A Vindication Of The Rights Of Men and A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman

By: Mary Wollstonecraft

Narrated by: Jessica Martin

Mary Wollstonecraft, often described as the first major feminist, is remembered principally as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and there has been a tendency to view her most famous work in isolation. Yet Wollstonecraft's pronouncements about women grew out of her reflections about men, and her views on the female sex constituted an integral part of a wider moral and political critique of her times which she first fully formulated in A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790).

Written as a reply to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), this is an important text in its own right as well as a necessary tool for understanding Wollstonecraft's later work. This edition brings the two texts together and also includes Hints, the notes which Wollstonecraft made towards a second, never completed, volume of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

©2013 Mary Wollstonecraft (P)2013 Audible Ltd

Critic reviews

"… a thoughtful, wide-ranging and important examination of Wollstonecraft's thought … Wollstonecraft is skilfully considered in terms of radical Enlightenment thought, and the links between this and feminism are probed in a treatment that is alive to the diversity of this radicalism." (Times Higher Education Supplement)

Great Performances

Jessica Martin reads both "Vindications" with much energy and clarity of voice, breathing fire into Wollstonecraft's excellent rhetoric, reason, and feeling.

True equally

The arguments Mary puts forth in her writing gives insight into the time and perspective of men and women. Can serve as a cornerstone of understanding. Must listen

“I declare against all power built on prejudices."

These are wide-ranging works in which Wollstonecraft explores basic principles, far-reaching proposals and some concerns that were very immediate to her day. Presenting these works together gives an understanding of the breadth of Wollstonecraft’s philosophy.

She starts from a religious perspective. It is not a traditional, hierarchical perspective, however, but one based on an individual’s personal responsibility for the state of his or her soul. For each person to bear that responsibility, Wollstonecraft posits that God must have given each person the ability necessary to meet the challenge. Therefore, for the sake of his or her soul, each person must have the opportunity to develop such ability. Wollstonecraft focuses on the development of virtue and morals, as opposed to obedience and manners.

From such an egalitarian religious outlook, Wollstonecraft naturally proceeds to an egalitarian ideal of society. She criticizes all arbitrary distinctions that divide society—whether they be of wealth, title, class, sex or race—or that limit people’s opportunities. In her view, nobody was born to serve another. She sees discrimination against women as being similar to both slavery and the English class system that valued the property of the rich more than the lives of the poor.

She insists that each individual is entitled to respect, and that respect and esteem are the bases of the most meaningful relationships. Therefore, the institutionalization of disrespect, however instituted, is anathema to her.

Wollstonecraft acknowledges that men are generally stronger physically than are women, but denies that such advantage gives men any intellectual or moral superiority. She argues that men have used their physical strength to restrain women socially and intellectually, and she inveighs against all the rationalizations and excuses men have created to justify such abuse. As the title quote shows, she objects to all such abuses of power.

She spends much energy attacking those excuses, focusing especially on the harm that restraints cause to women, to their relationships with their husbands and children and to society in general. In these specific arguments, she is focusing mostly on upper class women, those who can afford idleness. She inveighs against the same restrictions and harms that Jane Austen satirized. Through Wollstonecraft’s arguments, however, one gets a much harsher view of the problems women faced than one gets from Austen’s lighter tough.

Wollstonecraft makes many far-reaching suggestions that still resonate today, including education for women; coeducation; paid, public education and a balance of school and home lives. She advocates for women in the professions, including medicine and politics.

These are groundbreaking works, rooted deeply in their times.

Brilliant Critique of Gender Roles

Wollstonecraft confronts social hypocrisy, gendered oppression and educational discrimination logically and articulately. There is a good reason she is considered one of the primary founders of feminist philosophy. Additionally, the voice recording was good quality.