351

A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN

DOCUMENT

20-5

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

community. He currence of his

1792

importing' civil

The French Constitution of 1791, drafted by the same National Assembly that passed the "Declaration of the Rights of Man," confined full citizenship to a limited number of property-holding men. While many Enlightenment ideals that underlay the Revolution had developed in salons overseen by upper-class women, prevailing thought held that women lacked the intellectual and emotional capacity to participate in politics. The English radical Mary Wollstonecraft disagreed. Her response was A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman, written to French diplomat Charles Talleyrand, who had recently advocated a very limited and domestic education for women.

Ilmunity, saving rred by the wife property in her

s. rty of the comIr the establishence, until she nal property of ions and those
:annot alienate

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if! treat them like rational creatures,

consent. He is

instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly

his wife, occa-

wish to point out in what true dignity and human

happiness

consists -

I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince heart, delicacy of sentiment,

them that the soft phrases, susceptibility and refinement

of

of taste, are almost synony-

s

mous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the

n these laws?

objects of pity will soon become objects of contempt.
Dismissing those soft pretty feminine phrases, which the men con-

ems rooted in

descendingly

use to soften our slavish dependence,

elegancy

of mind,

supposed

to be the sexual characteristics

show that elegance ambition exquisite

sensibility,

and despising that weak

and sweet docility of manners, of the weaker vessel, I wish to

is inferior to virtue, that the first object of laudable

is to obtain a character

as a human

being, regardless of the dis-

tinction of sex.
Youth is the season for love in both sexes; but in those days of thoughtless enjoyment

provision should be made for the more important

years of

From Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), ed. Carol H.
Poston (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), pp. 9-10, 27, 31.

352

THE REVOLUTION

life, when reflection

1775-1815

IN POLITICS

takes place of sensation.

The woman who has only

[

been taught to please will soon find that her charms are oblique sunbeams

(

and that they cannot have much effect on her husband's are seen every day, when the summer

heart when they

is passed and gone. Will she then

have sufficient native energy to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate

FRANgOIS

DOMI

A Black R

her dormant faculties? or, is it not more rational to expect that she will try to please other men?
Why must the female mind be tainted by coquettish

arts to gratify the

sensualist and prevent love from subsiding into friendship, ate tenderness,

or compassion-

when there are not qualities on which friendship

can be

built? Let the honest heart show itself, and reason teach passion to submit to necessity; or, let the dignified pursuit of virtue and knowledge mind above those emotions ....
If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron be kept in ignorance argument triflers, why should they

under the specious name of innocence?

respecting the subjection

monsters, who scarcely have shown any discernment over thousands

... As to the

in which the sex has ever been held, it

retorts on man. The many have always been enthralled have tyrannized

raise the

by the few; and

The French Revolution h sentatives of the oppresse seized the opportunity to colonial ntlers aTTested th freed slave Toussaint Brec as he had "opened" the )
Haitian revolt. The revol owners, but British and SI while the French were dis;

of human excellence,
China is not

The impolitic and incenl

the only country where a living man has been made a God. Men have

of their fellow-creatures

blacks nearly so much as

submitted

etors of San Domingo are

to superior strength to enjoy with impunity

....

the pleasure of the

moment; women have only dOI\~ the same, and therefore till it is proved that the courtier, who servilely resigns the birthright of a man, is not a

any effect in the eyes of nations. But the attempts

moral agent, it cannot be demonstrated

the more to be feared h

that woman is essentially inferior

to man because she has always been subjugated.

cover their detestable pI:

them on you by illusory a this colony its former sce
READING

1.
2.

AND

DISCUSSION

How might a man and a woman read this document addressed to men or women?
In what ways does Wollstonecraft
Does this weaken or strengthen

stepped in among hands ofliberticides

QUESTIONS

differently? Is it

accept that women

I swear it by all that libel my knowledge

are inferior?

to
[i.e.,

LIS

of the bh

either of the crimes whicl ourselves under the ruiw

her argument?

the return of slavery.
3.

Based on Wollstonecraft's

argument,

what can you discern about a

stereotypical woman of the time? How does she behave? How do men respond to her?
4.

Of what is the title of Wollstonecraft's was not merely coincidence,

argument

reminiscent?

what was the author's purpose?

If this

From Franr;ois Dominique T ed., ed. C. 1. R. James (New
15Vaublanc: The count of Va and giving them citizenship,