Summary Of A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women By Mary Wollstonecraft
In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft challenges the perceptions of femininity forced on to women and condemns the notion that a “virtuous” female is a woman who contains flippant qualities and accepts that her purpose on Earth is to cater herself to the whims of husband (76, 84). While a woman who lives in a society in which the persona she is expected to assimilate to is advantageous only to the men who govern her, it would be unfair and unkind to blame her for living up to the expectation which her life has been reduced to (71). For Wollstonecraft, it is through educating women that the ability to stand on their own will be gained and thus allow them to independently navigate through a world that has been designed
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Wollstonecraft continuously through her work reiterates how women have been “duped by their lovers, as princes by their ministers” into believing that she is secondary by the will of God (90). Her ignorance is the absolute tragedy of her life. She is simplified into being absolutely dependent on her husband because the men who created her society wanted her to be. The men who oppress “one-half of the human race”, Wollstonecraft calls for them to not continue to assume that women are born to be objects of their fanciful doting and constant ridicule (68). She reason that women have no right to be subjected to such a lack of respect and so condescended to as to be denied a basic education simply on the grounds of her gender (66, 68, 76). The invariable responsibility that men are accountable for is seen in the cycle of how women continue to remain in the sedentary positions they have been forced into. The problem originates with men, ego puffed with the belief that his superiority over women is biblical (92). Running with the belief that Eve was made from Adam, without whom she would not exist, discounting God’s creation of Adam and God’s choice to use a spare part of man who he created, and then molding Eve from it, at no expense to Adam, men’s belief with the I-was-here-first mentality becomes what Wollstonecraft says to be shaky ground (85, 86, 92). On an
Wollstonecraft continuously through her work reiterates how women have been “duped by their lovers, as princes by their ministers” into believing that she is secondary by the will of God (90). Her ignorance is the absolute tragedy of her life. She is simplified into being absolutely dependent on her husband because the men who created her society wanted her to be. The men who oppress “one-half of the human race”, Wollstonecraft calls for them to not continue to assume that women are born to be objects of their fanciful doting and constant ridicule (68). She reason that women have no right to be subjected to such a lack of respect and so condescended to as to be denied a basic education simply on the grounds of her gender (66, 68, 76). The invariable responsibility that men are accountable for is seen in the cycle of how women continue to remain in the sedentary positions they have been forced into. The problem originates with men, ego puffed with the belief that his superiority over women is biblical (92). Running with the belief that Eve was made from Adam, without whom she would not exist, discounting God’s creation of Adam and God’s choice to use a spare part of man who he created, and then molding Eve from it, at no expense to Adam, men’s belief with the I-was-here-first mentality becomes what Wollstonecraft says to be shaky ground (85, 86, 92). On an