Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a ground-breaking work of literature which still resonates in feminism and human rights movements of today.

Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) wrote the book in part as a reaction to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, published in late 1790. Burke saw the French Revolution as a movement which would inevitably fail, as society needed traditional structures such as inherited positions and property in order to strengthen it. Wollstonecraft’s initial response was to write A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), a rebuttal of Burke that argued in favour of parliamentary reform, and stating that religious and civil liberties were part of a man’s birth right, with corruption caused in the main by ignorance. This argument for men’s rights wasn’t unique – Thomas Paine published his Rights of Man in 1791, also arguing against Burke – but Wollstonecraft proceeded to go one step further, and, for the first time, a book was published that argued for women’s rights to be on the same footing as men’s.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was written in 1791 and published in 1792, with a second edition appearing that same year. It was sold as volume 1 of the work, but Wollstonecraft never wrote any subsequent volumes. Before this date there had been books that argued for the reform of female education, often for moral reasons or to better befit women for their role as companions for men. In contrast, in her introduction Wollstonecraft criticizes women’s education thus:

I attribute [these problems] to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers … the civilised women of this present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.

She goes on to say, revolutionarily, that 'I shall first consider women in the grand light of human creatures, who, in common with men, are placed on this earth to unfold their faculties …'.

Wollstonecraft’s arguments were often far ahead of our time. For example, in Chapter 12 ‘On National Education’, she recommends the establishment of a national education system, to operate mixed sex schools. She also argues that it is essential for women’s dignity that they be given the right and the ability to earn their own living and support themselves.

The chapters of the book cover a wide range of topics, and the many digressions in the text support William Godwin’s report that Wollstonecraft wrote the book quickly over the course of only six weeks. Wollstonecraft’s tone conveys both her own sense of humour but also her anger at the enfeebled situation that the majority of women were forced into:

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.

Contents: Author's introduction --
Dedicatory letter to M. Talleyrand-Périgord --
The rights and involved duties of mankind considered --
The prevailing opinion of a sexual character discussed --
The same subject continued --
observations on the state of degradation to which woman is reduced by various causes --
Animadversions on some of the writers who have rendered women objects of pity, bordering on contempt --
The effect which an early association of ideas has upon the character --
Modesty-comprehensively considered, and not as a sexual virtue --
Morality undermined by sexual notions of the importance of a good reputation --
Of the pernicious effects which arise from the unnatural distinctions established in society --
Parental affection --
Duty to parents --
On national education --
Some instances of the folly which the ignorance of women generates; with concluding reflections on the moral improvement that a revolution in female manners might naturally be expected to produce.