A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) (edit title/settings)

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• Rousseau: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an educational philosopher who argued that a woman does not need a rational education. (Rousseau famously argues in Emile (1762) that women should be educated for the pleasure of men; Wollstonecraft, infuriated by this argument, attacks not only it but also Rousseau himself.)
• Dr. Gregory: Add a description of this character.
• Dr. John Gregory: John Gregory was an eighteenth-century Scottish physician, medical writer and moralist.
• Milton
• Catharine Macaulay: A female reformer and an English historian.
• Sophia

Quotes edit see section history

• “Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

  Mary Wollstonecraft

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• ‘For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.’

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• Wollstonecraft dared to take the liberal doctrine of inalienable human rights, a doctrine which was inflaming patriots on both sides of the Atlantic, and assume these rights for her own sex.

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• Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.

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• Let there be then no coercion established in society, and the common law of gravity prevailing, the sexes will fall into their proper places.

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• The theme that an ‘expanding mind’ is ‘the surest foundation of virtue’ was common parlance among Wollstonecraft’s reform-minded Dissenter friends at Newington Green, a theme that Wollstonecraft herself enlarged later in the Vindication.

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• women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue.

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• I have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue.

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• as moral beings, or so weak that they must be entirely subjected to the superior faculties of men.

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• Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives.

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• It was the first sustained argument for female emancipation based on a cogent ethical system.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• France
• Providence
• Europe

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by The Wealth of Nations, and followed by Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae.

Preceded by Reflections on the Revolution in France (World's Classics), and followed by Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Mary Wollstonecraft (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 305.420941

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Sociology › Women
• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Gender Studies
• Books › Nonfiction › Philosophy › Ethics & Morality
• Books › Nonfiction › Women's Studies › Feminist Theory
• Books › Nonfiction › Women's Studies › History
• Books › History › Europe › England
• Books › Nonfiction › Current Events › Civil Rights & Liberties
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary