A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. Volume one, third edition

1796

De Beer Eb 1796 W

London: Printed for J. Johnson

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97), as was so often the case, did not receive the same education as her brother. This, along with her father’s shabby treatment of her mother, was the foundation of her indignation against the disparities between men and women. Inspired by her publisher, and the events of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1791) first, before writing her more well-known treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In the latter text, she argues that women appeared to be ignorant, and were perceived as inferior because of their lack of education. She abhorred the idea that a woman had to be everything a man needed her to be – meek, docile, and compliant; as she writes above ‘all the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience…’. Wollstonecraft was a progressive and visionary feminist.