A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~96,800 words · 460 passages
Cite this work
- APAMary Wollstonecraft. (n.d.). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mary-wollstonecraft/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman
- MLAMary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mary-wollstonecraft/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman.
- ChicagoMary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mary-wollstonecraft/a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
An argument that women are not inferior by nature but appear so because they are denied the education given to men.
Context and history
Wollstonecraft wrote it in a matter of weeks in 1792, answering Talleyrand's report on a French national education from which girls were excluded. The claim is not that men and women are alike in everything, but that no one can judge a capacity that has never been cultivated. It was widely read and attacked at once; the nineteenth century buried it under the author's private life before twentieth-century feminism recovered it.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Manners and morals are so nearly allied that they have often been confounded; but, though the former should only be the natural reflection of the latter, yet, when various causes have produced factitious and corrupt manners, which are very early caught, morality becomes an empty name. The personal reserve, and sacred respect for cleanliness and delicacy in domestic life, which French women almost despise, are the graceful pillars of modesty; but, far from despising them, if the pure flame of patriotism have reached their bosoms, they should labour to improve the morals of their fellow-citizens, by teaching men, not only to respect modesty in women, but to acquire it themselves, as the only way to merit their esteem. Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice. And how can woman be expected to co-operate unless she know why she ought to be virtuous? unless freedom strengthen her reason till she comprehend her duty, and see in what manner it is connected with her real good? If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation of woman, at present, shuts her out from such investigations.…