| A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: (Annotated Edition) Contributor(s): Mary Wollstonecraft (Author) |
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ISBN: ISBN-13: 9798701811193 Publisher: Independently Published OUR PRICE: $5.39 Product Type: Paperback Published: January 2021 * Not available - Not in print at this time * |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Law | Civil Rights - Political Science | Human Rights |
| Physical Information: 0.21" H x 8.5" W x 11" (0.57 lbs) 102 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a treatise on overcoming the ways in which women in her time are oppressed and denied their potential in society, with concomitant problems for their households and society as a whole. The dedication is to Charles M. Talleyrand-P rigord, the late bishop of Autun whose views on female education were distasteful to Wollstonecraft. The introduction sets out her view that neglect of girls' education is largely to blame for the condition of adult women. They are treated as subordinate beings who care only about being attractive, elegant, and meek, they buy into this oppression, and they do not have the tools to vindicate their fundamental rights or the awareness that they are in such a condition. In the first chapter Wollstonecraft promotes reason and rationality and discusses the deleterious effects of absolute, arbitrary political power and the vices associated with riches and hereditary honors. Chapters two and three detail the various ways in which women are rendered subordinate. They are taught that their looks are of paramount concern, and they tend to cultivate weakness and artificiality to appear pleasing to others. They are seldom independent and tend not to exercise reason. Writers like Rousseau and Dr. Gregory desire that women remain virtual slaves, enshrined in the home and concerned only with their "natural" proclivities of being modest, chaste, and beautiful. Women are taught to indulge their emotions and thus have unhappy marriages because passion cannot be sustained. Virtue should not be relative to gender; as both men and women were created by God and have souls, they have the same kind of propensity to exercise reason and develop virtue. Female dependence as seen in her day is not natural. Women's confinement in the home and inability to participate in the public sphere results in their insipidness and pettiness. Wollstonecraft wants to inspire a "revolution in female manners." |