1. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
A VINDICATION of the RIGHTS of WOMAN
I. INTRODUCTION
Since ancient times, women have always been considered inferior
to men as they are ―female(s) by virtue of a certain lack of qualities‖.
However, though scarce in number, there were also some women
trying to defy and mock the norm of women characterization. Mary
Wollstonecraft, who has been called the ―first feminist‖ or ―mother of
feminism‖, was one of these brave women. In this presentation, we are
going to study Mary Wollstonecraft‘s book-length essay on women‘s
rights, and especially on women‘s education, ―A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman‖, by focusing on her life story and the historical
context of the 18th century. Here, I‘d like to show you a short video,
then will continue together.
The most striking part of the video for me is about Wollstonecraft‘s
opinion about the women sexuality: ―Women are sexual beings, but so
are men! Female chastity and fidelity is necessary for stable marriage,
but requires the male ones, too.‖ Not today but for the 18 th century, in
which the ‗blind obedience‘ was expected from all women, this
statement was very anachronistic. So, what did men of the 18th century
mean with this ‗blind obedience‘? Here, we will focus on a brief
historical context of the 18th century.
II. HISTORICAL CONTEXT of the 18TH CENTURY

2. This was a period in which the stress on rationality and the
questioning of traditional authority that started in the beginning of 17 th
century was to reach its fullest expression. It was also a period
dominated by the experiences of the American and French
revolutions, and in which philosophical debates on the nature of
freedom and human rationality were to take tangible form in the
American Declaration of Independence (1776), and The French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789). What united the
philosophers of this so-called ‗Age of Reason‘ or ‗The
Enlightenment‘was their optimism and their belief in progress through
the human reason and knowledge.
Although always expressed in terms of the rights of ‗man‘, it might
at first sight seem that this could be understood as a generic term that
includes women. However, there was indeed a strikingly widespread
consensus that the principles of rational individualism were not
applicable to women, because women were incapable of the full
development of reason by their very nature; thus we can find in the
writings of Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu and above all Rousseau,
the idea that women are essentially creatures of emotion and passion,
who have an important role to play as wives and mothers, but who are
biologically unsuited for the public sphere. Briefly, women of the 18 th
century were primarily educated at home, or in some rare instances
may have been educated in a formal setting focused exclusively on
extending and refining the domestic education. Primary education of
women revolved around the social responsibilities of women in terms
of their appearance, decorum, and talents. Women of the past were
encouraged to develop refined talents in art, music, poetry, and

3. personal fashion as assets to attract a potential husband. These talents
would later serve as entertainment for their husband upon request.
This consensus didn‘t go unchallenged, and by the end of the
century there were a number of attempts to show its inconsistency, to
demonstrate that the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment could be
applied to women as well as men. Of these best known is Mary
Wollstonecraft and her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
III. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT and HER BRIEF LIFE
STORY
Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in London. She was the
second and the first daughter of the six children. Although her family
had a comfortable income when she was a child, the family became
financially unstable and they were frequently forced to move during
Wollstonecraft's youth because of her father. Moreover, he was
apparently a violent man who would beat his wife in drunken rages.
As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her
mother's bedroom to protect her. Wollstonecraft played a similar
maternal role for her sisters, Everina and Eliza, throughout her life.
For example, in a defining moment in 1784, she convinced Eliza, who
was suffering from what was probably postpartum depression after
childbirth,to leave her husband and infant; Wollstonecraft made all of
the arrangements for Eliza to flee, demonstrating her willingness to
challenge social norms. The human costs, however, were severe: her
sister suffered social condemnation and, because she could not
remarry, was doomed to a life of poverty and hard work. Thus, the

4. two sisters established a school at Newington Green, an experience
from which Mary drew to write Thoughts on the Education of
Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More
Important Duties of Life (1787). The book was about female education
to the emerging British middle class, and anticipated Wollstonecraft's
feminist arguments in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
Then, Mary became the governess in the family of Lord
Kingsborough, living most of the time in Ireland. Upon her dismissal
in 1787, she settled in George Street, London, determined to take up a
literary careerafter trying to take up the traditional female jobs --
needlework, governess, and teaching. In 1788 she became translator
and literary advisor to Joseph Johnson, the publisher of radical texts.
While working there, she became acquainted with the intellectuals of
the days such as Thomas Paine, William Blake, Henry Fuseli, and
William Godwin.
In 1790 she produced her Vindication of the Rights of Man, the first
response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
(a defence of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of
England. He was against the French Revolution by emphasizing that a
political doctrine founded upon abstractions such as liberty and the
rights of man could be easily abused to justify tyranny). She was
furious and attacked the aristocracy and the hereditary privilege in her
work.
In 1792, she published her A Vindication on the Rights of Woman,
an important work which, advocating equality of the sexes, and the
main doctrines of the later women's movement, made her both famous
and infamous in her own time. Wollstonecraft added the simple but

5. radical idea that women, too, had a right to develop their faculties
freely, that the laws subjecting them to the fathers and husbands could
be changed, and that their existing defects (and indeed their charms)
were largely as a result of social conditioning, and could be modified.
By comparing women to military men – both are fond of dress, trained
in obedience, and not expected to think for themselves – she implies
that education and socialization account for more differences than
does gender role.
At the time of writing A Vindication on the Rights of Woman,
Wollstonecraft experiencedan additional complication that a life of
passion could create for an independent woman trying to live by her
reason (she was attacked most due to this unacceptable and
unorthodox lifestyle). She fell in love with a married man, Henry
Fuseli, and horrified his wife by suggesting that the three of them
might live together. Soon thereafter, she went to Paris alone. In
Paris, Mary met with a dashing American Captain Gilbert Imlay, and
agreed to become his common law wife (informal marriage used as a
synonym for non-marital relationships such as domestic partnership).
She bore him a daughter, Fanny, but then she learnt about his
infidelities and attempted suicide twice. Finally, the relationship was
with Imlay was over.
Mary eventually recovered her courage and went to live with
William Godwin, the political philosopher and the novelist. Although
both of them were opposed to marriage in principle, they eventually
married due to Mary's pregnancy and to make the child legitimate in
March 1797. During her marriage, she was happily working on a
novel Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, in which Mary asserted that

6. women had strong sexual desires and that it was degrading and
immoral to pretend otherwise. This work alone sufficed to damn Mary
in the eyes of critics throughout the following century. In August, a
daughter Mary (who later became Shelley's wife), was born, and on
September 10the mother died of an infection.
Shortly after Mary Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his
"Memoirs" [memwar] of Wollstonecraft as well as her unpublished
and unfinished novel, Maria: or the Wrongs of Woman. As some have
argued, his honesty in his memoirs of her troubled love relationships,
her suicide attempts, her financial difficulties, all helped conservative
critics to find a target to denigrate all women's rights. The result?
Many readers steered away from Mary Wollstonecraft. Few writers
quoted her or used her work in their own, at least they did not do so
publicly. Godwin's work of honesty and love, ironically, nearly caused
the intellectual loss of Mary Wollstonecraft's ideas.
IV. A VINDICATION of the RIGHTS of WOMAN
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was much acclaimed in
radical political circles when it was published, but it also attracted
considerable hostility. The statesman Horace Walpole, for example,
called Wollstonecraft ―a hyena [haina] in petticoats,‖ and for most of
the nineteenth century the book was ignored because of its scandalous
reputation. Beginning in the late twentieth century, literary critics and
philosophers began to take great interest in Wollstonecraft's treatise as
one of the founding works of feminism. Some issues discussed by
commentators of Wollstonecraft's treatise are the author's attitude
toward sexuality, ideas about education, the role of reason versus
passion, attitudes toward slavery, the relevance of the work to

7. contemporary struggles for rights, the unflattering portrayal of
women, and the status of the work as a foundational feminist text. For
me, after reading this book-length essay, it is a bit a debatable to what
extent the text is feminist. We will decide together after analysing it in
depth.
In 1791, two events took place that prompted Wollstonecraft to
write her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The first was the
writing of the new French Constitution, which excluded women from
all areas of public life and granted citizenship rights only to men over
the age of twenty-five. The second was the report on education given
by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord to the French National
Assembly recommending that girls' education should be directed to
more subservient activities. In his recommendations for a national
system of education, Talleyrand had written:
.... Men are destined to live on the stage of the
world. A public education suits them [...] The
paternal home is better for the education of women;
they have less need to learn to deal with the interests
of others, than to accustom themselves to a calm and
secluded life.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is dedicated to Talleyrand,
and Wollstonecraft appeals to him to rethink his views. In her
dedication, Wollstonecraft states that the main idea in her book is
based on the simple principle that ―if woman is not prepared by
education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress
of knowledge and virtue; and for truth must be common to all.‖ In
other words, for Wollstonecraft, the society will degenerate without

8. educated men, particularly because mothers are the primary educators
of young children.
Written in simple and direct language and regarded as the first great
feminist treatise, Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1792) is a declaration of the rights of women to equality of
education and to civil opportunities. In it, which is comprised of 13
chapters, Wollstonecraft argues that true freedom necessitates equality
of the sexes; claims that intellect, or reason, is superior to emotion, or
passion; seeks to persuade women to acquire strength of mind and
body; and aims to convince women that what had traditionally been
regarded as soft, ―womanly‖ virtues are synonymous with weakness.
Yet, most importantly, Wollstonecraft advocates education as the key
for women to achieve a sense of self-respect and a new self-image that
can enable them to live to their full capabilities. Here Wollstonecraft
was particularly concerned to refute the ideas of the philosopher
Rousseau, who in his work Emile, which described the ideal education
of a young man, had included a chapter on the very different
education of Sophie, Emile‘s future wife. For Rousseau, men‘s and
women‘s natures and abilities were not the same, and these
biologically given differences defined their whole role in society, with
men becoming citizens and women wives and mothers. This meant
that the education of boys and girls must both recognise the natural
differences in ability: ―Little girls always dislike learning to read and
write, but they are always ready to sew [sov]‖. Wollstonecraft was so
enraged by his views on women, and refused to accept that women
were less capable of reason than men, or that vanity, weakness and
frivolity were the natural attributes of her sex: ―I have, probably, had

9. an opportunity of observing more girls in their infancy than
Rousseau‖. Moreover, she added that this kind of ―femininity‖ is a
social construct rather than being women‘s true ability, because men‘s
and women‘s common humanity is based on their shared and ―God-
given possession of reason‖. Thus, virtue must be the same for both
sexes. This meant that for Wollstonecraft, the virtues of the good wife
and mother could not be seen as ―natural‖, nor could they be based
upon a male-imposed ignorance. As one of Wollstonecraft‘s
contemporaries, Mary Astell (1666-1761) said, ‗If all men are born
free…how is it that all women are born slaves?‘Because of that,
Wollstonecraft insisted on the idea that women must be given
knowledge and education so that they can make rational choices, and
these rational choices are necessary for the betterment of the society.
Yet, to be able to make independent rational choices, besides the
education and knowledge, women also needed to have independent
employment, property and the protection of the civil law to be able to
get rid of the economic necessity that lead them into the forced
marriages. She expressed how women were ‗legally prostituted‘
through these forced marriages, and explained how men considered
‗females rather as women than human creatures‘ and how they were
‗anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and
rational mothers‘. She also argued heavily against the ‗socially
constructed‘ position of women, which had been forced upon them by
men. Shortly, for Wollstonecraft, a woman who is forced to perform
traditional female roles will do so very badly, but if men
would... but generously snap our chains, and be
content with rational fellowship, instead of slavish
obedience, they would find us more observant

10. daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful
wives, more reasonable mothers - in a word, better
citizens.
I think here the paradoxical statements start for us and for
Wollstonecraft also. As the above quotation suggests, Wollstonecraft
did not expect that education and freedom of choice would lead most
women to reject their traditional role, but argued that they would
enable them to perform better. She didn‘t accept the public/private
split that runs through liberal thought, and which insists on the
superiority of the former over the latter; rather she sought to show that
domestic duties, properly performed, were a form of rational
citizenship: that is, they were to be seen as public responsibilities
rather than asource of private satisfaction (Thornton and Vogel, 1986).
The problem with this, of course, is that in a world in which
domesticduties are unpaid, the economic dependence of a woman
upon her husbandremains; Wollstonecraft had perceived the dangers
of this, but does not follow its implications through. Similarly, her
insistence that motherhood is aform of citizenship does not solve the
problem of the male monopoly offormal political and legal power,
which leaves women dependent on thegoodwill of men to ‗snap their
chains‘. Moreover, the predominantly domestic role Wollstonecraft
outlines for women—a role that she viewed as meaningful—was
interpreted by 20th-century feminist literary critics (and also for the
ones in 21st) as paradoxically confining them to the private sphere.
But still, in defending this right, Mary Wollstonecraft accepts the
definition of her time that women's sphere is the home, but she does
not isolate the home from public life as many others did and as many

11. still do. For Mary Wollstonecraft, the public life and domestic life are
not separate, but connected. Men have duties in the family, too, and
women have duties to the state.
It sounds good, but what are these duties? Here comes the opinion
of Rousseau again about the women duties. In his book Emile, to
which Wollstonecraft is responding directly, Rousseau confronts a
troubling question: ―Why would any free man bother to stick around
long enough to help raise the children and look after his wife if he
didn't have to, since those are both large demands on one's free
individuality—especially to his psychological freedom, his sense of
being wholly independent?‖ (This is something at the centre of
Rousseau's political thought). The wife's job, simply put, is to deceive
the man into staying at home by sustaining for him the illusion of his
freedom, by serving his psychological and sexual needs. Thus,
Rousseau devotes some time to outlining how society is to educate
Sophie to make the nuclear family functional. That means, above all,
taking care of things, so that the husband will remain a loving parent
and a good citizen, without ever sensing that his freedom is being
restricted. Emile's independence paradoxically is going to depend
upon Sophie - though he must never be aware of that. What about
Wollstonecraft‘s reactions to this idea of Rousseau? Strangely, she
says ―OK‖, but if Sophie is to carry out all that Rousseau wants her to
do in maintaining Emile's sturdy sense of autonomy, she has to have a
shrewd understanding of the society in which they live; in other
words, she has to have an educated reasonable intelligence in order to
carry out her main task of sustaining the family. This, of course, is the
major problem in Rousseau's argument. If women are to have the

12. more difficult role in society, if they are going to have to understand
men and society sufficiently well to protect the family, and if they are
going to have to be educated for these tasks, then the various things
Rousseau wants them to be taught simply do not seem adequate.
Wollstonecraft concludes her ideas by saying that ―to deal with men in
the way Rousseau demands, surely women require the chance to learn
what men learn‖. That is, she wants true equality in educational
pursuit for all people, because only when woman and man are equally
free, and woman and man are equally dutiful in exercise of their
responsibilities to family and state, can there be true freedom. Shortly,
Mary Wollstonecraft, in her Vindication, makes clear her position: an
education which recognizes her duty to educate her own children, to
be an equal partner with her husband in the family, and which
recognizes that woman, like man, is a creature of both thought and
feeling: a creature of reason.
Here again, another major problem arises from Wollstonecraft‘s
uncritical adoption of a concept of reason which is bound up with the
need to subdue passion and emotion – qualities traditionally
associated with the female. For Rousseau in particular, the rule of
reason was to be achieved by the exclusion of the objects of passion –
women – from public life, because if women enter public life they not
only disrupt it but they also destroy its domestic foundations.
Wollstonecraft was against the idea that women were irrational
creatures, because reason is a God-given possession and men and
women are equal in the eyes of God. But also she accepted that reason
was the basis of rational citizenship and that it involved the
overcoming or control of love and passion. Although she recognised

13. the existence of female sexuality, this was only to insist that it, like
love, must be subordinated to reason, so that marriage and
motherhood must be based on rational choice and duty.
Here we see again, one of Wollstonecraft's most scathing
criticisms in the Rights of Woman.She is against false and excessive
sensibility, particularly in women. She argues that women who are
"the prey of their senses" cannot think rationally, because these
women - due to the pleasure of the attention of men - actually prefer
being considered as objects rather than as rational beings. She
continues that ―women are told from their infancy, 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, everything else is needless, for at least
twenty years of their lives. In fact, not only do they do harm to
themselves but they also do harm to all of civilization: these are not
women who can refine civilization – these are women who will
destroy it.
But reason and feeling are not independent for Wollstonecraft;
rather, she believes that they should inform each other. For
Wollstonecraft, the passions underpin all reason. The goal, for
Wollstonecraft's ethics, is to bring feeling and thought into harmony.
The harmony of feeling and thought she calls reason. In bringing
together feeling and thought, rather than separating them and dividing
one for woman and one for man, Mary Wollstonecraft was also
providing a critique of Rousseau, who desires to convert a woman into
―a coquettish [koketiş] slave and a sweeter companion to man

14. whenever he chooses to relax himself‖, because a woman who lacks
reason and who is full of passion must be subject to the ‗superior
faculties of man.‘
As part of her argument and defence to Rousseau that women
should not be overly influenced by their feelings, Wollstonecraft
emphasizes that they should not be constrained by or made slaves to
their bodies or their sexual feelings.This particular argument has led
many modern feminists to suggest that Wollstonecraft intentionally
avoids granting women any sexual desire. Cora Kaplan argues that the
"negative and prescriptive assault on female sexuality" is a
"leitmotif"[laytmotiv] of the Rights of Woman.For example,
Wollstonecraft advises her readers to "calmly let passion subside into
friendship" in the ideal companionate marriage. It would be better, she
writes, when ―two virtuous young people marry . . . if some
circumstances checked their passion‖. According to Wollstonecraft,
―youth is the season for love in both sexes; but in those days of
thoughtless enjoyment provision should be made for the more
important years of life, when reflection takes place of sensation.‖ The
―more important years of life‖ were those that did not include
attention based on appearance only, but on thought, reflection, and
virtue. As Mary Poovey explains, ―Wollstonecraft fears that until
women can transcend [trensend] their fleshly desires and fleshly
forms, they will be hostage to the body.‖If women are not interested in
sexuality, they cannot be dominated by men. Wollstonecraft worries
that women are consumed with "romantic wavering", that is, they are
interested only in satisfying their lusts.Wollstonecraft was so
determined to wipe sexuality from her picture of the ideal woman,

15. because if the lustful desires cannot be controlled how women can be
free and more rational. Wollstonecraft believed that to address these
issues adequately, education must be available to both men and
women; focused on equal development of the integrity of both mind
and character of people. Yet, Wollstonecraft argued that in the course
of history men, women were never obtained a chance like
that.Wollstonecraft challenged her 18th century readers to dream of
the possible advancements and enhancements of society should
women be given the same opportunities for growth and education as
the great men of history had enjoyed, because both men and women
are rational creatures. But one concerned writer expressed that her life
‗is totally inconsistent with the nature of a rational being‘ when we
consider her two illegitimate pregnancies, attempts to commit suicide
twice (almost successfully) and her letters to William Godwin full of
vanity and passion, even though she argues that rationality would stop
the passion for love.
To sum up, in this aspect of her polemic, Wollstonecraft is
establishing the main guidelines for the future liberal feminist
movement, which sees access, education, and the changes in the laws
necessary to achieve those the key elements in the struggle for
women's equality. Give us a level playing field, and see if we can
measure up. The practical program involves letting women into the
existing corridors (or some of them) occupied by men, but no radical
restructuring of social and political institutions. Today, it may be
naïve to imagine that simply equalizing educational opportunity will
ensure true equality for women. But the century after Wollstonecraft
was a progression of newly opened doors for women's education, and
that education significantly changed the lives and opportunities for

16. women in all aspects of their lives. Without equal and quality
education for women, women would be doomed to Rousseau's vision
of a separate and always inferior sphere. Reading A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman today, most readers are struck with how relevant
some parts are, yet how archaic are others. This reflects the enormous
changes in the value society places on women's reason today, as
contrasted to the late 18th century; but it also reflects the many ways
in which issues of equality of rights and duties are still with us today.
Should we, like Rousseau, insist that women, because they
are not like men and because they have a special social role
to play, especially in marriage and family life, should be
educated and treated differently from men—with a special
emphasis on their lives as wives and mothers?
Should we, with Wollstonecraft, insist that men and women
should, in all the most important social and personal roles,
think of themselves as equal?
And how does our decision on this thorny point affect our
sexual and family life