A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

 

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and the first female writer to raise her voice for women's rights. Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers who immensely influenced the feminist critics of subsequent years .Her remarkable treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman(1792) is considered the first feminist text, where a female writer not only became vocal for women’s rights but encouraged other women to follow her example. Mary Wollstonecraft  's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a treatise on overcoming the ways in which women in her time are oppressed and denied access in the political area of the society. As a result, women face various challenges and cope with them simultaneously in their households as well as in society. An eminent scholar Catriona MacKenzie states that, "Her targets are, first, Rousseau's claim that women are by nature inferior to men with respect to those capacities that ground equality—namely reason, independence, and virtue—and second, his claim that women's equality would subvert the social order."

In the prefatory note of The Vindication, Wollstonecraft commences her discussion with a letter, where she dedicated the letter to M. Talleyrand-Perigord. Evidently, after reading Perigord’s  pamphlet on education in France, it was an attempt on Wollstonecraft’s part to try and change his belief regarding female education. She assures that she is not writing for herself, nor even for her sex, but for “the whole human race”. What motivated her was the desire to retain morality and virtue in society. Wollstonecraft inferred that in France there is far less respect for virtue, manners, and morality than the rest of the world, as she asserts that the French lead a dissipated life. She imposes the blame for this indecency and profligacy,  that has vitiated the French society, on the “social intercourse which has long subsisted between the sexes” and to not taking adequate measures  for her education for women. Wollstonecraft deduced that by empowering woman with both equitable rights and education, it would not only prepare her to “become the companion of man” and ensure her blissful conjugal life. Gradually, she will be able to comprehend the true meaning of being virtuous and thus she will realize what her domestic and civic duties are. Wollstonecraft further adds that if a mother doesn’t understand the value of patriotism, how can she inculcate patriotism in her son’s heart? and how can she take a ‘civil interest’  in mankind. Wollstonecraft believes that her treatise provides conclusive evidence that to make the human body and mind “more perfect”, there should be greater chastity, a thing that will only be achieved when women are not simply “idolized” by men, but respect for their intelligence, rather than their beauty.

Wollstonecraft justifies her claims by evincing the fact that allowing freedom to woman will strengthen her power of reasoning. The condition of female education and the deplorable plight of women obviate her capacity of pondering over the greater good of the society. By excluding women, who consist the half of the human race from participating in the political phenomenon, men are depriving the society from its beneficial effects. The male authority has been used to justify the oppression of woman, although, it is definitely unjust to subjugate women. She poses the ultimate question here, who made the men, the exclusive judge? Women are compelled to remain indoors fumbling in the dark, when men deny women, their fair share in the social and political rights. She elucidates the fact that, in this way, men can create a convenient slave out of a woman, but eventually, that slavery will degrade the master as well as the abject dependent. In her text, for the first time, she urges women to raise their voice. She also warns that if women are denied their fundamental rights, they will render both men and themselves vicious to obtain illicit privileges.