A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Contents

1. To M. Talleyrand-Périgord, Late Bishop of Autun 10 min 5

   Wollstonecraft dedicates the book to Talleyrand, whose 1791 report on public education had confined girls to a domestic upbringing. She pleads for her sex, not herself. If the rights of man rest on reason, women, who share reason, must share them; to exclude women by force while claiming liberty is the tyranny of every weak king and father. French manners, though sociable, lack modesty. Women denied legitimate rights will seek illicit power by cunning. She asks that the revised constitution do justice to “one half of the human race”.

2. Advertisement 1 min 1

   A brief note to readers. The work was planned in three parts, but fresh material made Wollstonecraft publish only the first. A second volume was promised on the laws relating to women and their particular duties. It never appeared.

3. Introduction 13 min 9

   Surveying history and present society, Wollstonecraft blames women’s weakness and misery on a false education, drawn from books by men who treat women as alluring mistresses rather than rational beings. She grants men greater physical strength but nothing more. She welcomes the charge of making women “masculine” if that means reason and virtue. Her address is chiefly to the middle class, the aristocracy being corrupted by idleness. She promises plain argument instead of flowery sentiment, and condemns an upbringing that makes marriage women’s only way to rise and leaves them childish, cunning and dependent.

4. I The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered 20 min 13

   The opening chapter returns to first principles. Reason distinguishes humans from animals, virtue ranks one person above another, and the passions are given so that we may grow in knowledge by mastering them. Prescription cannot justify denying anyone natural rights. Wollstonecraft rejects Rousseau’s preference for the state of nature: civilisation is part of God’s plan, and its evils come from hereditary rank, monarchy and arbitrary power. Professions built on strict subordination, such as the standing army and the hierarchical clergy, corrupt character, which is formed largely by one’s calling. She ends with a sketch of how monarchy and priestcraft arose.

5. II The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed 56 min 15

   Wollstonecraft attacks the idea of a separate “sexual character”. If women have souls, virtue and reason must be the same for both sexes, differing at most in degree. Against Milton’s Eve, Rousseau’s Sophia and Dr Gregory’s advice to daughters, she argues that teaching women only to please produces cunning, vanity and unhappy marriages, since love inevitably fades and only friendship lasts. Women, like soldiers, are given manners before morals. Subjection proves nothing about women’s nature: men have long submitted to kings no better than themselves, and liberty is the mother of virtue.

6. III The Same Subject Continued 37 min 11

   Bodily strength and health matter for both sexes, and genius does not go with frailty. Rousseau’s claim that girls naturally love dolls and dress is dismissed: girls imitate what surrounds them, and active girls are romps. Kept weak and ignorant, women become slaves or petty tyrants, as men do under despotism. It is “time to effect a revolution in female manners”. Morality rests on the character of a wise and just God. Wollstonecraft contrasts a helpless widow brought up on Rousseau’s plan with a rational widow who raises her children alone, and denies that there are any sexual virtues.

7. IV Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman Is Reduced by Various Causes 1 h 17 min 28

   Women are degraded by the same causes as the rich: pleasure without effort, homage without merit and position by courtesy, as Smith’s portrait of the great shows. Gallantry, sensibility, novels and needlework keep them childish and dependent, and marriage becomes legal prostitution. Wollstonecraft examines dependent unmarried sisters, notable housewives and fine ladies, rejects arguments from early maturity and polygamy, calls for seducers to be legally bound to maintain the women they ruin, and traces prostitution to idleness and dependence. Poor working women, she notes, show the most virtue.

8. V Animadversions on Some of the Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity, Bordering on Contempt 1 h 51 min 50

   The book’s longest chapter reviews the writers who shaped girls’ education. Section I quotes book 5 of Rousseau’s Émile at length and answers it: Sophie’s education in pleasing, obedience, cunning and borrowed religion produces weak wives and prepares for adultery, and Rousseau’s errors are traced to his sensibility. Sections II and III treat Fordyce’s sermons and Gregory’s Legacy as sentimental flattery and dissimulation. Section IV criticises Piozzi, Staël and Genlis, and praises Chapone and Catharine Macaulay. Section V attacks Chesterfield’s early worldly wisdom and Burke’s defence of prejudice: knowledge must be gained by one’s own exertion and passions.

9. VI The Effect Which an Early Association of Ideas Has upon the Character 17 min 8

   Using the psychology of the association of ideas, Wollstonecraft argues that early impressions fix character. Men’s business breaks their first associations; women, taught from infancy to think of dress and pleasing, are bound by theirs, so their failings come from education, not nature. This explains why women prefer charming rakes to men of sense, and why, unoccupied, they cannot let love settle into friendship after marriage. Only a cultivated understanding can free them from habit.

10. VII Modesty.—Comprehensively Considered, and Not as a Sexual Virtue 29 min 16

    Wollstonecraft redefines modesty as a virtue of reason, a just estimate of oneself, distinct from humility, bashfulness and mere sexual reserve. Ignorant innocence is not modesty, as prostitutes’ lost bashfulness shows; educated women and men will have more of it. She argues that modesty and chastity must be required of both sexes, criticises the false delicacy and gross familiarity of girls’ schools and households, recommends cleanliness and personal reserve, and concludes that knowledge and humanity, not studied rules, teach modesty.

11. VIII Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of a Good Reputation 29 min 12

    Wollstonecraft argues that teaching women to guard their reputation rather than their virtue undermines morality. Like courtiers, women learn dissimulation; Rousseau openly made opinion the throne of female virtue. Because one lapse ruins a woman forever while men keep their name through any vice, reputation for chastity displaces every other duty. Citing Smith and Macaulay, she holds that real character usually wins a just reputation. Men’s unchastity, she concludes, is the root of female weakness, prostitution and ruined motherhood, and public spirit needs private virtue in both sexes.

12. IX Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society 30 min 14

    Wollstonecraft traces the vices of society to the respect paid to inherited wealth and rank, which detaches esteem from duty and breeds idleness in the rich and envy below. Women suffer most, since wealth and dependence leave them only their charms. She praises the independent middle-rank household, mocks soldiers, ministers and the court, and attacks the slave trade and unequal taxation. She hints that women should have political representatives, proposes that they become physicians, farmers and shopkeepers, calls marriage for support “legal prostitution”, and appeals to men to free women for the sake of better citizens.

13. X Parental Affection 7 min 6

    A short chapter arguing that parental affection is often disguised self-love and a pretext for tyranny, since one despotism supports another. Women, enslaved to prejudice, either neglect or spoil their children. A good mother needs sense and independence of mind; meek wives make foolish mothers. Affection grows from the exercise of care, not instinct, so mothers who hand infants to wet-nurses and schools should not expect it.

14. XI Duty to Parents 14 min 9

    Wollstonecraft rejects the claim that children owe parents blind obedience, a claim she likens to the divine right of kings and to arguments from prescription. Following Locke, she grants parents a right to gratitude and care in old age in return for their care, but no authority over an adult's reason. Obedience extorted by rank or the prospect of inheritance degrades, and girls, held under a stricter hand, learn submission or cunning that prepares them for the slavery of marriage.

15. XII On National Education 1 h 6 min 22

    Arguing that education must become a national concern, Wollstonecraft criticises boarding schools, the great public schools and the clerical colleges for vice, tyranny and empty ritual, and private home education for producing vanity. She proposes national day schools, free for children aged five to nine, mixing sexes and classes, with outdoor exercise and Socratic conversation, followed by separate tracks by destination. Girls and boys should be educated together. She also urges kindness to animals and medical knowledge for women, and attacks Rousseau's Thérèse. Women made free and rational will be better wives and mothers.

16. XIII Some Instances of the Folly Which the Ignorance of Women Generates; with Concluding Reflections on the Moral Improvement That a Revolution in Female Manners Might Naturally Be Expected to Produce 48 min 16

    The final chapter catalogues follies bred by women's ignorance: consulting fortune-tellers and mesmerists, which she treats as irreligious; reading sentimental novels; fondness for dress and rivalry among women; narrow, exclusive affections; and the mismanagement of children and servants. Each, she argues, results from education and dependence, and dissenters show how oppression breeds cunning. Her concluding reflections call for a “revolution in female manners”: let women share men's rights and they will emulate their virtues, or else husbands may as well rule with whips.