A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

vindication of the Rights of Woman was published in 1792 and was received with a mixture of outrage and enthusiasm.

In an age of Ferment, following the American and French Revolutions, Mary Wollstonecraft took prevailing egalitarian principles and dared to apply them to women. Her book is both a sustained argument for emancipation and an attack on the social and economic system. As Miriam Brody points out in her introduction, subsequent feminists tended to loose sight of her radical objectives. For Mary Wollstonecraft all aspects of women's existence were interrelated, and any effective reform depended on a redistribution of political and economic power. Walpole once called her 'a hyena in petticoats', but it is a tribute to her forceful insight that modern feminists are finally returning to the arguments so passionately expressed in this remarkable book.

In this passionate reaction to Rousseau's pedagogical work Emile (1762) Wollstonecraft powerfully defends woman's ability to reason, given appropriate education. Her radical prescription was for girls to be educated alongside boys and to the same standard. Originally published in 1792, this is a foundational work of feminist political thought.