A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Abridged, with Related Texts

by Mary Wollstonecraft, Philip Barnard (Editor), Stephen Shapiro (Editor)

This edition features a shrewd, annotated abridgment of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) accompanied by an array of texts that help situate the Vindication in its political, historical, and intellectual contexts. Included are key selections from Wollstonecraft's other writings; from closely related works by Burke, Paine, Godwin, Rousseau, Macaulay, Talleyrand, and Brockden Brown; and from the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and de Gouges' Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Female Citizen (1791).

Genres: Philosophy

160 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2013

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

[livi]

Like soft dnf bc I’ve had this on my cr for months but I promise I’ll pick it back up again

[Grace Bouton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering she’s writing towards the aristocratic woman, Wollstonecraft provides an excellent breakdown of the unjust ontology of woman and explanation of the impossibility of the Sisyphean task of pursuing virtue while not being granted the capacity of virtue by the oppressive sex in patriarchal society. I did find myself very frustrated in her lack of intersectionality, considering her arguments focus on criticizing the fundamental principles upon which patriarchy/society is constructed. It just felt like Wollstonecraft was really limiting herself in order to really persuade her target audience, which unfortunately didn’t allow her to universalize the argument in a way that seems [to me] to logically follow.

[Noah Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's always pretty difficult for me (and I think anyone) to read things written around the Modern/Enlightenment era. However, the editors do a pretty good job at elucidating some of the more confusing parts and translating what Wollstonecraft was saying. It's also so interesting seeing what was considered radical during Wollstonecraft's time relative to what we see in contemporary feminist theory/philosophy. Certainly an interesting read regarding the ever-important march of women's rights that I would recommend to anyone who can withstand her language.