Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written by British philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the eighteenth century who did not believe women should receive a rational education. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be companions to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men. Written in the midst of the French Revolution and the British pamphlet war surrounding it, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as an answer to a report by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Her work is viewed as having been influential on the women's suffrage movement in the U.S. that began in the mid-19th century, and as a precursor to modern feminist philosophy.