The Politics of Fiction Education and Example in Jean-Jaques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft

Date of Award

2004

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Wallace, Miriam

Keywords

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Wollstonecraft, Mary, Education, Fiction

Area of Concentration

British and American Literature

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore the use of fiction in the philosophical agendas of two of the most influential writers and theorists of the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft. I pair these two writers together in order to show the parallels of their work and their positions within the larger scope of the second half of the century. Fiction affords these writers, as well as their contemporaries, a means to communicate their social and political messages in a different and possibly even more effective way than their purely theoretical tracts. Both Rousseau and Wollstonecraft hold ideas on the kinds of education that would be most beneficial to particular kinds of people. Rousseau focuses his educational views on children, and Wollstonecraft focuses on the education of women. I argue that fiction is particularly useful in illustrating the educational theories of Rousseau and Wollstonecraft for they are able to present their ideas on the need for experience and example in education through the examples that their fictional stories provide. In looking at the ways in which these writers blur the boundaries between fiction and philosophy in their works, I discuss the ways in which their educational examples of fictional characters are paralleled with the authors' educational relationships with their readers. I extend this argument to show the ways in which Wolistonecraft utilizes her fiction to a new level of purpose from Rousseau, writing her own biographical story into her fiction to teach a lesson to the reader, a function of fiction that was used by many women writers of her time and throughout literary history.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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