About: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

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About: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) Sponge Permalink

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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is often credited as being “the founding text of Anglo-American feminism” (Taylor 197). In A Vindication Wollstonecraft criticizes men and the education of women as the key factors which keep women in a state of oppression. While she does not use the same language or arguments for gender equality that later 19th and 20th Century feminist would employ; she does argue that men and women are equal in the eyes God and therefore subject to the same moral laws. Wollstonecraft draws on Adams expostulation to God in Milton’s Paradise Lost when he claims:

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rdfs:label	Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
rdfs:comment	A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is often credited as being “the founding text of Anglo-American feminism” (Taylor 197). In A Vindication Wollstonecraft criticizes men and the education of women as the key factors which keep women in a state of oppression. While she does not use the same language or arguments for gender equality that later 19th and 20th Century feminist would employ; she does argue that men and women are equal in the eyes God and therefore subject to the same moral laws. Wollstonecraft draws on Adams expostulation to God in Milton’s Paradise Lost when he claims:
dcterms:subject	Books
abstract	A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is often credited as being “the founding text of Anglo-American feminism” (Taylor 197). In A Vindication Wollstonecraft criticizes men and the education of women as the key factors which keep women in a state of oppression. While she does not use the same language or arguments for gender equality that later 19th and 20th Century feminist would employ; she does argue that men and women are equal in the eyes God and therefore subject to the same moral laws. Wollstonecraft draws on Adams expostulation to God in Milton’s Paradise Lost when he claims: Hast thou not made me here they substitute, And these inferior far beneath me set? Among unequals what society Can sort, what harmony or true delight? Which must be mutual, in proportion due Giv’n and receiv’d; but in disparity The one intense, the other still remiss Cannot well suit with either, but soon prove Tedious alike: of fellowship I speak Such as I seek, fit to participate All rational delight – (Wollstonecraft 47) Her argument follows the idea that if God made women with the ability for rational thought they in turn have the same capacity for reason as men. In denying women the opportunity for education and thus reason, men are essentially placing women on the same level with brute animals. She calls to Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualist are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing. The sensualist, indeed, has been the most dangerous of tyrants, and women have been duped by their lovers, as princes by their ministers, whilst dreaming they reigned over them (Wollstonecraft 50). Wollstonecraft appears critical of her own sex at times; acknowledging common criticisms of female behavior. However, she places the blame for this on women’s education since they “are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives (Wollstonecraft 45). It is in her educational reforms, her appeal for women’s ability for reason and rational thought, that without claiming gender equality, Wollstonecraft set the foundation for the feminist movements that would follow.

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