Thomas Paine Book Review

The treatise had a heavy impact as she attacked Burke as being blind to the plight of the poor, and denounced the injustices of the British hierarchy. Wollstonecraft remarked that the British constitution was composed of injustices, created by “the minds of men ... shackled by the grossest prejudices and most immoral superstition.” She commented on the notion that the government only provides for those of the aristocracy, stating “Security of property! Behold, in a few words, the definition of English liberty. . . . But softly—it is only the property of the rich that is secure; the man who lives by the sweat of his brow has no asylum from oppression; the strong man may enter—when was the castle of the poor sacred?—and the base informer steal

In addition, she boldly expressed her belief that all people, no matter their social class, gender or age, have the right to their own beliefs and to voice their independent mind. Though Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man published a year later is more well-known than Wollstonecraft’s work. Her work was most likely deemed less than that of Thomas Paine 's, because women 's work "has traditionally been valued less and considered less important than men 's work" (Anderson and Zinsser xiii). That said, she still managed to voice her beliefs and demonstrate her inability to back down. In response to criticism of Dr. Price by Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men. If it weren’t for Minister Richard Price’s influence on Mary Wollstonecraft, she wouldn’t have been so indignant towards Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France critiquing

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in rebellion against the traditional strictures of the behavior of women, recoiling from the traditional social hierarchy that determined the roles of lives and rejected ideas that she felt confined women. She rejected the notion that women were to bow down to men, questioning “who made man the exclusive judge?” and why it was that “the men stand up for the dignity of man, by oppressing the women.” (Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark: 1796 Letter 3). By looking to the state to reform education and believing that legislation would end women’s subordination, Wollstonecraft initiated a new era in feminist discourse. If women were not innately inferior, and if they could be educated to be the equals of men, then they could prosper to the same degree as men. Wollstonecraft initiated a new era in European feminism with her outspoken ideas, which were piloted by Richard Price and his followers of the Newington Green Circle. Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, discussing the significance in girls obtaining a more rightly education in order to prosper as a society, and A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in which she discussed the problems that have arisen in the national government as a rebuttal to Edmund Burke, were two radical treatises that would be drastically different without the guidance of Richard Price and his political