Mary Wollstonecraft

Samar Nattagh

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, during the French Revolution. Wollstonecraft was one of the Enlightenment's most radical thinkers and she applied the Enlightenment's espousal of reason and critique of monarchy to the defense of women's rights. Building upon Rousseau's ideas, Wollstonecraft spoke even more forcefully against inequality and artificial distinctions, arguing that society should seek, "the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness". Wollstonecraft applied the critique of despotism to the basic family unit, comparing the oppressive power a monarch has over his people to the oppressive power a husband has over his wife. She critiqued marriage laws, which deprived women of property rights. She writes, "Civilized women are... so weakened by false refinement, that, respecting morals, their condition is much below what it would be were they left in a state nearer to nature". She believed that female education and a deemphasis on typical frivolous femininity would enable women to acquire "strength, both of mind and body". However, Wollstonecraft only went as far as hinting at political rights for women and she believed in a division of labor between the sexes. "Let there be no coercion established in society, and the common law of gravity prevailing, the sexes will fall into their proper places."