Published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft argues on behalf of women's rights. In response to misogynist philosophers, its primary purpose is to think of women beyond the roles that confine them. It appeals to logic, asking readers to think of women as humans first. The major theme of this book lies in women's education with ignorance keeping women inferior to men, not nature.
1. Thesis and Argument
In Wollstonecraft’s introduction, she posed a modern and progressive premise where society’s deemed inferiority of women stems from their lack of education. She encouraged women’s independence and agency outside their lived reality, where marriage is the only means to advance in society. Her argument can be divided into three points:
Women must build an identity outside their relations to men.
Society must see women as autonomous and rational human beings.
Women are capable of being equal members of the society as men
Wollstonecraft detailed how conditioning started from girlhood where they were taught to be obedient and charming rather than develop their skills in reasoning and self-discipline. Written in the 18th century, the author's arguments heavily centered around abstract ideas such as morals and virtue. Having been educated in Catholic institutions, albeit boring and a tad preachy, I've been desensitized to such discourse. Women's weaknesses were tied to their morals and intellect. This discourse still persists in the 21st century where men’s value is judged on actions while women’s is judged on appearance.
Education is not just liberation from men, but liberation from the limitations imposed by the patriarchal society and every bitter flavor of its hypocrisy. Her emphasis on education went beyond being seen as rational beings to being seen as contributing members of their nation.
Although written over two centuries ago, her premise resonates in modern times. In some parts of the world, women’s education is either indirectly thwarted or outright discouraged. In addition, this directly addresses the archaic expectation from women to make men the nucleus of their existence and to imprison women's very own self-worth in the hands of men.
2. Research and Evidence
Subjugation was the center of Rousseau's (along with other philosophers and majority of men's) view on women. Wollstonecraft stressed their hypocrisy. She questioned what warranted men to rule when historically, they spearheaded barbarism and heinous violence against humanity in the name of conquest.
It had been over 200 years and yet such actions Rousseau supported still prevail. I agree with Wollstonecraft when she stated that 'all power intoxicates weak men'. I understand her to mean emotionally weak men. If emotional strength is their asset, they would know how to settle problems with communication. However, most heinous crimes, wars and violence are instigated and committed largely by men. How can men be hailed as a supreme gender and women as the emotional gender when minor inconveniences are resolved by savagery? No amount of government reform or advanced technology could make up for the barbaric mindset where brutality is normalized. We see it in the news and it almost desensitizes us. Almost, but not totally. Because somehow, such cruelty bleeds into our reality.
Wollstonecraft pointed out that male philosophers continued to contradict themselves to justify their prejudiced view on women.
For instance, Rousseau insisted on restricting women from ever gaining independence for it rendered them alluring and compliant to men. However, he admitted that women were naturally cunning. Yet, he maintained his stance on women to be inferior and therefore, must be enslaved to men's caprice. Similarly, Milton, yet another misogynist philosopher, tied women's beauty to moral virtue and yet denied their intellect and agency, a transgression against logic, glorifying women as pretty objects bound for subservience to men. She discussed his preconceived notion of women as frail beings made for softness, beauty and grace through his work "Paradise Lost".
Dr. Gregory, another poster boy of sexism, declared women to be artificial, weak and useless members of society. Yet, in his crookedly celebrated book "A Father's Legacy to his Daughters", he encouraged women to utilize deceit regarding their strength and intelligence to prevent emasculation of their husbands. I interpreted his statement as: 'Women need to suppress their intellect because it's a direct threat to a man's equally fragile ego and masculinity.' Here's my take: Repression would not have been necessary if their views were correct. An insufficient intellect would not have posed a threat if it was useless. These men only contradicted themselves in the name of patriarchal continuity and misogyny.
I share Wollstonecraft's abhorrence of the infantilization of women which sadly continues to this day. Prejudiced views and sexist societal norms kept women on a leash, their world view narrowed by blinders comparable to that of a child. Why a child? Because children are gullible and easily manipulated. What misogynist men truly required from a woman is ignorance and docility masked as unrealistic levels of modesty and innocence.
Throughout this discourse, the author emphasized the importance of education for both men and women to a great degree. She extended Rousseau's opinion on men confidently exercising their own independent thinking to women. The endeavor was not to gain masculine qualities. By pursuing knowledge, women do not have to rely on the arbitrary power of beauty and they can prove that women can compete with a man's intellect.
I find Wollstonecraft's mockery of the pretentious dynamic between opposite genders during her time amusing and sad at the same time. These women wouldn't have been so blinded by deceitful kindness had they not been kept ignorant.
Wollstonecraft provided an extensive critique of culture, literature, and social convention as co-conspirators in women’s oppression. She asserted sentimental novels, popular poetry, and exaggerated notions of sensibility train women to value emotion over judgment, promoting superficiality and vanity. I see this as a double-edged sword. On one hand, I find her conclusion that it perpetuated ignorance, weakness, and dependence on men as correct. She demonstrated, through references to male philosophers, that women were systematically deprived of the opportunity to cultivate their individuality. However, while I agree that these women were indoctrinated to blindly bind themselves to patriarchal values, I disagree with emotions being a weakness. Then again, that's a discussion for the 21st century.
I agree with Wollstonecraft's analysis of marriage and domestic life, where women’s value is socially reduced to beauty, charm, and obedience. She described the institution of marriage as a legalized transaction, a form of socialized prostitution where women exchange compliance for protection and social status. I'm astonished by her progressive thinking. She linked marriage and prostitution in one bold and eloquent argument. She supported this by her examination of philosophical writings that idealized submissiveness while disparaging women’s intellect. These irony-impaired misogynists provided written evidence of how societal and intellectual authorities colluded to deny women agency, even when women’s compliance is praised as moral excellence. Speaking of praising women for moral excellence, cynical as it may sound, I only see this as men mocking women for being objectified and subservient. What does that make them? Gullible. Why? Because they're not properly educated.
On a more positive note, Wollstonecraft was not necessarily against marriage. In fact, she drew attention to marriage as meeting of two individuals who have full control of their own mental faculties. I'd agree to this if she added emotional faculties as well. Humans are multi-faceted beings. To operate on logic alone, defies our nature. And for "logical beings" who denies the existence of their feelings, that's just denial.
Wollstonecraft also scrutinized class hierarchy, showing how wealth and idleness corrupt both men and women. She pointed out that upper-class women, steeped in luxury, became ornamental rather than rational, reinforcing social hierarchies and perpetuating moral decay. Education, she argued, must be universal and inclusive. She insisted moral development is not a privilege but a necessity. This was tied to her argument of liberating women to be contributing members of the society.
3. Structure and Clarity
After reading the table of contents, I expected 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' to pose arguments organized in a funnel structure, grasping a wider perspective while gradually transitioning to the main premise of this book, which is the importance of education on women. However, that was short-sighted and underestimation on my part.
She started by describing and questioning patriarchal values and how it directly contributed to systemic oppression of women as a whole. Wollstonecraft proceeded to provide examples of male philosophers' texts to prove her point. Since women were heavily defined by their roles to men, I think the aim was for every woman to find themselves and other women in their lives in these pages: a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a widow and so on. It was a letter for every woman to realize that their intellect and emotions were manipulated and held captive for the benefit of patriarchy. She wanted to urge women to exercise independence.
Upon reading these repetitive examples, I wanted a brief and concise version of this book. Yet, I contradict myself as soon as I read a new example. Reading about the systemic oppression ignited the passion to pull women from the trenches of misogyny, even in something as simple as shedding light to the topic. And maybe, that was also Wollstonecraft's aim, to appeal to the human compassion of the reader.
On the latter chapters of the book, Wollstonecraft widened her argument, moving from individual education to broader societal reform. She demonstrated the interplay of domestic, civic, and national education: uneducated mothers cannot raise virtuous children, idle or indulgent upper-class women fail to cultivate morality, and uneducated citizens weaken the nation. I believe the bedrock of a prosperous country lies on its highly educated and adequately incentivized citizens. The author proposed co-education as a remedy, cultivating respect and equality between the sexes from youth. This structural progression was logical and deliberate: personal virtue leads to moral family life, which in turn contributes to civic duties and national improvement.
4. Authority and Perspective
The vicissitudes of womanhood would be enough to make Wollstonecraft, an educated woman living in the throes of peak misogyny, a credible source and an articulate voice of reason. Her intellect was openly ridiculed and invalidated, defying the very grounds of what she was appealing for and what men claimed to generously possess: logic. While I do not agree with all her claims, I believe the majority of them warrant merit.
Hailing from the 18th century, the discourse of virtue naturally invites religious interrogations. I consider religion and morality to be two separate bodies. Morality governs mankind. Religion governs faith. Nevertheless, Wollstonecraft argues that treating women as secondary beings breaches God’s design. I agree that religion was often used to control women, which is why I find some parts of her narrative dissonant to me. The author's heavy fixation on virtue is at times pretentious. The polarity between religious teachings and the religious people rendered me skeptical of such discourse. Further, the author goes to great lengths to promote women as rational beings. In this book, women are pushed towards rationality while being encouraged to prioritize logic over their emotions. Humans are an amalgamation of logic and a vibrant spectrum of emotions. Denying either aspect is unjust, regardless of gender. It is understandable that philosophers in that era wouldn't even consider people to operate with both emotions and logic as it is a discourse that did not exist two centuries ago.
Wollstonecraft asserted that describing women as gentle and domestic is insulting. It shaped her claim that such descriptions reflected the norm during her time and environment. I perceive her view of women as victims a limited view. This is understandable as they didn't have immediate access to information. Her statements are true but only to an extent. In different parts of the world during this time, women from the different parts of the world already led and joined revolutions against their colonizers. These women were living proof that they rose above oppression.
According to Wollstonecraft, women at that time had as little education as military men. Manners, customs and tests to their judgement were primitive. Yet, superior advantage were deliberately given to men when their only superiority lies in physical strength. Such system was meant for people of both genders to forego critical thinking, rendering both sexes to blind obedience. Unfortunately, women were still at a great disadvantage.
Wollstonecraft's view on internalized misogyny is strikingly practical. Women have always been conditioned to imprison their self-worth in men's validation. This notion is detrimental to a woman's independence. Suppose a relationship naturally reaches the point where familiarity sets in over the years of marriage (as it always does), then the attention and wooing given by a man normally wanes. Her source of validation is either significantly less or severed. Hence, she encourages women to be self-reliant and to cultivate their mental faculties as a source of comfort for themselves.
While I strongly agree with the author's outlook, I think this wasn't easily achieved in their time. This is coming from a perspective of a liberated middle class woman and is likely unrealistic for most of commoners back then. Women weren't even allowed to have their own bank accounts in the late 18th century.
In addition, she claims women were trapped by overindulgence of sensation which promotes their resistance to having their own agency. As I mentioned in Research and Evidence part, this is another one of her arguments where I disagree. People have the tendency to vilify emotions to promote cultivating intellect. It is human to contain a multitude of emotions. However, throughout history and especially in the past, even emotions are gendered. For instance, a man pursuing higher education is ambitious and commendable whereas for women, in that era and even some parts of the world today, is considered masculine or unnatural. In my interpretation, this reflects Wollstonecraft‘s own unconscious internalized misogyny where intellect and the pursuit of being a rational person leaves no room for emotions.
Wollstonecraft’s authority is further reinforced by her acute understanding of human development, education, and social dynamics. She examined the formation of virtue in children, the responsibilities of parents, and the cultivation of morality in society. Mothers would not have been capable of educating their children if they themselves weren't properly educated. I think men were just looking for a part-time incubator, a part-time maid, and a part-time sex slaves. They didn't give much thought about what kind of human being they were raising. Is the child even morally decent? Does the child respect everyone or does the child perpetuate patriarchal values? Sadly, the answer is mostly the latter. Her perspective was informed by both lived experience and philosophical reasoning, making her critiques of sentimentality, vanity, and social pretense mostly credible.
While Wollstonecraft argued for rationality, she did not ignore the human condition entirely. She acknowledged how deeply women’s reasoning has been curtailed by systemic socialization. Yet, she consistently insisted that intellectual potential is not gendered and that moral and civic reform would be impossible without granting women full access to education. Despite Wollstonecraft's invalidation of emotions to be seen as an intellectual, I think this is where she demonstrated equal logical and emotional intelligence. She went beyond liberating women to be independent beings. The author insisted that women are capable of being a part of intellectual society and perform their civic duties. Her constant literature citations and tackling various angles on social norms demonstrated that her perspective was not abstract. It was a realistic critique grounded in observation, logic, and ethical reasoning, even when she occasionally indulges in moral idealism.
5. Practical Application and Insights
Although the modern society has made significant strides in educational access compared to the gender norms of the 18th century, Wollstonecraft's premise of withholding education is still befitting. Traces of gendered-discrimination and class oppression on education widely prevail.
The entire premise of Wollstonecraft emphasized that intellect is gender-independent. Hence, she highlighted education to elevate the country. In the twenty-first century, I firmly believe that the foundation of a progressive country is knowledge. A country's peak advancement could never be truly reached if education is withheld from its citizens, regardless of class, gender, or form of discrimination.
The implications of Wollstonecraft’s arguments remain strikingly relevant. Education, she asserted, was the cornerstone of personal and national development. Mothers must be educated to raise morally competent children and citizens must be educated to participate in society meaningfully.
In modern times, we're far beyond barring education based on gender. However, in a lot of countries, there are still nuanced misogyny. For example, in 2018, there were medical schools who admitted to rigging women's exam results to exclude female students. Why? I thought we're completely past this discourse but apparently, we're combating sexism that persists in educational institutions. Just like a virus, a lot of these misogynists mutate into smarter ways of keeping women off their universities.
She indicated that women must cultivate both reason and virtue to achieve independence from men and societal expectation. This is where I disagree. Virtue is not necessary to be independent from men but it is essential to be a decent human being. What caused friction with my preferences was the over-prominence of virtue discourse. I respect that this came from a time where being religious was a norm and it was important to be virtuous and knowledgeable but it just reads too moralistic for my taste. Then again, her argument stood as generally holistic: social reform, moral development, and gender equality are inseparable.
Her critique of reputation culture, class privilege, and domestic tyranny sadly resonates in modern contexts where societal pressures, gender norms, and internalized misogyny persist. Even in contemporary societies with wide access to education, women continue to face subtle forms of manipulation and moral judgment, both from external structures and from internalized social norms.
The practical application is clear: education must cultivate reason, exercise self-agency, and contribute to their nation through civic duties. Emancipation requires women to consciously de-center patriarchal values while reclaiming their own moral and intellectual authority.
6. Reading Experience
This book would have been a quick page-turner if it hadn’t been a vocabulary enrichment activity on steroids! Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable read which required alert engagement up until Chapter 4. However, it was not without flaws. For example, the repetitive examples wore me down and I had to pause reading it for a while before speed reading from Chapter 5 onwards.
Reviewing this book put all the media I consumed throughout the years into perspective. Truth be told, I wanted it to read distant. However, distance is impossible to simulate when the same gender oppression bridges the past and the present. It now makes sense that the majority of female characters in books, shows, comics and all other media are props in stories. I do not claim to be an expert in feminist literature, but as a woman, her anecdotes resonated with me. I consciously made an effort to connect her arguments, data and premises to the modern world. Although we have reached great progress in terms of education, the world hasn't reached true equality.
I strongly agree that education is an essential step to liberating women. However, as an adult living in the twenty-first century, I am a living witness to educated women who have yet to free themselves from their internalized misogyny. These are women who embody the same patriarchal values from centuries ago. For instance, a lot of women still have the fixed mindset of centering men and are the living embodiment of learned helplessness. Some wouldn't want to form an opinion because that wouldn't change things or they wouldn't dare voice their needs because they're 'just a woman'. These women have deeply ingrained incorrigible patriarchal values and somehow find a way to justify men’s atrocities and even nuanced misogyny.
Emancipation of women begins with education, as Wollstonecraft explicitly articulated, but it would also require women to willingly de-center men and unlearn deeply patriarchal values inculcated in their minds for generations. What struck me most was the timelessness of her insights: the same patterns of gendered expectations, vanity, and societal constraint she critiqued still echo centuries later.
Her focus on education and moral development framed a world where virtue and intellect were not gendered, a premise that resonated not only in feminist discourse but in the broader question of human development. I've heard lessons about virtue for years and years in my old classrooms as a student, but intellect cannot be everything we need to progress as a society aiming for equality.
Ultimately, Wollstonecraft’s work served both as a mirror and as a guide: it reflected the injustices of her era and ours, while offering a blueprint for cultivating rational, and independent women. Her call to educate, empower, and morally cultivate women is as urgent now as it was over two centuries ago. It left me reflecting critically on how far society has come and how far it still has to go... and it is exhausting.
