Editor’s Introduction 11“fi rst principles” of human nature (especially the capacities for reason and
moral virtue), feminist liberals such as Nussbaum and Sen have returned
to naturalistic approaches to defi ning human rights in terms of universal
human capabilities (such as practical reason and love) (37). In this vein,
Abbey shows how Wollstonecraft’s ontology of the human being and op-
timistic theory of providential progress shape her perfectionistic ethics.
Although most contemporary philosophers return to John Stuart Mill as
a source for liberal theories of human development of moral virtues such
as independence and responsibility, Abbey follows recent Wollstonecraft
scholarship in rooting this school in the Rights of Woman. Abbey also
builds on current attention to Wollstonecraft’s theology and religiosity to
show how the metaphysical orientation of her virtue ethics undergirds her
arguments for women’s human rights.
Norma Clarke’s essay situates Mary Wollstonecraft in the milieu of
the late eighteenth-century London intelligentsia, especially the circle of
women writers (of varying political persuasions) who were published by
Joseph Johnson. Wollstonecraft was both supported by the existence of a
community of women writers and stood at odds with them. She was one
among a number of strong-minded, assertive women writers who, build-
ing on the successes of the English bluestockings, found public support
as opinion-makers. The Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft’s impassioned
demand that women renounce their subordinate status and become full
moral agents in the world, produced mixed responses. Many, like the evan-
gelical Christian writer Hannah More, believed equally passionately that
subordination (one of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s favorite words) was vital to an
ordered society. After placing Wollstonecraft in the literary context of her
time, Clarke discusses what she and her Rights of Woman came to mean
for women writers and reformers as well as the emergent fi eld of English
literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
My essay builds on both Abbey and Clarke’s readings of the philosophi-
cal and literary legacies of the Rights of Woman. While Wollstonecraft’s
rhetorical ingenuity has long been noted, her righteous and angry tone has
sometimes obscured for her audiences her equally undeniable sense of hu-
mor. However dark in mood, her command of satire, sarcasm, irony, and
understatement places Wollstonecraft among the great wits of the eigh-
teenth century. Reading Wollstonecraft with an eye toward her dark humor,
I show how she used wit to expose the moral problems with the patriarchal
oppression of women, and to elicit public sympathy for the then laugh-
able cause of women’s human rights. She also developed an innovative