•felt
that denying education to women would deprive them
of the tools they needed to properly exercise their
reason.
•Women’s rights movement
•Many regard
her writings as the beginning of the modern
women’s rights movement.
Title page of
Wollstonecraft’s Thoughts
on the Education of Daughters
Wollstonecraft
believed women were kept in ignorance “under the specious name of innocence.”
She refers here to a common argument of the time which held that women should
not be educated because it would ruin their natural “innocence” and have a
detrimental effect on their character. She felt that denying education to
women would deprive them of the tools they needed to properly exercise their
reason.
In the
first chapter of her book, Wollstonecraft proclaimed, “It is time to effect a
revolution in female manners—time to restore to them their lost dignity—and
make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to
reform the world.” Many regard A Vindication of the Rights of Women as
marking the beginning of the modern women’s rights movement.