Thinker · TH-0285
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and philosopher active in London's radical circles in the 1780s and 1790s. Her Vindication of the Rights of…
1759 – 1797 · London, Ireland, Paris, Scandinavia
Traditions: Modern European
Schools: Feminist philosophy
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and philosopher active in London's radical circles in the 1780s and 1790s. Her Vindication of the Rights of Men answered Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution, and her Vindication of the Rights of Woman extended the same arguments by consistency: if rights rest on reason, and women are rational, women must share them. She is regarded as a founding figure of liberal feminism.
Key ideas
- Rights and duties are grounded in reason and virtue, which women possess as fully as men.
- Women's apparent weakness is the product of an education that trains them for dependence and to please.
- Denying women rights while claiming them for men is inconsistent with the principles of liberty itself.
- Co-education and the cultivation of reason would make women better citizens, companions and parents.
Major works
- Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787)
- A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
- Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)