Summary Of A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women By Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft is a woman known particularly for her avocation of women’s rights. The book A Vindication of the Rights of Women, With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects in today’s time is considered to be the first book written on the idea of feminism and expressed the ideals of feminist ideas. This book specifically addresses the need for women to be educated alongside men, and the nature of gender differences. There have been in the past others who have took a stand on this issue, but Wollstonecraft shaped an exposition for the women in her generation of Britain, who dealt with oppression that limited their chance in society, and restricted them to the household where women were placed. This essay will discuss Wollstonecraft’s

Wollstonecraft came from a middle class family, and she dedicated her text to the middle class. She is against the upper class arguing the rich as being, “A baneful lurking gangrene” (Wollstonecraft, pg.18-19). Those in higher classes were considered a disease spreading, and infecting whatever it the rich could get a hold on. Throughout the text she describes the rich as being weak and showed her anger toward the upper class. People in higher positions did not have to deal with the issues that Wollstonecraft as a middle class woman had to deal with. In the text, Wollstonecraft Rousseau, “Trying to justify to himself the affection which weakness and virtue had made him cherish for that fool Teresa. He could not raise Teresa to the common level of sex; therefore he labored to bring women down to hers” (Wollstonecraft, pg. 40). It depicts Rousseau’s wife as being dumb. Now he sees all women on the same level, uneducated and weak in

While women on the other hand, were deemed as being fragile, and driven emotionally and sexually. What arose from this feeling of passion was all deemed an accountability of their bodies. In other words, women who committed sins were blamed because of their bodies, they were said to have no self-control over their actions. Wollstonecraft on this of gender inequality issue says, “How grossly do they insult us who thus advise us only to render ourselves gentle, domestic brutes” (Wollstonecraft, pg 19). Wollstonecraft describes the struggles of being a woman in this quote. There is a sense of weakness and helplessness that portray to being a woman. “She can never be reproached for being masculine, or turning out of her sphere; nay she may observe another of his grand rules and cautiously preserving her reputation free from spot, be reckoned a good kind of woman” (Wollstonecraft, pg 51). Women must act as women and not stray out of the lines that they are bound to. It would be considered inappropriate for a woman to act outside of her character. Wollstonecraft wants to prove that women are not fragile; they do not need to rely on men as council. They are strong individuals and should not be seen as weak individuals. She goes on further saying, “women are therefore considered together as moral beings or so weak that they must be entirely subjected to