I mainly found the Echnique and Sagasta articles interesting because I love reading feminist discourses by women of colour before the first wave in the 1920's. They're definitely far left and right discourses and they're both flawed and brilliant in their own way. To me, both of their perspectives were reductive but I could also really understand their logic.
I heard some people claim that Sagasta was arguing for the right of women to be mothers and not be vilified for it but I don't think that's a fair claim. She's arguing that women's only place in the world is as a mother and a wife. She's telling us emancipation is wrong because we'll lose our purposes in life (serving men). Sagasta views women as inferior to men physically and emotionally -- our bodies just can't take the same amount of trauma men can. Even so, she thinks our spiritual connections to the world are invaluable; we are beautiful the way we are and we shouldn't seek to emancipate ourselves. Our thrones, as queens, rest in the household -- which is by far one of my favourite sentences in her article. We are beautiful, radiant, royalty, the backbones of families, the essence of purity, but still second to men.
And Echnique's article is pretty much summed up to making women feel guilty for having comfort in things like art, literature or poetry. She claims that these focuses are useless and are one of our main oppressors. She tells us to reject these values and seek knowledge in "practical philosophy" which is basically critical self-reflection... but, contrary to her belief, most if not all of art, poetry and literature are forms of self-reflection. Even with that harsh critique that as women we're too focused on sentiments, she praises us! She wants us to be emancipated, fulfill our dreams because we are as equal to men.. and perhaps even better.
It was really amusing to see them love women, women's powers, and bodies, but still reduce them down to how 1) they are helpful to men or 2) how they are not useful to men or even relevant.
But I'd like to know what you think, do you disagree or agree with me? Am I not critiquing them enough or vice versa?
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I agree with you! I also enjoy reading feminist writing, and it seems as though these two author's "love for women" is one sided, as you said, or perhaps even no sided... it is imperative for feminism to raise women up to equality, and of course today our view of equality is equal on all levels between jobs, emotional power, sexual power, etc. Of course, these pieces were written a long time ago, but it truly is interesting and a bit infuriating to read these pieces from a contemporary viewpoint wherein they appear so very limited and incorrect.
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