Mary Wollestonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792) is a foundational piece of feminist philosophy and staple in modern philosophy classrooms.
The essay itself was written in response to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord's 1791 report to the French National Assemble, which called for the restriction of education for French women to only the domestic spheres. While Wollstonecraft never argued for the true equality of sexes (her own ideals were more rooted in religious morality and the maintenance of certain gender roles), she argued fervently against the double standards that plagued the women of her time. Chief among these were the exclusion of women from higher education and the responsibility of women to remain virtuousness in marriage while men could sin as they pleased. She also argued against the rampant sensibility of the time and suggested that, to become productive members of society, women must decouple themselves from the excessive emotions they have been taught to cultivate for centuries. In the style of the text itself, Wollstonecraft's tendency to combine male and female sensibilities shines in her notably philosophical framing of the essay as a ?treatise? and her personal usage of ?I? and ?you? and expressive punctuation like dashes and exclamation marks. While undoubtedly an important piece of feminist thought, historians and philosophers stress the importance of resisting the temptation to impress modern ideals of gender, revolution, and politics onto someone whose views were very much shaped by the prevailing politics and moral beliefs of her own time.
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