Review Of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

In Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792), Wollstonecraft takes a gendered lens to critique what was assumed to be a private institution: the family. However, there are disagreements among scholars concerning the extent of radicalism informed by Wollstonecraft’s position on the dichotomy of the public/private sphere as exhibited in her politicization of the family. Thus, a competing interpretation of Wollstonecraft’s work could be argued as a variant of classical liberalism or embryonic form of feminism. As such, this paper intends to argue that Wollstonecraft’s particular politicization of the family unit is heavily drawn upon both classical liberalism and feminism, and as such her work pioneered liberal feminism.

In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstonecraft argues that the public organization of society, especially the field of education and economy, is structured to disadvantage women to confine them to powerless roles as mothers and wives as a result of the overall arbitrary power granted to men. Furthermore, in the chapter, “Of The Pernicious Effects Which Arise From The Unnatural Distinctions Established In Society” (1792), Wollstonecraft clearly politicizes the issue of inequality in the private sphere by situating it within the public sphere and the realm of governing: “a truly benevolent legislator always endeavours to make it the interest of each individual to be virtue; and thus private virtue becoming the cement of public happiness, an orderly whole is consolidated by the by the tendency of all the parts towards a common centre” (p. 119). Thus, she argues that there could be public action in order to redress a private issue. This novel approach lends her work to be radical, thus providing the basis of this paper’s argument that the way in which she politicizes the private institution of family is a critical feminist work grounded in classical

While she focuses on primarily the familial relation between husband and wife, Abbey argues that Wollstonecraft’s idea of maintain a marriage like a friendship is in accordance with the liberal values of “equality, autonomy, consent, reciprocity, and the diminution of arbitrary power” (p. 90). Abbey explores Wollstonecraft’s argument in the structural inequalities of marriage and how it relates to liberalism, thus advocating for a model of marriage akin to friendship in order to further liberal values in all social human relations. With this considered, this paper intends to use this article to inform the understanding of Wollstonecraft’s politicization of the family unit, and the consequent thematic relationship with the tenets of liberalism. However, Abbey argues that based on Wollstonecraft’s line of reasoning in her work, Wollstonecraft challenges any strong separation between the public and private sphere. This distinction is important as the latter secondary literature contends otherwise. Nevertheless, Abbey’s interpretation on the nature of Wollstonecraft’s politicization of the family unit and the liberal values it embodies will be explored later in this