Wollstonecraft's Vindication
The Enlightenment's own premises are turned on the position of women.
- When
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Early Modern, Holocene
Mary Wollstonecraft argues in 1792 that women appear irrational and frivolous because they are educated to be so, and that if reason is the basis of rights then women possess it equally. The book responds directly to a French proposal for national education that would have limited girls to domestic training. It is among the earliest sustained feminist arguments in English and is built entirely out of Enlightenment principles applied consistently.