Vindication Of Woman

Denying someone to become educated based on their gender is a notion that is foreign to modern readers. Education has become a cornerstone of our society, pursuing the ambition of providing equal education for every learner. Mary Wollstonecraft, a late Eighteenth century writer, recognized the disadvantage that women were being bound to through the patriarchal societal demands that women to only be educated in means of being obedient, chaste, and beautiful. Wollstonecraft wrote her essay, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, as a platform to present her argument of achieving education for women in areas to heighten their abilities to reason and find self-acknowledgement beyond their innate passions. It is also within this essay that she addresses

Wollstonecraft credited the general female population’s inability to achieve these components to their unequal opportunities to educate themselves outside the realm of maintaining their home, their beauty, and keeping their husband entertained, “One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers” (102). She saw this as a direct attempt by the male driven society to distort the women’s ability to enhance their reasoning capabilities and securing their place banished from public life spheres. Catriona MacKenzie, author of “Reason and Sensibility: The Ideal of Women 's Self-Governance in the Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft”, recognized Wollstonecraft’s stance on the importance for women to gain the ability to heighten and sharpen their reasoning skills, “In her defense of equality, she puts a great deal of stress on women 's capacity to reason and on the idea that virtue must be founded on reason” (38). She understood that only through having a reasoning ability can the women find true equality. However, it is also through this reasoning ability that women will be able to examine and understand their own sexuality for

These were aspects that must be cultivated and taught in order for them to form into the respectable and correct aspirations required by society. Within her essay, she noted that the soul, which is every person’s moral obligation to maintain as a beacon of purity, does not have a strong will of its own, “An air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery, and proves that the soul has not a strong individual character, awes simple country people into an imitation of the vices, when they cannot catch the slippery graces, of politeness” (Web). This reinforced her notions that in order to become more than the domestic brutes that women have become through their manipulations, lack of education, and sheltered lives, then they must have equal opportunity to become educated in every aspect of being a member of humanity. She understood that these learned skills could very well be a gateway in becoming equal partners within their lives instead of merely spectators. It all came back to having equal education opportunities. It was the key, according to Wollstonecraft, in assuring a better life, a better society, and a better future for everyone regardless of