The Vindications: Annotated Edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men

by Mary Wollstonecraft

Written as a passionate riposte to Talleyrand's report to the French National Assembly, in which he declared that women needed only a domestic education, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the traditional view of decorative femininity and deplored the educational restrictions and the “mistaken notions of female excellence” that degraded women and kept them in a state of “slavish dependence”. Indeed, independence, “the grand blessing of life”, was at the heart of Wollstonecraft's philosophy, and it is a mark of the profound influence of her words that Virginia Woolf, writing almost a century and a half later, could state that “her originality has become our commonplace”.

As a companion piece, this volume also includes A Vindication of the Rights of Men – an earlier influential pamphlet advocating republicanism and social equality. The two Vindications, taken together, showcase Wollstonecraft's rhetorical talents, as well as her brilliance and depth of thought as an anti-establishment polemist and social reformer.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Classics, Feminism, Politics, History, Essays

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1790

About the author

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attention than her writing because of her unconventional, and often tumultuous, personal relationships. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement; they had one daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts.

During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.


After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.

Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Reviews

[E. G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction
Note on the Texts
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Mary Wollstonecraft

--A Vindication of the Rights of Men
--A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
--An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution [Abridged]

Explanatory Notes

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I already wrote about A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women; but this appealing edition from Oxford also includes selections from Wollstonecraft's Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, which she wrote in Paris and published in 1794, when the Terror was at its height. It is a little bit stodgy, to be honest, and shows how much her prose style depended on the touch of personal outrage that was present in her earlier screeds – here, writing a straight history, she's less sparkling, but still fascinatingly uncompromising. Her basic position is a defence of the principles of the revolution, despite the violent turn that events had taken:

Several acts of ferocious folly have justly brought much obloquy on the grand revolution, which has taken place in France; yet, I feel confident of being able to prove, that the people are essentially good…

And I'm sure she had a point, though certainly there wasn't much audience for this kind of talk in England by 1794. Wollstonecraft in fact goes further than some radicals in justifying, even while she condemns, the violence, suggesting that people are ‘justified in having recourse to coercion, to repel coercion’. As she points out, the new regime is only following the model of the royalist application of justice, which was always extremely one-sided and fairly merciless.

The rich have for ages tyrannized the poor, teaching them how to act when possessed of power, and now must feel the consequence.…When justice, or the law, is so partial, the day of retribution will come with the red sky of vengeance, to confound the innocent with the guilty.

Her thorough political background to the events of 1789 is a little laborious, but whenever she stops to give her own opinions on the state of affairs, her writing comes alive again. For Wollstonecraft, everything comes down to basic matters of fairness and justice, and you can see her measuring everything by that yardstick, disgusted by the rising death toll but determined to defend the principles that first set things in motion.

She compares the current disorder to a medical treatment that makes you worse before you get better – ‘the excrementitious humours exuding from the contaminated body’ – and concludes, perhaps with more hope than conviction, that it would only be a temporary blip on the road to utopia. ‘Europe ought to be thankful for a change,’ she says, ‘that, by altering the political systems of the most improved quarter of the globe, must ultimately lead to universal freedom, virtue, and happiness.’ I guess we're still waiting for all that, but her idealism got her a lot further than the cynicism of her opponents ever did.

[Jimmy Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vindication of the Rights of Man, Wollstonecraft's lesser known essay, was a polemical response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, which in itself was a critical response to the political motivations behind the French Revolution. The central issues that Wollstonecraft takes with Burke's book is the way in which it seems to advocate inequality, further oligarchic control, and dismiss the popular reason of the Enlightenment as an irrational and reckless response to (what Burke considers) justice.

Both of the essays contained in this edition rail against the way in which power denies certain individuals the right to a life of equal opportunity and happiness, which is what makes reading them in conjunction such a redeeming experience. Of course, her major work here is Vindication of the Rights of Woman, mainly because it established her as one of the first major feminist writers, and because it elaborately lays out her views on subjects ranging from class distinction, parenting, national education, and most importantly, the unfortunate social role that women seem to play in the world.

For the most part, Wollstonecraft's ideas are not terribly complex, and her writing isn't as difficult as that of some of her contemporaries. Aside from some of the slightly tangential details that occupy most of the latter half of the book, the first, stronger half, basically concerns itself with the issue of blind female obedience as brought on by early indoctrination. Education systems are solely to blame here, not to mention a certain domestic etiquette that hinders the independent growth of female thought. While this isn't exactly an earth-shattering epiphany to the modern reader, it certainly was a large part of the problem when it came to women's rights in the Eighteenth century. Not only were women basically denied the same political, social, and financial opportunities as men, but they were furthermore distracted by a certain lifestyle that seemed to flat out eschew any activities or duty that even remotely resembled independent thought. Her solution to a life of social oppression goes as follows.

"Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play thing."

To be perfectly honest, I cannot see how anything more elaborate or complex than that can be ascertained from this book. It displays a fair share of redundancies, but then again, the joy of reading Wollstonecraft is to be found in the tone of her vitriolic writing style. She also put action into praxis through the act of writing the book at all, which was a notable accomplishment in itself.

[Ellie Kidger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've officially fallen in love with Wollstonecraft. Her style of essay writing is biting and to the point, whilst using 18th century modes of writing to her advantage. Rights of Men is basically one big take down of Edmund Burke, whilst Rights of Woman tears Jean Jacques Rousseau and other philosophers of the period a new one. Meanwhile, A Historical and Moral View is analytic and more like a modern essay in its style and language. One thing I love in particular is how Wollstonecraft looks at the bigger picture for everything she discusses, and acknowledges flaws and problems in a way that doesn't detract from her arguments.

[Crito · Rating 4 out of 5]

I maintain that if these results can be achieved, the state of affairs in our corner of Greece, where men and women do not have a common purpose and do not throw all their energies into the same activities, is absolutely stupid. Almost every state, under present conditions, is only half a state, and develops only half its potentialities, whereas with the same cost and effort, it could double its achievement. Yet what a staggering blunder for a legislator to make!
Laws VII, Plato

It's worth invoking Plato in order to talk about Wollstonecraft because her argument in the main work is a species of the one he took contra Aristophanes, and she certainly had the education to have known. She would agree with the near polemic tone, and more importantly with the idea that the subjection of women is to the detriment of nearly everyone. But while Plato wanted to say it's because women are inherently weak and frivolous that it's especially important that they get the right education, Wollstonecraft counters that it's a society that infantilizes its women and keeps them from receiving a proper education that would produce a "frivolous" woman in the first place. And further, a male society which values women for only the most superficial reasons, that is, teaching men to value superficiality, is a mar on the men as well. The work is a piece by piece elaboration on this theme in different areas. The crux of the argument seems to be that lack of education is the breeding ground of vice, thus the proliferation of education equally provided to the sexes is to the benefit of everyone's virtue, and that what were seen as follies of women would in hindsight be seen to be just unwarranted impositions against the development of their virtue.

That's the step I was most interested in reading this, and I was disappointed to see this itself was never elaborated on. It is especially telling that Wollstonecraft never elaborates on what her notion of virtue is. It may be subject to a similar view of the ancients, if not for the fact that she also in many places seems to conflate morality with virtue, at one point arguing that women seeing each other naked would be a detriment to their virtue, when this is more a matter of the prudish British morals. And if this were an ancient holdover sense of the term, she would have to contend with Aristotle's separating theoretical/scientific knowledge and practical wisdom; the latter part concerns that which is actionable, and thus that which governs virtue, but isn't teachable because it is exactly that skill by which a person knows exactly what is specific to themselves in acting well. Virtue has tutors, but habituation is only enforced in schooling by throwing you into situations, rather than anything specific to what's being taught. And even then, in her Vindication Wollstonecraft doesn't address the several skeptical arguments which were being advanced by her contemporaries which threw serious doubt both on virtue and knowledge as a means of getting there.

That concerns Burke and Rousseau, which is a good way to transition to the other works bookending her more famous one. The first Vindication is a near direct response to Burke's Reflections on The Revolution in France, and while it's a nice followup if you have read it, I'm not sure if it's worth it for someone who hasn't read Burke. It is necessary to read it while noting both her valid remarks, and the ones which gloss over the core of Burke's argument. A good example is the discussion of the house of commons. Wollstonecraft criticizes the irresponsibility of a ruling body which has no recourse to virtue, while Burke was first to admit that they're a bunch of useless loafers, and in fact he banks severely on it. It is a proper counterweight to have a class who will dig their heels in at any slight disturbance so as to keep any drastic measures from commencing. One would question the worth of intentional gridlock, and Burke is at the disadvantage of banking on a group whose power is soon to be on the decline. And so Wollstonecraft goes on, somewhat fallaciously, to say nearly every great change is that of great disturbance, so digging the heels in is a vain gesture. Burke is not necessarily opposed to large changes, he gives much applause to the Revolution of 1688 which he argued made a drastic emergency change to Britain's constitution while draping it in the veil of cultural and historical continuity. He wrote his letter to oppose the notion of importing France's revolution to England, a climate which would make no sense.

In this Burke shares a notion of Rousseau's, that of a culture having what R terms natural morality; that is, the set of arbitrary given assumptions which have arisen particular to one culture. One example of such an assumption is how in America the mere political provision of freedom of speech has become an assumed value. And to Burke's credit, this is indeed something which will only change slowly over time in a proper context. It's however Rousseau's point that the proliferation of the arts and sciences have sown a rupture of self awareness about the arbitrariness of our values. This gives Wollstonecraft the further problem of whether education might corrupt more than actually proliferate virtue.

And indeed Wollstonecraft is a great reader of Rousseau, and seems to have adopted this line in her View of the French Revolution. She retains her view that the Bourgeoisie of France were too morally bankrupt, further including the vain capricious social function of the arts and sciences among them, practically right out of Rousseau. So it's not quite a 180 from her positions in the first vindication, but she's clearly shaken by the Terror. She ultimately concludes it is better that oppression be opposed rather than enabled, however she is far more sensitive this time to the idea of natural morality, and what happens in a society which sees its assumptions dissolve around it. And ultimately she returns to Burke's position on the strength of England's constitution. She does offer a greater morsel on virtuous education on this work, which is a neigh Confucian take which treats education in manner and plain education together, where one or the other would be incomplete on its own to foster virtue.

So these three texts together make an interesting arc (although the last text, being more a historical commentary, is severely abridged), though the Vindication of the Rights of Women is the clear centerpiece and stands on its own. It is radical for its time certainly, which is all the more ballsy of her to write in a sharp, florid, rhetorical tone. It's rather unfair of her to criticize Burke's sentimental flourishes while doing the same herself, but it's intricate prose nonetheless. It's however not that radical: she is after all arguing for the way women can be better wives to their husbands. But it's still a noble endeavor on her part to see her responsibility be the promotion of self development alongside virtue in a time where this found its best expression in Germans such as Goethe. Solid Recommendation.

[Polly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll confess that I only read the two Vindications in this edition as part of research for a university essay.
Some of the prose is a little tough to read but that may be a symptom of the time she wrote in as much as anything.
Some of these arguments are utterly timeless, her advocation for a level playing field for both sexes upon which they can develop morality is something that resonates even today. A genuine legend of her time and one of the founding mothers of the feminist movement.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Free the nipple, etc.

[Tim Rideout · Rating 5 out of 5]

'This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.'

'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' was published in 1792. It is impossible for me to review this work in any traditional sense. Yes, there are contradictions in some of Wollstonecraft's arguments. Yes, the essay is discursive and meandering at times. None of that matters, compared with the ground breaking nature of Wollstonecraft's fundamental proposition, that women and men are independently equal and should be educated and treated as such.

Some 226 years later, despite the progress that has been made, we continue to wait for the day when Wollstonecraft's vision is truly realized. There is still much to do.

'Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being to her duty.'

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished: 07.09.2018
Genre: novel
Rating: C+
#ccbookreviews
Conclusion:
Classic....but with some reservations.

Review

[AMS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better the second time around

She's getting an obligatory 3 stars for being a revolutionary and championing feminism in a time when a lot of people didn't, but I found the book itself to be tedious, redundant, and honestly incredibly unenjoyable to read (personally).

[Sam Lien · Rating 5 out of 5]

She is smart, fun, and feisty!

[Madeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”

It’s 1792, and Mary Wollstonecraft is RAGING. Here she goes on the rampage, railing against Burke in an essay about the Rights of Men and tearing Rousseau (and society) a new one about the Rights of Women for, like, a novel-length diatribe. And it’s so hardcore. This is heavy metal.

Yes, it’s repetitive and overlong and grows tedious at time, and not everything translates perfectly to 21st century feminism, I’m not surprised. But man, someone resurrect Mary Wollstonecraft to fight the fight now? She’d have so much to say about the flaws of the modern beauty industry alone, I swear. Anyway, so much of what she says is radical and still way too relevant. She talks about equality in education and the fucked-up-ness of separating children and forcing girls to play with dolls and being raised to be “slaves” to their husbands, essentially weak simpering objects of lust designed “to please.” This is like that Barbie movie monologue but SO MUCH ANGRIER. In the background she finds time to talk class and consider the family structure and the problems of hereditary wealth and I’m so very interested in learning more about her life now. Also, like. Imagine being born Mary Shelley, and finding out your dead mother was this RADICAL ???? It’s so much to think about.

[Gabby Proice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly progressive for 1792, and the sass is ICONIC.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

At the moment, what has struck me the most about Wollstonecraft's Vindications is the following excerpt:

"I am aware of an obvious inference: - from every quarter have I heard exclamations against masculine women; but where are they to be found? If by this appellation men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, I shall most cordially join in the cry; but if it be against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the attainment of those talent and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human character, and which raise females in the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind; - all those who view them with a philosophic eye must, I should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine. (Wollstonecraft 110) - my emphasis.

Really, this was the whole impetus behind the topic for my M.A. essay. Masculine women - in both characteristics and features. Shall I dare say, of "ugly" women?

[Rose Bouchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Wollstonecraft was a revolutionary for her time. Her work is not only sparking questions and changing the way we look at feminism but it's also a great period piece on the way women would act during the Enlightenment. This book is a must-read for any young feminist trying to understand where the movement came from and why it's still relevant today.

Though the language was at times complicated to grasp, it was overall, well explained and the surrounding sentences made the whole book come together.

[Aria Ligi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book.

[Adam Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a couple things to consider when rating and reviewing this book. The first is that this is a critical edition (specifically Broadview Literary Texts) and the second is the book contains two different writings from Mary Wollstonecraft. I'll begin with the second point.

The two different texts are like night and day. "The Vindications of the Rights of Men" was written as a hasty response that extended beyond a mere letter from Wollstonecraft to Edmund Burke concerning his work "Reflections on the Revolution in France". Burke was fully against the French Revolution as it deposed traditional and sacred institutions. Wollstonecraft (similar to Thomas Paine) made the case that the Revolution was to correct human rights violations and orchestrated a venerable novel government while pointing out some of Burke's hypocrisy. This is, of course, before the Reign of Terror in France which showed the true colours of many revolutionists. "The Rights of Men", I dare say, is not well written. It is a rant that got out of hand and there are many passages which sound like they are meant to be flurries of poesy with no real point. Wollstonecraft was simply expressing her distaste for Burke and his stance.

"The Vindications of the Rights of Woman", on the other hand, is more methodical and flows well. Wollstonecraft definitely thought this one through, unlike the other which she merely emoted. The general argument of "The Rights of Woman" is that women should be educated on par with men in order to provide intellectual freedom and participation in the moral sphere in order to be more involved, informed, caring, and responsible members of society. (It clearly draws from the Enlightenment principle that knowledge and education breed freedom.) Overall, she has good arguments, although it drags in a few places such as when she has extended confutations of Rousseau's "Emile" which presents his theory of education, which neglects and patronizes women. I would highly recommend this book for general reading as well as a foundation for understanding good Feminism.

Lastly, the Broadview edition has some good points like including a number of appendices which give background to the writings. My gripe is that there was more focus on "The Rights of Men" than I thought should have been given in contrast to "The Rights of Woman". More space in the introduction to the implications and historical reception of the book would have been nice.

[Eden Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to Google, A Vindication of the Rights of Women was the first feminist book. Such a wonderfully profound and relevant read and I am glad to gotten through it, no matter how depressing it was at times to see how little the world has changed in 235 years.

Wollstonecraft dreams of a future in which women and girls are given the chance they deserve, a future that has not yet come to pass. She lays out satisfyingly straightforward reasoning that draws the reader into her ideas. Of course women cannot raise their children or have an affectionate marriage or contribute to society as well as they could if they were allowed to have an education and grow their minds. Of course women spend much of their time worrying about how to appear beautiful and win a husband if they are not permitted to own their own property or support themselves financially.

Wollstonecraft debunks the still commonly held belief that women need to make themselves smaller or weaker to attract a man. She says that women value their reputations above all else, including heaven or themselves, since it is the eye of man they have been taught to dread. She maintains that the want of chastity in men is the cause of a lack of virtue or modesty in women.

Wollstonecraft hopes for a future in which women have their own representation in government. And most of all, her wild wish is to see the distinction of sex confounded in society. All of this written in 1790, and somehow still wildly applicable to today’s world.

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always with this kind of text, the review is about the suitability of the text as an assigned volume for undergraduates—not whether Wollstonecraft's work is important (it is—eleventy million stars for sure). The star of the volume, of course, is Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the other two texts are makeweights. Of those two, the earlier Vindication of the Rights of Men makes more sense here and is better annotated. The curious choice was to include a selection from Wollstonecraft's Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution. For some reason, the editing itself in that final text is shabbier than the other two (several typos). Moreover, the principle of selection in that text is not entirely clear. The two vindications are rightly more celebrated. MW's vigorous prose attack on Burke's Reflections in the first Vindication is worth closer attention than it has often received. Todd's endnotes are helpful here in elucidating some of the context. She does solid work with the second Vindication as well. There are footnotes here (occasionally) which are MW's own—oftentimes the need to include some of these simply didn't seem justified. Despite the inconvenience of endnotes, this is not a bad edition for undergraduates, though if one only wants to assign the second Vindication, there are several more economical choices out there. Todd's introductory material is (no surprise) quite good. However, the suggestions for further reading are pretty cursory.

[Adil Khan · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you thought Indian news channels of the 2010s invented vitriolic political debates, behold these pamphlets from the 1790s. There's enough word-twisting, name-calling, mud-slinging to keep a modern politician taking copious notes.

I had very high expectations of this book and will give an extra star just for its historical importance, but am DNFing about 60 pages in because I see no point in continuing further.

[Evan Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read about 1/6th for class. Scarily relevant. It’s always shocking to me what perspicacious insight the early liberals had into what capitalism could become, despite their usual bourgeois disdain for the the classes that eventually became the industrial proletariat (exemplified in one of the most radical Jacobins, Robespierre, detesting the Sans-Culottes for rioting for pastries).

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

honestly, she kinda cooked burke in A vindication of the rights of man... if i were him i would literally have just shut up after.

[Olivia Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

she went off

[Jake Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

CC reading

[Todd Denning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good! Interesting! But long! Wouldn’t read if it weren’t for work…

[Lukas Roybal · Rating 5 out of 5]

hoping the goodreads shawties see my rating for this one

[Teoman Versteegen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ngl I have a bit of a crush on Wollstonecraft

[Jerry]

review text for 250

[Ava Jast · Rating 4 out of 5]

omg she’s so tea

[Ethan Skipp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slay queen