of the human species” (1169). While the argument may be true in how women are treated and dehumanised on a social and literary level, the mention of ‘Mahometanism,’ which is an archaic term for Islam, suggests a level of English superiority in her argument for women’s education (1169).  Islam is an Abrahamic religion just like Christianity, which was the exclusive religion of England at the time. Comparing the treatment of English women to the treatment of women in Islam suggests that she is arguing that English society is at a higher level than Islamic society and that it has degraded to the point where it can be comparable to ‘Mahometanism.’ So, arguably, her fight for women’s education is a fight for white, Englishwomen only. Similarly, Browning writes that Aurora’s aunt believed Englishwomen to be “models to the universe” (Browning 452). Here, the political vocabulary of assuming England as the centre of the world that will spread civilization through colonialism is at play. To be a ‘model’ means to possess the qualities the rest of the ‘universe’ want to parrot or follow, which assumes a level of superiority in English society and culture. It could be argued that both writers are using terminology for English superiority to criticise English society rather than put it up on a pedestal. While that may be the case, it cannot be denied that the contextual background of a colonial interest in England is an influencer on both writers and their approach to argue for English women’s empowerment. Their approach is to demonstrate the standard English society has set forth and that by denying women proper education, they are no better than the places England wants to civilise and colonise. 

While both writers argue for the betterment and solidification of female education in England, their style and delivery differ. Wollstonecraft writes with the intention of arguing and persuading her readership of the inadequacy of the current education system, whereas Browning writes a novel in verse form to express and represent women’s experience. Both writers represent women’s needs, rights, and experience in an accurate and detailed manner which have been denied in literature due to male dominance and insufficient female education. Wollstonecraft draws on contemporary political, social, and literary style and language to build her argument whereas Browning innovates a new form of literature by combining novel and verse to describe women’s lives. Both styles of writing include a level of creativity that spotlights the intellectual capability of women like themselves. Wollstonecraft repurposes political language to reclaim power since it is ‘tyrannical’ policies and social conditions that suppress women socially and creatively. She equates herself on an intellectual level similar to men in order to have an intellectual argument about women’s education that is not neglected as overly emotional or irrational. Browning decides that if the space of novel or verse individually do not allow women to write or be represented properly, she takes it upon herself to create a genre where she can express herself as she deems it necessary to represent women accurately. Both writers empower women to take action and create space and language for themselves if it is not made available to them and that their texts are just the beginning of the potential English society can experience if women are given the chance to be educated formally.

Disclaimer: This work is original and the property of Aroni Sarkar. It is not authorised for any use, copies or dissemination.

Works Cited

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. “From Book 1.” Aurora Leigh, London, 1856, lines 1-500.  

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. London, England, 1595. 

Wollstonecraft, Mary. “from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: One-Volume Compact Edition: The Medieval Period Through the Twenty First Century, Broadview Press, 2015, pp 1169-1184.