In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,Wollstonecraft argues that women’s
voices have been silenced because women are denied educational opportunities.
Since reason is the key characteristic of human beings,anyonedenied the possi-
bility of developing reason, male or female, will seem inferior. If women were
more “rationally educated, they could take a more comprehensive view of things”
and participate more fully in philosophy.
In the selection that follows, Wollstonecraft acknowledges that the women
in her society were intellectually inferior. But the reason for this inferiority
had nothing to do with “sexual character.” Rather they were “inferior” because
they had been taught to focus all attention on becoming docile beauties attrac-
tive to men.
Although in many ways Wollstonecraft is an Enlightenment thinker (who
died at age 38 before the turn of the century), her concerns were echoed by
others in the nineteenth century. For example, in On the Subjection of Women,
John Stuart Mill argued that women’s subordination to men is “one of the chief
hindrances to human improvement.” Wollstonecraft’s ideas stand as a chal-
lenge to the nineteenth century: How can women be a part of the “Age of
Progress”?
Wollstonecraft’s fascinating life has been chronicled by many writers, beginning
with her second husband. William Godwin, in Memoirs of the Author of a
Vindication of the Rights of Woman (London, 1798; reprinted, New York:
Greenburg, 1927). Among more recent biographies are Ralph M. Wardle,Mary
Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1951); Eleanor Flexner,Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography(New York: Coward,
McCann & Geoghegan, 1972); Claire Tomlin,The Life and Death of Mary
Wollstonecraft(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1974); Jean Detre,
A Most Extraordinary Pair: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975); Janet M. Todd,Mary Wollstonecraft:
A Revolutionary Life(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); and Lyndall
Gordon,Mary Wollstonecraft(New York: Little, Brown, 2005). For a discussion
of the relationship between Wollstonecraft’s life and her thought, see Margaret
George,One Woman’s “Situation”: A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft(Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1970). For a brief overview of Wollstonecraft’s
philosophy, see Kate Lindemann, “Mary Wollstonecraft” in Mary Ellen Waithe,
A History of Women Philosophers, Volume III: Modern Women Philosophers,
1600–1900(Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1991), pp. 153–70.
For books examining Wollstonecraft’s contributions to feminist theory, see
Jennifer Lorch,Mary Wollstonecraft: The Making of a Radical Feminist(New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); Gary Kelly,Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind
and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft(Houndmills, England: Macmillan, 1992);
Maria J. Falco, ed.,Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft(College
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996); and Barbara Taylor,Mary
Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003). For her political theory, see Virginia Sapiro,A Vindication of
Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992). Finally, Mary Wollstonecraft,A Vindication