Annie Gaylor started
her book on Women Freethinkers [1] by quoting Matilda Joslyn Gage an
early activist in the American suffrage movement, dedicated to freeing
women from the teachings of the Christian church, who wrote in 1893
quite late on in her story:-
“The world has
seemingly awaited the advent of heroic souls who once again should
dare all things for the truth. The
woman who possesses love for her sex, for the world, for truth,
justice and right, will not hesitate to place herself upon record as
opposed to falsehood, no matter under what guise of age or holiness it
appears” (Matilda Joslyn Gage)
And Gaylor comments:-
“The women who have placed themselves on record as opposed to
falsehood have included some of the most remarkable “heroic souls”
in the Western world:” (Annie Gaylor1997)
The first woman she
writes about is one of the few names in the book we would
recognise, Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote the first influential book
calling for equality of the sexes. She wrote the related works A
Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman two years
later, she also wrote ‘Thoughts on the Education of Daughters’(1786)
and wrote for the Analytical Review.
Born in London she
worked as a schoolteacher and headmistress at a school she established
at Newington Green with her sister Eliza. ‘The sisters soon
became convinced that the young women they tried to teach had already
been effectively enslaved by their social training in subordination to
men [2]’.
She called herself a
Deist, a common euphemism of the past for agnostics, her ‘God’ was
Nature, perfection and the source of reason and she expressed strong
opinions against conventional religion. Those who have studied her
writing say that the evidence shows that Mary lost even that faith and
became an agnostic.She was certainly a freethinker
Like many if not most
of the more than 50 women featured in her book, and feminists up to
today, she had to take a considerable amount of personal abuse for her
views and free lifestyle from politicians and clerics – she was
called “a hyena in petticoats”, others were pilloried, physically
threatened and even attacked in some cases . Annie calls her ‘a
child of the enlightenment’.
Mary Wollstonecraft
campaigned against conventional religion and astrology, the Tory
politics of her day, poverty, and slavery, and championed women’s
rights, children’s rights and animal rights, and counselled the
benefits of breast-feeding, early education, dress reform, rational
parenting and called for a national system of free, coeducational
primary day schools..She devoted a chapter in in the Rights of Women
to exposing faith healers and fortune tellers calling the 'lurking
leeches' practicing on the credulity of women.
Perhaps we know about
her because as a member through marriage, of the small middle class of
her day, a woman with some social status, she was able to write and
have her work published, which in turn allowed her to meet other
influential writers, artists and scientists through her publisher
Joseph Johnson – she therefore became known by well known
male progressives of the time.
She rebutted the
views of the conventional views of her day such as those of Rouseau,
and challenged the assumptions that women ’feel rather than
think’- “Teach them
to think” she said, and treat women as the rational creatures that
they are. “Women must only bow to the authority of reason, instead
of being the modest slaves of opinion” [3]
In
‘Women Without Superstition, No Gods, No Masters’ [1] Annie
Gaylor quotes from ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’
–
“Rational
Creatures” “Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and
there will be an end to blind obedience….”
“Blind
Obedience” “[Women’s]
first duty is to themselves as rational creatures, and the next, in point
of importance, as citizens…
“Submit to
Reason” – “A Slavish
bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind;…Children cannot
be taught too early to submit to reason”
"Eve" - "Probably
the prevailing opinion, that woman was created for man, may have taken
its rise from Moses's poetical story; yet, as very few, it is
presumed, who have bestowed any serious thought on the subject, ever
supposed that ~eve was, literally speaking, one of Adam's ribs, the
deduction must be allowed to fall to the ground; or only be so far
admitted as it proves that man, from the remotest antiquity, found it
convenient to exert his strength to subjugate his companion, and his
invention to shew that she ought to have her neck bent under the yoke,
because the whole creation was only created for his convenience or
pleasure"
"Demi-Gods"
- "Men neglect the duties incumbent on man, yet are treated
like demi-gods; religion is also separated from morality by a
ceremonial veil, yet men wonder what the world is almost, literally
speaking, a den of sharpers or oppressors."
“Divine Right of
Husbands”
“I love man as my
fellow; but his sceptre, real, or usurped, extends not the me, unless
the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the
submission is to reason, and not to man.
But should it be
proved that woman is naturally weaker than man, whence does it follow
that it is natural for her to labour to become still weaker than
nature intended her to be? Arguments of this cast are an insult to
common sense, and savour of passion, The divine right of husbands,
like the divine right of kings, may, it is to be hoped, in this
enlightened age, be contested without danger.”
She died at 38 from
infection following a botched surgical intervention during childbirth.
[1]
Women
Without Superstition "No Gods, No Masters"
[2]
http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/woll.htm
[3]
www.workshop3.freeuk.com/Religious_Views_of_Women.htm