Talk:A Vindication of the Rights of Men

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Featured article star A Vindication of the Rights of Men is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do.
Featured topic star A Vindication of the Rights of Men is part of the "Mary Wollstonecraft" series (project page), a featured topic identified as among the best series of articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
Main Page trophy This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 29, 2007, and in the Did you know? column on September 18, 2007.
This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:
A summary of this article appears in Mary Wollstonecraft.
Maintained The following user(s) are actively contributing to this article and may be able to help with questions about verification and sources:
Awadewit (talk • contribs • email)
This in no way implies article ownership; all editors are encouraged to contribute.
Archive
Archives
  • Archive 1 - March 2007 - October 2007, covering GA review, copy editing, FAC comments, discussion of influence of VRM
  • Archive 2 - October 2007, covering a discussion of AE and BE in the article


Contents

[edit] Feminist

See A Vindication of the Rights of Woman for a good quotation on whether Wollstonecraft's work is "feminist" or not and whether using that word is appropriate. It was obviously not available to her, but it is frequently used by scholars to describe her thought. Awadewit | talk 11:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Since we are writing for a general audience here, I think "feminist" is appropriate. A more technical digression would be distracting, IMO, and leaving the term out would lose an important bit of info. Kaldari (talk) 15:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I disagree. Clearly Ms Wollstonecroft is many things, feminist among them, but here I think she is better noted as a philosopher. The work we are discussing has nothing to do with feminism, but much to do with philosophy. CsikosLo (talk) 13:17, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
All I can really say to that is: read the material published on Wollstonecraft's VRM listed in the bibliography. Almost all of it describes MW's political theory and especially her language in terms of its relation to feminism. The discussions of her use of the sublime and beautiful, for example, are almost exclusively framed in terms of feminism. This is the dominant scholarly conception of VRM. Awadewit | talk 13:35, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. Although VRM may not address feminism directly, it is certainly a work of feminist critique (perhaps the first). Kaldari (talk) 15:33, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Mary Astell? Awadewit | talk 21:45, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

The spelling convention used in this article is not appropriate for its subject matter. I could easily change it, but I'd like to know why American editors are variously unable, unwilling or incapable of employing the correct convention in a particular context such as this.

See archive 2. There is nothing "incorrectly" spelled in this article. Awadewit | talk 10:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Please use eighteenth-century British spelling and style, or we risk another pamphlet from Mary. She's dead and doesn't care, you say? Andplus (talk) 10:53, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Having just seen the stuff in the archive on this, I'm amazed at, variously, the length of the discussions, some of the "arguments" produced, and the determination of Awadewit & Qp10qp to resist a clear, if rather too well-mannered, concensus, which seems to be growing further on this page. Johnbod (talk) 13:56, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I do hope my sarcasm wasn't lost on you and you don't believe that I really want it in eighteenth-century British prose? I disdain to take advantage of a man's weak side, or draw consequences from an unguarded transport. Andplus (talk) 14:07, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
No, I mean the archived stuff, now clarified. Johnbod (talk) 14:10, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • The previous debate didn't end up too well-mannered on either side, I'm afraid, and I really do tire of the incoherencies of it all. If you want to see more people in support of retaining AE, see my talk page. Really, though, I just wish that everyone - on both sides - could be happy that I am writing these articles at all. That this becomes the paramount issue astonishes me. More debate has been wasted on the nine Mary Wollstonecraft articles I wrote over BE/AE and other petty MOS issues than it ever has over the content. I would much prefer to discuss the content of the articles. That is the most important part of them. The rigid adherence that is demanded to the MOS is not always a benefit to an article and the MOS itself is constantly in flux. It is extremely frustrating. I cannot reread the MOS every week to see what has changed. That is why I think there should be a semi-permanent version that changes every six months or so. Then when the MOS 2.0 comes out, for example, a list of changes could also be released. The way it is now makes it impossible for editors to keep up and only fosters debates such as this. The policy on national varieties of English has actually subtly changed several times since I have been an editor. Appealing to an ever-changing rule is not particularly convincing, nor are the other arguments I have heard. Awadewit | talk 14:13, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
What utter nonsense. Should an article about Shakespeare use Elizabethan spelling? Clearly this is an article about a British subject and should use British spelling. On that there should be no debate, WP:ENGVAR is absolutely clear on this. Jooler (talk) 16:06, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) The article is excellent, of course, as one has come to expect from this series. I looked at the relevant MOS section 13 months ago (before you became "very active") & whilst the section has strengthened somewhat against your position in the interval, I can't see it has made any substantive difference to the MOS's position on these articles. Pernickety-seeming adherance to WP guidelines is a key part of the FA process, as you must know better than most. Johnbod (talk) 16:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • 1) ENGVAR privileges English over every other language. According to its logic, we should write the Balzac article in French. Since we can't do that, only English articles receive this special "nationalistic" treatment. This is not acceptable in the equitable world that wikipedia attempts to create.
  • 2) ENGVAR is a guideline, not a policy. It is meant to be implemented with sanity, not rigidity. Since I am the sole maintainer of 8 of the 9 Mary Wollstonecraft articles, it is easier for me to update them and restore them after vandalism if they are in AE.
  • 3) Forcing BE spelling into a bastard hybrid with AE syntax doesn't do justice to either dialect. BE is not only a set of spellings. It is also a set of vocabulary choices and sentence constructions. It must be, if it is to be considered a separate form of English.
I see no compelling argument to change the spelling other than "we must adhere to the MOS". Well, the MOS is a guideline not a policy. We should make intelligent decisions, not automatic ones. Awadewit | talk 16:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • That guideline is nonsensical. It attempts to reduce national varieties of English to simple spelling differences. Should an article about Shakespeare use Elizabethan spelling? Quite. So why should we tack a modern British spelling onto an article about an 18th century subject written chiefly by an American (with all the stylistic foibles of regional variation)? Like it makes the slightest difference anyway. Are you incapable of comprehending that color and colour are referring to the same principle? That we can recognize or recognise? No. So you wish to change it to plant a little Union Flag on the article and claim it for the United Kingdom of Unreformed Spelling, despite the fact that the main author is American? It mentions Britain umpteen times, so there is no danger of it falling into the hands of the revolutionaries. Really, what is the problem? If you wanted it to be in British English you should have got here earlier and written it. Andplus (talk) 16:43, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Strawmen, I'm afraid. Johnbod (talk) 16:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Depends on your assumptions. :) Awadewit | talk 16:59, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I've always seen that guideline as an effort to avoid edit wars between nationalities. I usually try to respect it unless I feel that such an edit war is unlikely, as is the case with lower-profile articles. I don't know if an MoS guideline should be strictly followed if that is the only reason for its existence. There is no other style guide in the world with such a requirement because, the fact is, other things matter more. I think people should just be responsible enough to realize that and come to a calm agreement on talk pages. Wrad (talk) 17:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I would imagine all other English style guides plump firmly for one or other of the national varieties, so the question does not arise. You know where you are with the BBC, Chicago, Harvard etc. Johnbod (talk) 17:07, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • But you see, that is just the thing. Everything published by the Oxford University Press uses one style, for example. We have many styles. It is madness. (And by the way, OUP doesn't publish its American scholarship in AE and its British scholarship in BE.) If we actually abided by a single MOS, I might be more sympathetic to these arguments, but we do not. We abide by a shifting, contradictory, incoherent MOS. Awadewit | talk 17:10, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm dubious about this - my US edition of Malcolm Bull, The Mirror of the Gods, How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods, Oxford UP, 2005, ISBN 100195219236 has Hercules labouring. Johnbod (talk) 17:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Malcolm Bull is British, isn't he? I think Awadewit meant that if Bull was writing about an American artist his words wouldn't have the spelling adjusted to American English (because that would be madness, wouldn't it?). American scholarship, not American editions. Andplus (talk) 17:29, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what she meant; plenty of labor in Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11 By Geneive Abdo, OUP 2006. Johnbod (talk) 17:39, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • It really doesn't matter what OUP does, because we follow WP house style which is set up to handle a different problem -- multiple authors of different places following variant rules. ... Anyway, Awadewit has previously said that she wouldn't revert style/spelling changes; nobody expects her or anyone else to write in a way unfamiliar to them; so I don't see the problem. People should edit articles per WP:MOS which is intended to set up a clear rule to avoid edit warring. Here, strong national ties of the subject to England are not really disputed; the only thing disputed is what that means. But I've concluded it's not that hard: If new editors come onto the page and follow clearly established house rules, so be it. Longstanding MS editors should write in their own style but should not revert/edit war in contravention of house style (and WP:OWN), and I would hope that they would refrain from doing so. --Lquilter (talk) 17:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

BORING! Kaldari (talk) 18:18, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

  • "1) ENGVAR privileges English over every other language. According to its logic, we should write the Balzac article in French. Since we can't do that, only English articles receive this special "nationalistic" treatment. This is not acceptable in the equitable world that wikipedia attempts to create." - this is a nonsensical argument. The French language has its own WP so the French speakers can do what they like on their Balzac articles, and perhaps the Canadians and the French argue about it. We only have one English Wikipedia so we have to share it in a sensible manner and WP:ENGVAR is a well established convention used for this purpose. Jooler (talk) 21:33, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • "Since I am the sole maintainer of 8 of the 9 Mary Wollstonecraft articles..." - no its doesn't work like that. Please see WP:OWN. There are many American Anglophiles who edit RMS Titanic and Jack the Ripper et al who have learned to live with an alien spelling, just like all of the Brits and Aussies who end up having to use American spelling in oh so many many other articles. Jooler (talk) 21:28, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
    • But she said that she wouldn't revert British changes. You can't expect her to do something she doesn't know how to do. Forcing that would be owning her. Wrad (talk) 00:59, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
  • So this really has nothing to do with Awadewit, who simply will be doing her own thing. It has to do with other editors. It is my belief that if people would refrain from "protecting" "AE" on these articles, over time they will go to "BE" based on the common and repeatedly demonstrated understanding, from editors not closely involved with editing these articles, that these articles should be in "BE". In other words, people who are drawn in by Featured * reviews, will seek to fix what is, by all accounts, the minor matter of BE/AE variant spellings. --Lquilter 13:39, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neutral point of view

The article, particularly in its header, seems to take the point of view that Wollstonecraft won the debate with Burke, hands down. This does not strike me as a neutral point of view; Burke's writings are still highly regarded by a sizeable number of political philosophers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.165.87.144 (talk) 23:11, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

That's fine but while the article is linked from the main page, let's leave the ugly NPOV tag off, okay? It will be off the main page shortly and then you can reinsert the tag if you feel the need. —Wknight94 (talk) 23:17, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Following WP:V, this article accurately summarizes the Wollstonecraft scholarship on VRM. That scholarship does assert that MW's argument, particularly her rhetorical argument against Burke, was particularly devastating. If you have an issue with the argument, you have to take it up with the scholars. However, if you have some important scholarship on Burke that also address Wollstonecraft's work, we should include that as well. What works are you thinking of? Awadewit | talk 00:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
We can start with Russell Kirk, who admires Burke and specifically praises [i]Reflections...[/i]. Off-hand, I don't recall what he says about Burke's critics, but I doubt he ignores them.
I see he has written several books on Burke - are you thinking of A Genius Reconsidered? Awadewit | talk 21:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
From a contemporary view, she did win, no bones about it. The vast majority of western culture today would sooner agree with her argument than Burke's. Wrad 21:48, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
  • I trust that all long-time editors of historical articles would recognize that, in the light of history, one can deem something "won" or "lost" without running afoul of WP:NPOV. Certainly if there are any significant (in quality or quantity) alternative views they should be cited, but frankly, it's not so much a WP:NPOV issue as -- at best -- a "needs more sources" issue. --Lquilter 19:09, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Punctuation

Per WP:PUNC, Wikipedia uses neither "American" nor "British" quotation conventions, but rather "logical quoting". Someone needs to fix this article to conform to that. It is best done by someone with access to the sources quoted (Awadewit). P.S. - logical quoting does not mean that an entire sentence must be quoted in order for the punctuation mark to be inside the quotation marks. P.P.S. - Looking at the history I see someone changed the punctuation style from American to British recently, however, neither are correct for Wikipedia. Kaldari 22:08, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

  • When I wrote the article, I followed the logical quotation style of wikipedia. During the main page day, someone changed a bunch of quotations, but I thought I had fixed them all. Awadewit | talk 23:14, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
    • It looks like you did fix some of them. I've corrected 3 more. Hopefully, that takes care of it, but if someone else would like to double-check, that would be helpful. Kaldari 23:59, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
      • Do we need to put a note at the top of the article - "This article follows wikipedia's MOS, please don't alter". :) Awadewit | talk 10:26, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
        • Theoretically that shouldn't be necessary. Kaldari 16:04, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV description of [i]Reflections[/i]

I take issue with this article's description of Burke's text: it seems biased and notably fails to reference the text itself, even though [i]Reflections[/i] is included as a "primary source". More specifically:

[Burke] argues that citizens do not have the right to revolt against their government, because civilizations, including governments, are the result of social and political consensus.

Even though it is a difficult work to summarize, this seems like a poor representation of Burke's views. The word "consensus" doesn't even appear in the text, and if it's from O'Brien's introduction I certainly don't remember. Stronger themes include the idea that the French revolutionaries were overthrowing society on the basis of "metaphysical abstraction" (p89); that their views were "a priori"; that they were not wary of the fact that "the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate", or that politics is an "experimental science" (p152); or that their "mechanic philosophy" could not instill the affections necessary for social cohesion (p172).

more concerned with persuading his readers than informing them, he greatly exaggerated this element of the revolution in his text for rhetorical effect [...] to generate fear in the reader

The idea that the whole text "greatly exaggerated" the revolutionary violence at that point in time seems biased. The description of Marie and Louis forced from their palace is dramatized, but Burke seems to be trying to inspire pity rather than fear.

This section currently contains many loaded statements, and only cites three pages of clearly unsympathetic commentary, without any references from the text itself. I am seeking permission to succinctly rewrite the sections mentioned above, based on references taken from Burke's text and O'Brien's introduction. Leon 11:12, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

This article was based on a careful reading of the scholarly sources written on A Vindication of the Rights of Men, therefore I feel confident that it does not misrepresent the sources in any way. The article is supposed to be about the VRM and it is based on a solid understanding of the scholarship about the VRM. Mary Wollstonecraft does not engage with every argument that Burke makes (for example, his "scientific" arguments), so taking time to explain all of those would be fruitless. Burke's text is long and meandering. This article must focus on describing Burke's major arguments and the arguments Wollstonecraft engages with.
As you acknowledge, it is difficult to write a summary of Burke's Reflections, but I do not feel that the article misrepresents the text as much as you say. I have studied this text several times myself and been taught it at the undergraduate and graduate level and most of the major points brought up in those classes are here. You have asked to use Burke's own text and O'Brien's introduction as sources instead. I do not think this is the best choice, for two reasons. First, relying extensively on primary sources can lead to original research. We can only include claims in articles here that scholars have made. (I chose to include quotations from Vindication of the Rights of Men that scholars themselves quoted.) Second, you want to base the statements about Burke on Conor Cruise O'Brien's 1968 "Introduction" to the Penguin edition of Reflections. Such an out-dated introduction no longer represents the scholarship in the field. To even begin to understand all that has been said about Burke and his Reflections, we would have to start reading this list of books (and this is just the tip of the iceberg):
  • Freeman, Edmund Burke and the critique of political radicalism
  • Kramnick, The rage of Edmund Burke: portrait of an ambivalent conservative
  • O'Gorman, Edmund Burke: his political philosophy
  • Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered
  • Hampsher-Monk, The political philosophy of Edmund Burke
  • Macpherson, Burke
  • De Bruyn, The literary genres of Edmund Burke: the political uses of literary form
  • Reid, Edmund Burke and the practice of political writing
  • Furniss, Edmund Burke's Aesthetic Ideology: Language, Gender, and Political Economy in Revolution
This is the kind of reading I did for the series of articles that I wrote on Mary Wollstonecraft and her works, so I am confident that I have adequately represented the scholarship on this text. However, the Reflections on the Revolution in France article is badly in need of expansion. I urge you to begin this project. Once that is completed, it will be easier to fix any problems we might find in this article, don't you think? Awadewit | talk 17:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
I appreciate the effort to which you have gone to research the contents of this article, and won't attempt any edits without good support from secondary sources. That said, concerns may be raised about bias of the secondary sources used if the section so warrants. Burke does not use the term "swinish multitude" to dismiss "the people" - the text uses the indefinite article ("a swinish multitude"), and specifically with respect to the feared debasement of education (p173). The section on 'Reflections' seems to intimate that it aimed for persuasiveness over truth, and that subsequent fulfillment of its predictions was incidental. It suggests that the set piece around the infiltration of Versaille is exaggerated, based on inexact notions, and designed to instill fear. Needless to say, many Burke scholars would disagree with these points (secondary references pending). In the mean time, I'm not suggesting the section is at all uninformed, but that perhaps the one specifically cited source (3 pages of Butler 2002) does not represent a balanced opinion.
I agree with your point about the 'Reflections' article and will look to improve it with my little remaining holidays :-). Thanks for your patience Leon 12:36, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Burke's exact intention in the "swinish multitude" phrase (which is quoted without any articles) is actually irrelevant. As the scholarship on the Revolution Controversy makes clear, the middling sorts were offended by this phrase. Publisher-writers such as Daniel Isaac Eaton started issuing journals called Pig's Meat and Hog's Wash in response - an obvious play on words. This phrase is included because it became iconic during the debate. Its meaning was transformed because writers such as Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine in his Rights of Man challenged the premise of Burke's argument about class. Butler is far from the only scholar to say this (I can get you a list if you want because I wrote my Master's Thesis on Paine) and the book I quoted is a standard textbook used in undergraduate classes to introduce students to the 1790s Revolution Controversy. I feel confident that this section of the article does not misrepresent the debate that Burke's work sparked.
With respect to your point about the Versailles set piece. There are several standard interpretations of that section of Burke's work. I have included the one here that Wollstonecraft scholars focus on because this is a page on the VRM. On the Reflections page, however, we would have to have this interpretation plus several others.
The Reflections has been hotly debated by scholars in recent years - particularly the role of sublime in it. However, this article is not the place to explain all of those debates. This is the place to give the two-minute summary of the text and focus on what Wollstonecraft said in response. Because she highlighted certain aspects of Burke's work, those aspects are going to come through more clearly than others. I never thought of this article as an introduction to the Reflections - only an introduction to Wollstonecraft's response to it. I think that is appropriate. Awadewit | talk 17:55, 23 January 2008 (UTC)