Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Harriet

Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave GirlAlthough Mary Wollstonecraft and Harriet Jacobs personifyd almost three hundred years apart from one another, the basic undercurrent of both of their work is the same. Wollstonecraft was a feministbefore her time and Jacobs was a freed slave who wanted to a greater extent than just her own freedom. Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Jacobs Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl, Written By Herself were both revolutionary texts that were meant to proclaim changeand the liberation of a group of people. For Wollstonecraft, this was women for Jacobs, it wasthe slaves. On the surface, these two works do not seem to be much related, but it is in this ideaof liberation that they are deeply connected. Even though these very different women were writing in two very different worlds, they both still sway to get across the idea that it is in the tyranny of slavery, mentally or physically, that ones true self is lost. The oppression of a persons free leave through the tyranny of slavery or absence of womens rights are virtually the same thing they both suppress a persons natural identity and the nevertheless way to liberation is through theeducation and humanization of those being oppressed. The first key idea in both Wollstonecrafts and Jacobs texts is that women and slaves are only define by those who own them, they cannot define themselves. Both women write of thedehumanization that slaves and women experience. Wollstonecraft says that women in her timeare simply objects of desire, instructed to play the feminine role, ...enfeebled by false refineme... ...ps a person of all dignity and humanity, all free-will gone. In both cases it is impossible to deny the implications for a loss of identity. If a person is stripped of choice, denied an education, and trained to live within the false restrictions of society, is impossib le for them to have an identity. Works CitedJacobs, Harriet. Incidents In the Life of A Slave Girl, Written By Herself. The Pearson Custom Library of American Literature. Ed. bathroom Bryant et al. Compiled for English 370B, Spring 2005. Boston Pearson Custom Publishing, 2003. Pages 418-77.Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication on the Rights of Woman. The Longman Anthology of British Literature Volume 2A- The Romantics and Their Contemporaries. Ed. Susan Wolfson and Peter Manning. New York Longman, 2003. Pages 230-257.