A Vindication of the Rights
of Woman
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Title page from the first American edition of Rights of Woman
A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), written by the eighteenth-century
British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest
works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to the
educational and political
theorists of the eighteenth century who wanted to deny women an education. She
argues that women
ought to have an education commensurate
with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation
because
they educate its children and
because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than
mere wives. Instead of viewing
women as ornaments to society
or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are
human beings
deserving of the same fundamental rights as
men.
Wollstonecraft was prompted to
write the Rights of Woman by Charles Maurice de
Talleyrand-Périgord's 1791 report to the
French National Assembly which stated that
women should only receive a domestic education; she used her commentary on
this specific event to launch a broad attack
against sexual double standards and to indict men for encouraging women to
indulge
in excessive emotion.
Wollstonecraft wrote the Rights of Woman hurriedly in order to respond
directly to ongoing events; she
intended to write a more
thoughtful second volume, but she died before completing it.
While Wollstonecraft does call
for equality between the sexes in particular areas of life, such as morality,
she does not explicitly
state that men and women are equal. Her
ambiguous statements regarding the equality of the sexes have since made it
difficult
to classify Wollstonecraft as a
modern feminist, particularly since the word and the concept were unavailable
to her. Although it
is commonly assumed now that the Rights of
Woman was unfavourably received, this is a modern misconception based on
the
belief that Wollstonecraft was as reviled
during her lifetime as she became after the publication of William
Godwin's
Memoirs
of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798).
The Rights of Woman was
actually well-received when it was first published in 1792. One biographer has
called it "perhaps the
most original book of
[Wollstonecraft's] century".[1]
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URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Vindication_of_the_Rights_of_Woman
This information has been taken on 1st of
November 2008
This page was
last modified on 30 October 2008, at 10:46.
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ABOUT WOMEN RIGHTS
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creada: 28/10/08 actualizada: 03/11/08