Vindication of the Rights of Women: The Universal Library

Description

First published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Women was written in an age of turmoil, against the backdrop of revolutionary uprisings in France and America. Mary Wollstonecraft's declaration of female independence dared to attack the prevailing view of women as decorative ornaments to be traded through marriage. In a sustained polemic against the establishment, she argued passionately for an educational standard applicable to both sexes and for recognition of the essential role that women played in society. She believed that all aspects of women's existence were interrelated, and that nothing less than the redistribution of political and economic power could bring about this major reform. A Vindication of the Rights of Women established Mary Wollstonecraft as the mother of modern feminism.

Mary Wollstonecraft, born in 1759, was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and, most famously, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She died in 1797.