Romanticism

[SacredImpetus]

First time posting here, I'll go ahead and apologize for any first time mistakes. Please feel free to make suggestions.

Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman cautions, "The imagination should not be allowed to debauch the understanding before it has gained strength, or vanity will become the forerunner of vice." She later says the best books are those "which exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination."

I wanted to get some second opinion on what exactly Wollstonecraft is saying in the first statement. It seems like she is saying that when imagination is strong enough it is permissible for it to debauch understanding but her second statement differs and suggests a balance. Perhaps I'm reading too much or too little into it. Opinions?

[Seasider]

Before you go any further in trying to understand the works of this author it is crucial to recognise that she was a woman writing about the oppression of women.

[SacredImpetus]

Thanks for that catch, I suppose that's what I get for only reading excerpts and not looking into the author or work. Gender definitely played a substantial role in perspective.

[Jozanny]

Mmm. James too warns in his prefaces for the reader to be on the alert about imagination, but his context is much different. Wollstonecraft may mean to not allow the ideal, as we might imagine it, to overtake experience; let me see if I can get this title on my kindle.

[JCamilo]

Forgive me, but both phrases she says about controled imagination and need of understandment. Clearly englightment idea of clarity of ideas controlling all else.

[Seasider]

Debauch is an extremely negative word and I think she she would wish the power of understanding to be strong enough to withstand any attempt to debauch it. But the general tenor seems to me to be to strive for a balance of feeling and intellect by a process of cross fertilisation.

[JBI]

Here is the context:

In order then to inspire a love of home and domestic pleasures, children ought to be educated at home, for riotous holidays only make them fond of home for their own sakes. Yet, the vacations, which do not foster domestic affections, continually disturb the course of study, and render any plan of improvement abortive which includes temperance; still, were they abolished, children would be entirely separated from their parents, and I question whether they would become better citizens by sacrificing the preparatory affections, by destroying the force of relationships that render the marriage state as necessary as respectable. But, if a private education produces self-importance, or insulates a man in his family, the evil is only shifted, not remedied. 22
This train of reasoning brings me back to a subject, on which I mean to dwell, the necessity of establishing proper day-schools. 23
But, these should be national establishments, for whilst school-masters are dependent on the caprice of parents, little exertion can be expected from them, more than is necessary to please ignorant people. Indeed, the necessity of a master's giving the parents some sample of the boys abilities, which during the vacation is shewn to every visitor, 1 is productive of more mischief than would at first be supposed. For they are seldom done entirely, to speak with moderation, by the child itself; thus the master countenances falsehood, or winds the poor machine up to some extraordinary exertion, that injures the wheels, and stops the progress of gradual improvement. The memory is loaded with unintelligible words, to make a shew of, without the understanding's acquiring any distinct ideas: but only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of mind, which teaches young people how to begin to think. The imagination should not be allowed to debauch the understanding before it gained strength, or vanity will become the forerunner of vice: for every way of exhibiting the acquirements of a child is injurious to its moral character.

[Seasider]

Mary Wollstonecraft an inspirational figure for feminists...Horace Walpole called her That hyaena in petticoats.

[SacredImpetus]

I think my confusion was what it was referring to when she says, "before it gained strength". Perhaps, because I was reading about the male perspective on imagination just before reading about the female it led me to read her statement to say that imagination may debauch understanding when it has gained proper strength. Now knowing the negative connotation beyond the defintion of debauch I can see how that interpretation would be foolish. Thank you all!

[mal4mac]

Surely it is central to the romantic tradition that imagination *should* be allowed to debauch the understanding. A debauch is "a wild gathering involving excessive drinking and promiscuity". That doesn't have to be negative. And I was under the impression that the Byron/Shelley set indulged in that sort of thing!

It's a subtle point that such activities should only be undertaken by those with sufficient understanding. It doesn't contradict the statement about the best books being those that regulate the understanding and exercise the imagination.

[SacredImpetus]

Interesting point, I do know that that many of the women writers found a common danger with romanticism and it was often a topic of dispute. I think it's safe to say that male writers were, for the most part, supportive of imagination that would surpass the understanding?

[JCamilo]

She is not a romantic, at best she is pre-romantic, but so is Adam Smith. Something should be clear, considering she is the mother an early romantic writer. She is not talking about romanticism, her dialogue is with enlightment... Hume, Locke, Rousseau.

[Seasider]

Surely it is central to the romantic tradition that imagination *should* be allowed to debauch the understanding. A debauch is "a wild gathering involving excessive drinking and promiscuity". That doesn't have to be negative. And I was under the impression that the Byron/Shelley set indulged in that sort of thing!

I think your definition misses out an important element of the verb. To debauch is to corrupt or vitiate with lewdness. Rather more than a wild party...more de Sade than Shelley.

[OrphanPip]

She is not a romantic, at best she is pre-romantic, but so is Adam Smith. Something should be clear, considering she is the mother an early romantic writer. She is not talking about romanticism, her dialogue is with enlightment... Hume, Locke, Rousseau.

Yes JCamilo is right, Wollstonecraft is a product of the Scottish Enlightenment in particular. Philosophically she can be grouped alongside other major Liberal thinkers like the democratic reformer Paine (who was a friend of her husband) and Scott thinkers like Hume and Smith. She was also interested in the democratic ideas of Rousseau, but she lacks a lot of his sentimentality.

It should be noted that her argument in the Rights of Woman is not that women are equal to men, it is that women are made inferior to what they could be by their lack of education. Her obsession with civic participation and education makes her a firmly Enlightenment figure. Her interest in equality aligns her in particular with the Scottish thinkers.

(edit: Her political leanings are more evident in A Vindication of the Rights of Men which was a response to Burke's condemnation of the French revolution.)