Cat Fight Over Women's Independence? Barbauld vs. Wollstonecraft

“The Rights of Woman” is an incredibly dramatic call to action directed at women, who Barbauld describes as those “too long degraded, scorned, opprest” (2). The poem employs war-like imagery and military vocabulary to emphasize the burden of female oppression at the time, and the necessary action overcoming such oppression would require. Barbauld bids women “gird thyself with grace, collect thy store/ Of bright artillery glancing from afar…Blushes and fears thy magazine of war” (9-12). The poem takes a very unusual turn in the second to last stanza, essentially reversing all the emphatic language that preceded it. Barbauld initially calls women to “Make treacherous Man thy subject, not thy friend” and explains that being subordinate to men means no freedom; in the seventh stanza however, Barbauld suggests that feminist sentiments are not “secure to stay” that women’s bitterness will “soften, and thy pride give way.” Before the seventh stanza, Barbauld is clearly responding to Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, as she makes reference to a “golden sceptre,” which Wollstonecraft continually uses as a metaphor for usurpation of power by women of men. The seventh stanza’s turn indicates that Barbauld is actually satirizing or “dissing” Wollstonecraft, and her emphatic treatise on how women should be. The exaggerated militaristic language from before becomes then, not empowering, but satirical and totally reverses the meaning of the entire poem. The footnote indicates that Barbauld angrily wrote this after Wollstonecraft “dissed” another poem of hers, but I think it is strange that a woman who so commonly defended dissidents would be affected enough by Wollstonecraft’s dismissal to attack a piece on women’s independence.