A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman By Mary Wollstonecraft

A Study of Early Feminism

Webster's Dictionary defines feminism as: 1- the belief that women and men should have equal rights and opportunities 2- organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.(“Feminism”) What this means in other words is feminism is an activist movement which advocates for the belief that women deserve equal rights to that of men as well as equal opportunity to further themselves both politically and economically. If this is applied to the late 17th and early 18th centuries, it shows Mary Wollstonecraft was a very influential figure in feminism who worked to further this view in a time when it was almost unheard of. She wrote a very significant book called A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which promoted

It was one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In this book Mary Wollstonecraft made a revolutionary argument. The book presented the argument that women were born equal to men. It presented the idea that the inequality between men and women was a social construct that women would be made equal to men if women were given education equal to that of a man. (“From ) This was revolutionary because it came at a time when a majority believed men were smarter than women. The arguments made in this book became a basic element of future feminist arguments and remain so

Wollstonecraft was a strong opponent of marriage; she refused to be subjugated to the rule of any husband. She believed wholeheartedly in equality between the sexes. As an article in the New York Times states, “Wollstonecraft dreamed that someday men and women would nurture each other as equals. “The man who can be contented to live with a pretty, useful companion, without a mind, has lost in voluptuous gratifications a taste for more refined enjoyments,” she wrote. “She has never felt the calm satisfaction that refreshes the parched heart like the silent dew of heaven—of being beloved by one who could understand him ”(Bentley, Toni). This shows her true dream of men and women coexisting together as equals. She was a woman ahead of her time who spoke to a populace not ready to receive her message of equality for women in all aspects of life. She lived in the time when her ideas were truly in the minority. In the book by Lyndall Gordon, Vindication, A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, Ms. Gordon describes Mary Wollstonecraft thus: “ It took the renegade second child (of seven) -- and first daughter -- of Edward John Wollstonecraft, a drinker, and the unhappy Elizabeth Dickson, to take this virtually unimaginable plunge into uncharted waters, and she took this leap while displaying the full measure of female unpredictability, while the world watched, astounded,