"Professed Enemies of Politeness": Sincerity and the Problem of Gender in Godwin's "Enquiry concerning Political Justice" and Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Woman"

Abstract

WOLLSTONECRAFT'S VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN (1792) identifies dissimulation as specifically female problem. Attacking modesty as embodiment of insincerity, Wollstonecraft aligns femininity with deceptiveness and suggests that as consequence, women have an obligation to be less but more truthful than their male counterparts: this is ultimate in female for which she calls.(1) Her call emerges from historical moment characterized just by its perception of crisis in manners and situation of women, however, but by what was widely understood to be crisis of sincerity in nation at large. The breakdown of honest and open communication between men and women is linked by Wollstonecraft to other failures--of political representation, of individual rights--and Wollstonecraft's call for women to become more sincere is also part of larger political plan. Godwin is even more explicit than Wollstonecraft about political evils of insincerity. While Wollstonecraft attacks politeness primarily insofar as it is tool for oppression of women, Godwin argues that insincerity is most stubborn obstacle to social reform and political revolution in broadest sense. Godwin's philosophical argument against insincerity in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) may be neither so persuasive nor so practical as Wollstonecraft's gendered and openly polemical attack on politeness. Yet Political Justice has virtue of taking sincerity to its logical extreme, setting up premise that only complete lack of reserve between individuals will guarantee absolute freedom in political sphere. By exploring rhetorical and cultural contexts in which Godwin's argument for truth-telling is situated, I hope to show how and why problem of insincerity had come to be perceived by writers of 1790s as central to questions of power and exclusion. Godwin's arguments for sincerity in Political Justice can be read profitably in counterpoint with body of writing, more sympathetic to politeness, authored by Hume, Edgeworths and others. Godwin responds quite explicitly to several of these arguments; others are written in wake of Godwin's own defense of absolute sincerity, and with goal of undermining such defense and preserving thereby social and political stability that politeness secures. The impossibility of thinking about politeness without also considering problems posed by relations between classes is revealed by fact that servants (both literal and metaphorical) figure in two most prominent examples of insincerity available to writers on either side of politeness debate: letter signed your most obedient and humble servant; and fashionable mode of excluding visitors by asking servant to say that one is not at home. The topic of servants offers writers across political spectrum way of managing anxiety or disposing of rhetorical excess at boundaries where masters and servants interact. In his rejection of the notorious hypocrisy of `I am at home,' Godwin deliberately foregrounds politeness as problem of gender but of class relations.(2) This choice proves problematic, however, as topic of gender continues to perplex social relations in manner that Godwin cannot address within framework of Enquiry, though I will suggest that it is thematized in Caleb Williams (1794). Both servitude and politeness are for Godwin antithetical to justice, yet his commitment to sincerity is ultimately undermined by his awareness that insincerities associated with gender will prove even harder to eradicate than miscommunication between members of different social classes. 1 For Political Justice, deception is simply one kind of injustice. It is rather dominant trope for representing injustice of all kinds, so that institution of government is described most damningly as organized deception and institution of marriage as a system of fraud (3. …