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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men
This volume brings together the major political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft in the order in which they appeared in the revolutionary 1790s. It traces her passionate and indignant response to the excitement of the early days of the French Revolution and then her uneasiness at its later bloody phase. It reveals her developing understanding of women's involvement in the political and social life of the nation and her growing awareness of the relationship between politics and economics and between political institutions and the individual. In personal terms, the works show her struggling with a belief in the perfectibility of human nature through rational education, a doctrine that became weaker under the onslaught of her own miserable experience and the revolutionary massacres.
Janet Todd's introduction illuminates the progress of Wollstonecraft's thought, showing that a reading of all three works allows her to emerge as a more substantial political writer than a study of The Rights of Woman alone can reveal.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Janet Todd's introduction illuminates the progress of Wollstonecraft's thought, showing that a reading of all three works allows her to emerge as a more substantial political writer than a study of The Rights of Woman alone can reveal.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1790
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692 people want to read
About the author
Mary Wollstonecraft
411 books934 followersMary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attention than her writing because of her unconventional, and often tumultuous, personal relationships. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement; they had one daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts.
During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.
Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org
During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.
Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org
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February 17, 2017
Introduction
Note on the Texts
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Mary Wollstonecraft
--A Vindication of the Rights of Men
--A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
--An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution [Abridged]
Explanatory Notes
Note on the Texts
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Mary Wollstonecraft
--A Vindication of the Rights of Men
--A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
--An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution [Abridged]
Explanatory Notes
August 22, 2021
I already wrote about A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women; but this appealing edition from Oxford also includes selections from Wollstonecraft's Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, which she wrote in Paris and published in 1794, when the Terror was at its height. It is a little bit stodgy, to be honest, and shows how much her prose style depended on the touch of personal outrage that was present in her earlier screeds – here, writing a straight history, she's less sparkling, but still fascinatingly uncompromising. Her basic position is a defence of the principles of the revolution, despite the violent turn that events had taken:
And I'm sure she had a point, though certainly there wasn't much audience for this kind of talk in England by 1794. Wollstonecraft in fact goes further than some radicals in justifying, even while she condemns, the violence, suggesting that people are ‘justified in having recourse to coercion, to repel coercion’. As she points out, the new regime is only following the model of the royalist application of justice, which was always extremely one-sided and fairly merciless.
Her thorough political background to the events of 1789 is a little laborious, but whenever she stops to give her own opinions on the state of affairs, her writing comes alive again. For Wollstonecraft, everything comes down to basic matters of fairness and justice, and you can see her measuring everything by that yardstick, disgusted by the rising death toll but determined to defend the principles that first set things in motion.
She compares the current disorder to a medical treatment that makes you worse before you get better – ‘the excrementitious humours exuding from the contaminated body’ – and concludes, perhaps with more hope than conviction, that it would only be a temporary blip on the road to utopia. ‘Europe ought to be thankful for a change,’ she says, ‘that, by altering the political systems of the most improved quarter of the globe, must ultimately lead to universal freedom, virtue, and happiness.’ I guess we're still waiting for all that, but her idealism got her a lot further than the cynicism of her opponents ever did.
Several acts of ferocious folly have justly brought much obloquy on the grand revolution, which has taken place in France; yet, I feel confident of being able to prove, that the people are essentially good…
And I'm sure she had a point, though certainly there wasn't much audience for this kind of talk in England by 1794. Wollstonecraft in fact goes further than some radicals in justifying, even while she condemns, the violence, suggesting that people are ‘justified in having recourse to coercion, to repel coercion’. As she points out, the new regime is only following the model of the royalist application of justice, which was always extremely one-sided and fairly merciless.
The rich have for ages tyrannized the poor, teaching them how to act when possessed of power, and now must feel the consequence.…When justice, or the law, is so partial, the day of retribution will come with the red sky of vengeance, to confound the innocent with the guilty.
Her thorough political background to the events of 1789 is a little laborious, but whenever she stops to give her own opinions on the state of affairs, her writing comes alive again. For Wollstonecraft, everything comes down to basic matters of fairness and justice, and you can see her measuring everything by that yardstick, disgusted by the rising death toll but determined to defend the principles that first set things in motion.
She compares the current disorder to a medical treatment that makes you worse before you get better – ‘the excrementitious humours exuding from the contaminated body’ – and concludes, perhaps with more hope than conviction, that it would only be a temporary blip on the road to utopia. ‘Europe ought to be thankful for a change,’ she says, ‘that, by altering the political systems of the most improved quarter of the globe, must ultimately lead to universal freedom, virtue, and happiness.’ I guess we're still waiting for all that, but her idealism got her a lot further than the cynicism of her opponents ever did.
November 21, 2009
Vindication of the Rights of Man, Wollstonecraft's lesser known essay, was a polemical response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, which in itself was a critical response to the political motivations behind the French Revolution. The central issues that Wollstonecraft takes with Burke's book is the way in which it seems to advocate inequality, further oligarchic control, and dismiss the popular reason of the Enlightenment as an irrational and reckless response to (what Burke considers) justice.
Both of the essays contained in this edition rail against the way in which power denies certain individuals the right to a life of equal opportunity and happiness, which is what makes reading them in conjunction such a redeeming experience. Of course, her major work here is Vindication of the Rights of Woman, mainly because it established her as one of the first major feminist writers, and because it elaborately lays out her views on subjects ranging from class distinction, parenting, national education, and most importantly, the unfortunate social role that women seem to play in the world.
For the most part, Wollstonecraft's ideas are not terribly complex, and her writing isn't as difficult as that of some of her contemporaries. Aside from some of the slightly tangential details that occupy most of the latter half of the book, the first, stronger half, basically concerns itself with the issue of blind female obedience as brought on by early indoctrination. Education systems are solely to blame here, not to mention a certain domestic etiquette that hinders the independent growth of female thought. While this isn't exactly an earth-shattering epiphany to the modern reader, it certainly was a large part of the problem when it came to women's rights in the Eighteenth century. Not only were women basically denied the same political, social, and financial opportunities as men, but they were furthermore distracted by a certain lifestyle that seemed to flat out eschew any activities or duty that even remotely resembled independent thought. Her solution to a life of social oppression goes as follows.
"Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play thing."
To be perfectly honest, I cannot see how anything more elaborate or complex than that can be ascertained from this book. It displays a fair share of redundancies, but then again, the joy of reading Wollstonecraft is to be found in the tone of her vitriolic writing style. She also put action into praxis through the act of writing the book at all, which was a notable accomplishment in itself.
Both of the essays contained in this edition rail against the way in which power denies certain individuals the right to a life of equal opportunity and happiness, which is what makes reading them in conjunction such a redeeming experience. Of course, her major work here is Vindication of the Rights of Woman, mainly because it established her as one of the first major feminist writers, and because it elaborately lays out her views on subjects ranging from class distinction, parenting, national education, and most importantly, the unfortunate social role that women seem to play in the world.
For the most part, Wollstonecraft's ideas are not terribly complex, and her writing isn't as difficult as that of some of her contemporaries. Aside from some of the slightly tangential details that occupy most of the latter half of the book, the first, stronger half, basically concerns itself with the issue of blind female obedience as brought on by early indoctrination. Education systems are solely to blame here, not to mention a certain domestic etiquette that hinders the independent growth of female thought. While this isn't exactly an earth-shattering epiphany to the modern reader, it certainly was a large part of the problem when it came to women's rights in the Eighteenth century. Not only were women basically denied the same political, social, and financial opportunities as men, but they were furthermore distracted by a certain lifestyle that seemed to flat out eschew any activities or duty that even remotely resembled independent thought. Her solution to a life of social oppression goes as follows.
"Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play thing."
To be perfectly honest, I cannot see how anything more elaborate or complex than that can be ascertained from this book. It displays a fair share of redundancies, but then again, the joy of reading Wollstonecraft is to be found in the tone of her vitriolic writing style. She also put action into praxis through the act of writing the book at all, which was a notable accomplishment in itself.
September 4, 2018
I've officially fallen in love with Wollstonecraft. Her style of essay writing is biting and to the point, whilst using 18th century modes of writing to her advantage. Rights of Men is basically one big take down of Edmund Burke, whilst Rights of Woman tears Jean Jacques Rousseau and other philosophers of the period a new one. Meanwhile, A Historical and Moral View is analytic and more like a modern essay in its style and language. One thing I love in particular is how Wollstonecraft looks at the bigger picture for everything she discusses, and acknowledges flaws and problems in a way that doesn't detract from her arguments.
July 14, 2019
I maintain that if these results can be achieved, the state of affairs in our corner of Greece, where men and women do not have a common purpose and do not throw all their energies into the same activities, is absolutely stupid. Almost every state, under present conditions, is only half a state, and develops only half its potentialities, whereas with the same cost and effort, it could double its achievement. Yet what a staggering blunder for a legislator to make!
Laws VII, Plato
It's worth invoking Plato in order to talk about Wollstonecraft because her argument in the main work is a species of the one he took contra Aristophanes, and she certainly had the education to have known. She would agree with the near polemic tone, and more importantly with the idea that the subjection of women is to the detriment of nearly everyone. But while Plato wanted to say it's because women are inherently weak and frivolous that it's especially important that they get the right education, Wollstonecraft counters that it's a society that infantilizes its women and keeps them from receiving a proper education that would produce a "frivolous" woman in the first place. And further, a male society which values women for only the most superficial reasons, that is, teaching men to value superficiality, is a mar on the men as well. The work is a piece by piece elaboration on this theme in different areas. The crux of the argument seems to be that lack of education is the breeding ground of vice, thus the proliferation of education equally provided to the sexes is to the benefit of everyone's virtue, and that what were seen as follies of women would in hindsight be seen to be just unwarranted impositions against the development of their virtue.
That's the step I was most interested in reading this, and I was disappointed to see this itself was never elaborated on. It is especially telling that Wollstonecraft never elaborates on what her notion of virtue is. It may be subject to a similar view of the ancients, if not for the fact that she also in many places seems to conflate morality with virtue, at one point arguing that women seeing each other naked would be a detriment to their virtue, when this is more a matter of the prudish British morals. And if this were an ancient holdover sense of the term, she would have to contend with Aristotle's separating theoretical/scientific knowledge and practical wisdom; the latter part concerns that which is actionable, and thus that which governs virtue, but isn't teachable because it is exactly that skill by which a person knows exactly what is specific to themselves in acting well. Virtue has tutors, but habituation is only enforced in schooling by throwing you into situations, rather than anything specific to what's being taught. And even then, in her Vindication Wollstonecraft doesn't address the several skeptical arguments which were being advanced by her contemporaries which threw serious doubt both on virtue and knowledge as a means of getting there.
That concerns Burke and Rousseau, which is a good way to transition to the other works bookending her more famous one. The first Vindication is a near direct response to Burke's Reflections on The Revolution in France, and while it's a nice followup if you have read it, I'm not sure if it's worth it for someone who hasn't read Burke. It is necessary to read it while noting both her valid remarks, and the ones which gloss over the core of Burke's argument. A good example is the discussion of the house of commons. Wollstonecraft criticizes the irresponsibility of a ruling body which has no recourse to virtue, while Burke was first to admit that they're a bunch of useless loafers, and in fact he banks severely on it. It is a proper counterweight to have a class who will dig their heels in at any slight disturbance so as to keep any drastic measures from commencing. One would question the worth of intentional gridlock, and Burke is at the disadvantage of banking on a group whose power is soon to be on the decline. And so Wollstonecraft goes on, somewhat fallaciously, to say nearly every great change is that of great disturbance, so digging the heels in is a vain gesture. Burke is not necessarily opposed to large changes, he gives much applause to the Revolution of 1688 which he argued made a drastic emergency change to Britain's constitution while draping it in the veil of cultural and historical continuity. He wrote his letter to oppose the notion of importing France's revolution to England, a climate which would make no sense.
In this Burke shares a notion of Rousseau's, that of a culture having what R terms natural morality; that is, the set of arbitrary given assumptions which have arisen particular to one culture. One example of such an assumption is how in America the mere political provision of freedom of speech has become an assumed value. And to Burke's credit, this is indeed something which will only change slowly over time in a proper context. It's however Rousseau's point that the proliferation of the arts and sciences have sown a rupture of self awareness about the arbitrariness of our values. This gives Wollstonecraft the further problem of whether education might corrupt more than actually proliferate virtue.
And indeed Wollstonecraft is a great reader of Rousseau, and seems to have adopted this line in her View of the French Revolution. She retains her view that the Bourgeoisie of France were too morally bankrupt, further including the vain capricious social function of the arts and sciences among them, practically right out of Rousseau. So it's not quite a 180 from her positions in the first vindication, but she's clearly shaken by the Terror. She ultimately concludes it is better that oppression be opposed rather than enabled, however she is far more sensitive this time to the idea of natural morality, and what happens in a society which sees its assumptions dissolve around it. And ultimately she returns to Burke's position on the strength of England's constitution. She does offer a greater morsel on virtuous education on this work, which is a neigh Confucian take which treats education in manner and plain education together, where one or the other would be incomplete on its own to foster virtue.
So these three texts together make an interesting arc (although the last text, being more a historical commentary, is severely abridged), though the Vindication of the Rights of Women is the clear centerpiece and stands on its own. It is radical for its time certainly, which is all the more ballsy of her to write in a sharp, florid, rhetorical tone. It's rather unfair of her to criticize Burke's sentimental flourishes while doing the same herself, but it's intricate prose nonetheless. It's however not that radical: she is after all arguing for the way women can be better wives to their husbands. But it's still a noble endeavor on her part to see her responsibility be the promotion of self development alongside virtue in a time where this found its best expression in Germans such as Goethe. Solid Recommendation.
March 11, 2020
I’ll confess that I only read the two Vindications in this edition as part of research for a university essay.
Some of the prose is a little tough to read but that may be a symptom of the time she wrote in as much as anything.
Some of these arguments are utterly timeless, her advocation for a level playing field for both sexes upon which they can develop morality is something that resonates even today. A genuine legend of her time and one of the founding mothers of the feminist movement.
Some of the prose is a little tough to read but that may be a symptom of the time she wrote in as much as anything.
Some of these arguments are utterly timeless, her advocation for a level playing field for both sexes upon which they can develop morality is something that resonates even today. A genuine legend of her time and one of the founding mothers of the feminist movement.
September 27, 2015
Free the nipple, etc.
January 29, 2018
'This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.'
'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' was published in 1792. It is impossible for me to review this work in any traditional sense. Yes, there are contradictions in some of Wollstonecraft's arguments. Yes, the essay is discursive and meandering at times. None of that matters, compared with the ground breaking nature of Wollstonecraft's fundamental proposition, that women and men are independently equal and should be educated and treated as such.
Some 226 years later, despite the progress that has been made, we continue to wait for the day when Wollstonecraft's vision is truly realized. There is still much to do.
'Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being to her duty.'
'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' was published in 1792. It is impossible for me to review this work in any traditional sense. Yes, there are contradictions in some of Wollstonecraft's arguments. Yes, the essay is discursive and meandering at times. None of that matters, compared with the ground breaking nature of Wollstonecraft's fundamental proposition, that women and men are independently equal and should be educated and treated as such.
Some 226 years later, despite the progress that has been made, we continue to wait for the day when Wollstonecraft's vision is truly realized. There is still much to do.
'Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being to her duty.'
September 7, 2018
Finished: 07.09.2018
Genre: novel
Rating: C+
#ccbookreviews
Conclusion:
Classic....but with some reservations.
Review
Genre: novel
Rating: C+
#ccbookreviews
Conclusion:
Classic....but with some reservations.
Review
May 10, 2023
Better the second time around
She's getting an obligatory 3 stars for being a revolutionary and championing feminism in a time when a lot of people didn't, but I found the book itself to be tedious, redundant, and honestly incredibly unenjoyable to read (personally).
She's getting an obligatory 3 stars for being a revolutionary and championing feminism in a time when a lot of people didn't, but I found the book itself to be tedious, redundant, and honestly incredibly unenjoyable to read (personally).
March 15, 2021
She is smart, fun, and feisty!
December 24, 2023
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
It’s 1792, and Mary Wollstonecraft is RAGING. Here she goes on the rampage, railing against Burke in an essay about the Rights of Men and tearing Rousseau (and society) a new one about the Rights of Women for, like, a novel-length diatribe. And it’s so hardcore. This is heavy metal.
Yes, it’s repetitive and overlong and grows tedious at time, and not everything translates perfectly to 21st century feminism, I’m not surprised. But man, someone resurrect Mary Wollstonecraft to fight the fight now? She’d have so much to say about the flaws of the modern beauty industry alone, I swear. Anyway, so much of what she says is radical and still way too relevant. She talks about equality in education and the fucked-up-ness of separating children and forcing girls to play with dolls and being raised to be “slaves” to their husbands, essentially weak simpering objects of lust designed “to please.” This is like that Barbie movie monologue but SO MUCH ANGRIER. In the background she finds time to talk class and consider the family structure and the problems of hereditary wealth and I’m so very interested in learning more about her life now. Also, like. Imagine being born Mary Shelley, and finding out your dead mother was this RADICAL ???? It’s so much to think about.
January 10, 2025
Incredibly progressive for 1792, and the sass is ICONIC.
January 6, 2016
At the moment, what has struck me the most about Wollstonecraft's Vindications is the following excerpt:
"I am aware of an obvious inference: - from every quarter have I heard exclamations against masculine women; but where are they to be found? If by this appellation men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, I shall most cordially join in the cry; but if it be against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the attainment of those talent and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human character, and which raise females in the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind; - all those who view them with a philosophic eye must, I should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine. (Wollstonecraft 110) - my emphasis.
Really, this was the whole impetus behind the topic for my M.A. essay. Masculine women - in both characteristics and features. Shall I dare say, of "ugly" women?
"I am aware of an obvious inference: - from every quarter have I heard exclamations against masculine women; but where are they to be found? If by this appellation men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, I shall most cordially join in the cry; but if it be against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the attainment of those talent and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human character, and which raise females in the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind; - all those who view them with a philosophic eye must, I should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine. (Wollstonecraft 110) - my emphasis.
Really, this was the whole impetus behind the topic for my M.A. essay. Masculine women - in both characteristics and features. Shall I dare say, of "ugly" women?
April 6, 2020
Mary Wollstonecraft was a revolutionary for her time. Her work is not only sparking questions and changing the way we look at feminism but it's also a great period piece on the way women would act during the Enlightenment. This book is a must-read for any young feminist trying to understand where the movement came from and why it's still relevant today.
Though the language was at times complicated to grasp, it was overall, well explained and the surrounding sentences made the whole book come together.
Though the language was at times complicated to grasp, it was overall, well explained and the surrounding sentences made the whole book come together.
June 11, 2015
Great book.
November 24, 2024
There are a couple things to consider when rating and reviewing this book. The first is that this is a critical edition (specifically Broadview Literary Texts) and the second is the book contains two different writings from Mary Wollstonecraft. I'll begin with the second point.
The two different texts are like night and day. "The Vindications of the Rights of Men" was written as a hasty response that extended beyond a mere letter from Wollstonecraft to Edmund Burke concerning his work "Reflections on the Revolution in France". Burke was fully against the French Revolution as it deposed traditional and sacred institutions. Wollstonecraft (similar to Thomas Paine) made the case that the Revolution was to correct human rights violations and orchestrated a venerable novel government while pointing out some of Burke's hypocrisy. This is, of course, before the Reign of Terror in France which showed the true colours of many revolutionists. "The Rights of Men", I dare say, is not well written. It is a rant that got out of hand and there are many passages which sound like they are meant to be flurries of poesy with no real point. Wollstonecraft was simply expressing her distaste for Burke and his stance.
"The Vindications of the Rights of Woman", on the other hand, is more methodical and flows well. Wollstonecraft definitely thought this one through, unlike the other which she merely emoted. The general argument of "The Rights of Woman" is that women should be educated on par with men in order to provide intellectual freedom and participation in the moral sphere in order to be more involved, informed, caring, and responsible members of society. (It clearly draws from the Enlightenment principle that knowledge and education breed freedom.) Overall, she has good arguments, although it drags in a few places such as when she has extended confutations of Rousseau's "Emile" which presents his theory of education, which neglects and patronizes women. I would highly recommend this book for general reading as well as a foundation for understanding good Feminism.
Lastly, the Broadview edition has some good points like including a number of appendices which give background to the writings. My gripe is that there was more focus on "The Rights of Men" than I thought should have been given in contrast to "The Rights of Woman". More space in the introduction to the implications and historical reception of the book would have been nice.
The two different texts are like night and day. "The Vindications of the Rights of Men" was written as a hasty response that extended beyond a mere letter from Wollstonecraft to Edmund Burke concerning his work "Reflections on the Revolution in France". Burke was fully against the French Revolution as it deposed traditional and sacred institutions. Wollstonecraft (similar to Thomas Paine) made the case that the Revolution was to correct human rights violations and orchestrated a venerable novel government while pointing out some of Burke's hypocrisy. This is, of course, before the Reign of Terror in France which showed the true colours of many revolutionists. "The Rights of Men", I dare say, is not well written. It is a rant that got out of hand and there are many passages which sound like they are meant to be flurries of poesy with no real point. Wollstonecraft was simply expressing her distaste for Burke and his stance.
"The Vindications of the Rights of Woman", on the other hand, is more methodical and flows well. Wollstonecraft definitely thought this one through, unlike the other which she merely emoted. The general argument of "The Rights of Woman" is that women should be educated on par with men in order to provide intellectual freedom and participation in the moral sphere in order to be more involved, informed, caring, and responsible members of society. (It clearly draws from the Enlightenment principle that knowledge and education breed freedom.) Overall, she has good arguments, although it drags in a few places such as when she has extended confutations of Rousseau's "Emile" which presents his theory of education, which neglects and patronizes women. I would highly recommend this book for general reading as well as a foundation for understanding good Feminism.
Lastly, the Broadview edition has some good points like including a number of appendices which give background to the writings. My gripe is that there was more focus on "The Rights of Men" than I thought should have been given in contrast to "The Rights of Woman". More space in the introduction to the implications and historical reception of the book would have been nice.
March 14, 2025
According to Google, A Vindication of the Rights of Women was the first feminist book. Such a wonderfully profound and relevant read and I am glad to gotten through it, no matter how depressing it was at times to see how little the world has changed in 235 years.
Wollstonecraft dreams of a future in which women and girls are given the chance they deserve, a future that has not yet come to pass. She lays out satisfyingly straightforward reasoning that draws the reader into her ideas. Of course women cannot raise their children or have an affectionate marriage or contribute to society as well as they could if they were allowed to have an education and grow their minds. Of course women spend much of their time worrying about how to appear beautiful and win a husband if they are not permitted to own their own property or support themselves financially.
Wollstonecraft debunks the still commonly held belief that women need to make themselves smaller or weaker to attract a man. She says that women value their reputations above all else, including heaven or themselves, since it is the eye of man they have been taught to dread. She maintains that the want of chastity in men is the cause of a lack of virtue or modesty in women.
Wollstonecraft hopes for a future in which women have their own representation in government. And most of all, her wild wish is to see the distinction of sex confounded in society. All of this written in 1790, and somehow still wildly applicable to today’s world.
Wollstonecraft dreams of a future in which women and girls are given the chance they deserve, a future that has not yet come to pass. She lays out satisfyingly straightforward reasoning that draws the reader into her ideas. Of course women cannot raise their children or have an affectionate marriage or contribute to society as well as they could if they were allowed to have an education and grow their minds. Of course women spend much of their time worrying about how to appear beautiful and win a husband if they are not permitted to own their own property or support themselves financially.
Wollstonecraft debunks the still commonly held belief that women need to make themselves smaller or weaker to attract a man. She says that women value their reputations above all else, including heaven or themselves, since it is the eye of man they have been taught to dread. She maintains that the want of chastity in men is the cause of a lack of virtue or modesty in women.
Wollstonecraft hopes for a future in which women have their own representation in government. And most of all, her wild wish is to see the distinction of sex confounded in society. All of this written in 1790, and somehow still wildly applicable to today’s world.
April 1, 2025
As always with this kind of text, the review is about the suitability of the text as an assigned volume for undergraduates—not whether Wollstonecraft's work is important (it is—eleventy million stars for sure). The star of the volume, of course, is Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the other two texts are makeweights. Of those two, the earlier Vindication of the Rights of Men makes more sense here and is better annotated. The curious choice was to include a selection from Wollstonecraft's Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution. For some reason, the editing itself in that final text is shabbier than the other two (several typos). Moreover, the principle of selection in that text is not entirely clear. The two vindications are rightly more celebrated. MW's vigorous prose attack on Burke's Reflections in the first Vindication is worth closer attention than it has often received. Todd's endnotes are helpful here in elucidating some of the context. She does solid work with the second Vindication as well. There are footnotes here (occasionally) which are MW's own—oftentimes the need to include some of these simply didn't seem justified. Despite the inconvenience of endnotes, this is not a bad edition for undergraduates, though if one only wants to assign the second Vindication, there are several more economical choices out there. Todd's introductory material is (no surprise) quite good. However, the suggestions for further reading are pretty cursory.
January 16, 2025
If you thought Indian news channels of the 2010s invented vitriolic political debates, behold these pamphlets from the 1790s. There's enough word-twisting, name-calling, mud-slinging to keep a modern politician taking copious notes.
I had very high expectations of this book and will give an extra star just for its historical importance, but am DNFing about 60 pages in because I see no point in continuing further.
I had very high expectations of this book and will give an extra star just for its historical importance, but am DNFing about 60 pages in because I see no point in continuing further.
March 25, 2024
honestly, she kinda cooked burke in A vindication of the rights of man... if i were him i would literally have just shut up after.
May 1, 2024
she went off
April 7, 2025
CC reading
April 29, 2025
Good! Interesting! But long! Wouldn’t read if it weren’t for work…
May 19, 2025
hoping the goodreads shawties see my rating for this one
January 31, 2024
Slay queen
February 18, 2013
Read "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" for EN4363: Romantic Writing and Women.
I was pleasantly surprised by what an engaging and enlightening read this was when I began this book. I expected it to be the sort of text I could appreciate historically, but not entirely enjoy, but for the most part I genuinely enjoyed reading this book. I did find that it got bogged down in repetitions at times, but I know this is because Wollstonecraft had very little time to edit this text before it went to print. Given more time, it could have been a far better structured book that conveyed the same message without needing to repeat the same facts and ideas over and over.
Ultimately my biggest issue with this book was Wollstonecraft's bizarre ideas on marriage, namely the fact that passion eventually disappeared, leaving the couple with nothing but friendship and their children to unite them. While I do believe that friendship is essential to a good marriage, I wondered what she had experienced to make her think that passionate love could never be sustained throughout a marriage. She also seemed to suggest that once a couple had children, they should devote themselves entirely to them, and that a husband who doted more on his wife than his children was wrong. Again, I don't think a husband should treat his child like an infant or subordinate, but I do believe that the husband-wife relationship should take precedence over the parent-child one because one is always a husband or wife, but children will eventually grow up and leave home. These are the sorts of issues that 20th and 21st century feminists have particularly struggled with in this text.
In a way, I was relieved that I found flaws in Wollstonecraft's ideas, because this meant she wasn't entirely ahead of her times. Like many writers, Wollstonecraft had her flaws and it's clear that elements of her personal relationships have held her back from truly exploring what makes a good marriage. But when it comes to the reasons why women are subordinated and struggle, I think she's spot on. Likewise, her thoughts on education left little to be improved on. Overall, a fascinating read, and one I'm glad to have encountered in my time at university. Flawed but enlightening. 4*
I was pleasantly surprised by what an engaging and enlightening read this was when I began this book. I expected it to be the sort of text I could appreciate historically, but not entirely enjoy, but for the most part I genuinely enjoyed reading this book. I did find that it got bogged down in repetitions at times, but I know this is because Wollstonecraft had very little time to edit this text before it went to print. Given more time, it could have been a far better structured book that conveyed the same message without needing to repeat the same facts and ideas over and over.
Ultimately my biggest issue with this book was Wollstonecraft's bizarre ideas on marriage, namely the fact that passion eventually disappeared, leaving the couple with nothing but friendship and their children to unite them. While I do believe that friendship is essential to a good marriage, I wondered what she had experienced to make her think that passionate love could never be sustained throughout a marriage. She also seemed to suggest that once a couple had children, they should devote themselves entirely to them, and that a husband who doted more on his wife than his children was wrong. Again, I don't think a husband should treat his child like an infant or subordinate, but I do believe that the husband-wife relationship should take precedence over the parent-child one because one is always a husband or wife, but children will eventually grow up and leave home. These are the sorts of issues that 20th and 21st century feminists have particularly struggled with in this text.
In a way, I was relieved that I found flaws in Wollstonecraft's ideas, because this meant she wasn't entirely ahead of her times. Like many writers, Wollstonecraft had her flaws and it's clear that elements of her personal relationships have held her back from truly exploring what makes a good marriage. But when it comes to the reasons why women are subordinated and struggle, I think she's spot on. Likewise, her thoughts on education left little to be improved on. Overall, a fascinating read, and one I'm glad to have encountered in my time at university. Flawed but enlightening. 4*
September 15, 2016
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is such a profoundly weird book. It's not so much a feminist work as it is pre-feminist or proto-feminist. She largely defers to the dominant notion that women are inferior to men - yet there are these odd flashes where she explicitly declines to say anything further on an issue related to the relative equality of women in various capacities, and you can almost feel her biting back an angry feminist rant that simply isn't politic yet. She compares the Divine Right of husbands to the Divine Right of Kings and frequently draws parallels between the relations between the sexes and tyranny - but only to show how and why women's character is so degraded by lack of mental cultivation that they abuse the few useless powers they are allowed. I giggled when I realized that even Mary Wollstonecraft - Mary Wollstonecraft, Victorian moralist, conventional Enlightenment type - found chivalrous practices like opening doors for women to be condescending false admiration! HA! Strangely there are times like this when she seems to have insights into the subtle perniciousness of certain practices that we today in our purportedly equal society view as totally harmless and neutral. At any rate, the purpose of the text is to make a case for women's equality in education, and this is highly strategic; once that piece was in place there was no putting the genie of women's equality fully back in the bottle ever again. Still, if you are expecting this book to sound anything like the feminism that would follow in a generation and on throughout history, you're in for a surprise.
August 23, 2021
Beautifully written and argued pamphlets on the rights of men and women. This was a women so ahead of the progress of her time. She knew the capacity women had for intelligence and yet daily had to watch other women trade that capacity away on the goal of being nothing more then enamored by men. Not really even loved because, as she implies, who can love for very long a creature so superficial, helpless and childish. She watched women of her class trade the fight for education for women for fashionable clothes. Trade being a natural mother who nurses and nurtures and is beloved by her children to nanny’s so as not to ruin the sexuality of her body. Sending children to grow up in loveless boarding schools. She is equally accusatory of women and men for the state of the world. She uses scripture to show how far off the mark they have fallen from all they proclaim to believe.
I think we see women trading intelligence for “love” of men still. But at least we can rest in the peace of knowing all paths are open to women in most countries. How incredibly frustrating to be fighting to gain a path to education for women and to have so few women care about that path being opened to them. No wonder her personal world was full of unhappiness.
So cool this is the mother of Mary Shelley!!!
https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2016/0...
I think we see women trading intelligence for “love” of men still. But at least we can rest in the peace of knowing all paths are open to women in most countries. How incredibly frustrating to be fighting to gain a path to education for women and to have so few women care about that path being opened to them. No wonder her personal world was full of unhappiness.
So cool this is the mother of Mary Shelley!!!
https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2016/0...
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June 24, 2020Ok, so I'm not rating this book because I kinda didn't understand some points of it. I wasn't sure the author was saying women should be treated equally so they could fit better into their "natural" roles as mothers and wives or if women should have the same rights to employment and education so they could be independent. I think she was saying both, but it seemed contraditory to me.
In general, I agree with her views although I disagree that education is the source of rationality. It's not education alone, there are plenty irrational, venal, vulgar people with college degrees. Unfortunately, there, she was wrong. But, yes, a trained, educated mind is always the better choice.
I didn't much appreciate how she denigrated her own sex in one breath and then called them victims in the other, as if women could never be rational, intelligent beings without education.
But I do recognize that this is quite the text for the 18th century. Very much the roots of feminism and gender equality. Not only that, but class equality as well, if only on a minor scale (especially in A Vindication of the rights of Men).
In general, I agree with her views although I disagree that education is the source of rationality. It's not education alone, there are plenty irrational, venal, vulgar people with college degrees. Unfortunately, there, she was wrong. But, yes, a trained, educated mind is always the better choice.
I didn't much appreciate how she denigrated her own sex in one breath and then called them victims in the other, as if women could never be rational, intelligent beings without education.
But I do recognize that this is quite the text for the 18th century. Very much the roots of feminism and gender equality. Not only that, but class equality as well, if only on a minor scale (especially in A Vindication of the rights of Men).
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