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• 1 media/Novak_Item0225.jpg 2024-04-16T17:53:58-07:00 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) 24 18th Century Work of Political Philosophy plain 2024-05-24T11:02:01-07:00 Some might only know Mary Wollstonecraft as the mother to Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, but she had her own very influential career as an author, feminist scholar, teacher, and governess as well. She wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which was a very influential and revolutionary feminist piece that many feminists today still look back on. In her work, she addresses countless societal limitations that women have to live within, and she gives the audience ways in which to grapple and fight against these injustices that she sees. 
  
  One of the biggest arguments Wollstonecraft makes in her piece is that both sexes are equal. This is the overarching goal she wanted to reach when writing and publishing this work. She believes that men cannot accept that women are equal to them, so they paint themselves as the superior sex. When it was published in 1792, this was a radical view that she often addressed and spoke up about. Wollstonecraft also discusses the fields of education, marriage, and politics and how all of these problems exist within society and how they all interact with one another. She claims that women are educated to only be props in their husbands lives, and she confronts this view as something she seeks to change. Ultimately, she suggests that society needed to overcome its traditional perspectives on gender roles.
  
  Although Wollstonecraft’s book was a very influential feminist piece, it did not initially receive the response it strove for, especially from other women readers. Another book found in the Rare Book Room, titled The Female Student; or Lectures to Young Ladies on Female Education, by Almira Lincoln is also considered a progressive work in which the author asserts the importance of female education. Her argument differs from Wollstonecraft’s in that she believes it remains important that women stick to their traditional gender roles. In her book, Lincoln critiques Wollstonecraft by stating, “There is an absurdity in such suppositions; that if Mary Wollstonecraft… [has] thrown aside that delicacy that is the crowning ornament of the female character, if [she] urge[s] the rights of their sex to share in public offices and in the command of armies;- if [she] demand[s] that they shall be permitted to leave the sacred hearth, the domestic altar…[she] ha[s] but expressed…[her] own unnatural and depraved ambition. [She is] not to be considered as… representative of the sex; [she has]  thrown off the female character and deserve no longer to be recognized as women; [she is a] monster… who amused the world to the great injury of that sex whom [she] pretended to defend” (Lincoln 47-48). Even though Lincoln was relatively progressive in her thinking towards feminism and equality for the time, she goes as far to call Wollstonecraft a “monster” who should “no longer to be recognized as a woman.” If those are the beliefs of a woman who strongly supported the equal education of men and women, one can only imagine what the beliefs of the common person were when Wollstonecraft's work was published. 
  As stated above, Wollstonecraft was a revolutionary when it came to addressing the gender issues present in the 18th century. While there were many people who agreed with her, and even more who disagreed, she continued to publish, represent, and show people that women deserve equal rights. She fought until the end of her life to spread her ideas and to educate not only others but herself as well. Equality between men and women is still something that modern day society is working on. Books such as these communicate to present day readers that these problems are not new problems, but hopefully can someday become old ones.