A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

Are Women Human? 243

This is not to suggest that every dimension of Wollstonecraft’s defense
of rights for women fi nds an echo in contemporary feminist thinking. Few
feminists today would ground rights in a religious metaphysics. And Woll-
stonecraft’s understanding of dignity, respect, morality, and duty are inti-
mately connected to this foundation. Many (but not all) feminists would
be cautious about accentuating rationality in the way she does. More-
over, Wollstonecraft has to defend the idea of rights for an abstraction —
woman —whereas the commitment to women’s rights as human rights
has evolved from actual women identifying their needs and articulating
their demands (MacKinnon 2006, 107). In this closing section, there-
fore, I have tried to suggest some of the ways in which Wollstonecraft’s
ideas about rights continue to resonate without insisting that nothing has
changed. Along with being ahistorical,^30 any such approach would ob-
scure the distinctive and original aspects of her vindication of rights for
woman.

notes

1. This would require the repeal of coverture. Brody (1985, 67) speculates that
   Wollstonecraft would have said more about this legislation in her planned
   second volume.


2. The term “duty” appears sixty times, and “duties” eighty-one.


3. Indeed, just under a third (nine) of the text’s direct references to rights appear
   in this Dedication.


4. Brody refers to the book’s many digressions and “lack of coherent organiza-
   tion” (1985, 41; see also Taylor 2003, 51).


5. As Taylor points out, Wollstonecraft strove to provide a “systematic philo-
   sophic analysis” (2003, 50). Halldenius (2007) also reads Wollstonecraft as a
   systematic theorist of rights, and her analysis has much to recommend it. She
   pays much less attention to the theological bases of Wollstonecraft’s view
   of rights than I do, however. Taylor (2003, 3 – 4, 12, 93 – 94) fi nds that many
   of Wollstonecraft’s contemporary interpreters have neglected religion’s fun-
   damental role in her thought. Taylor sets out to rectify this, as does Botting,
   who tracks the changes in Wollstonecraft’s religious views over time. Dur-
   ing the period when the Rights of Woman was penned, Botting identifi es “a
   theodicy with more progressive implications for society and politics” than
   Wollstonecraft’s previous belief in original sin and atonement had permitted
   (2006, 165; see also 166, 135, 155).


6. Her claim that “he has ordered all things... in the same perfect harmony, to
   fulfi l his designs” (211) supports this inference.