Biography

Mary Wollstonecraft was born to Edward John and Elizabeth Dickinson Wollstonecraft on April 27, 1759. Wollstonecraft left her family's home after the death of her mother and began a day school with her close friend Fanny Blood. After the failure the school and the death of Fanny, Wollstonecraft moved to London and began writing under publisher Joseph Johnson. Her works included Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, Mary: A Fiction, Original Stories from Real Life, The Female Reader, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the posthumously published Maria: or the Wrongs of Woman. Though unmarried, Wollstonecraft had a daughter, Fanny, with American Gilbert Imlay. In the same year as Fanny's birth, Imlay left Wollstonecraft and she twice attempted suicide. Three years later in 1797, Wollstonecraft met William Godwin for the second time, and the two fell in love and commenced an affair. When Wollstonecraft became pregnant, she and Godwin were married. Later Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (who would become Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and write Frankenstein) was born. However, Wollstonecraft died of complications of pregnancy eleven days later. She was 39 years old.

Role in the Conversation

A Vindication of the Rights of Men is written in letter form and addressed to "the Right Honorable Edmund Burke." Published in 1791, it directly refutes Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. A year later, in 1792, Wollstonecraft published the much longer Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which in many ways, continues in the same vein of thought as does the first Vindication. It is also important to note that, although her first Vindication was published several months after Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, Wollstonecraft would have had little opportunity to read Paine's work before the publication of her own, and therefore her own work is in no way directly responding to or borrowing from Paine's.

Summary of A Vindication of the Rights of Men

A Vindication of the Rights of Men is written in a biting, confrontational style to Edumund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France argued for the legitimacy of European monarchical systems. Throughout her letter, Wollstonecraft alternates between criticizing Burke's method of argument and criticizing his ideas. Criticizing Burke's emotionality, she draws attention to her own self-control. She notes at one point that she must "pause to recollect myself; and smother the contempt I feel rising for your rhetorical flourishes and infantine sensibility" (96).

One of her main criticisms of Burke is the idea that people should "reverence the rust of antiquity" (38), even when the ideas become out of date or are discovered to be wrong. She especially comments on the obviously biased justice system of the past, asking, "Are we to seek for the rights of men in the ages when a few marks were the only penalty imposed for the life of a man, and death for death when the property of the rich was touched? when -- I blush to discover the depravity of our nature -- when a deer was killed!" (42).

This complete belief in egalitarianism is quite important in Vindication. At many points, Wollstonecraft asserts that all are born equal, echoing the views that had earlier been espoused by Locke and both the French and American revolutionary doctrines. Instead of being born with different rights, property, etc, these distinctions should rather be earned through education, access to which should be equally available to everyone. This belief in egalitarianism does not only mean that the poor should be given the same opportunities as the wealthy, but also that kings and queens should not be elevated over the rest of society. On this subject, Wollstonecraft comments that "Inequality of rank must ever impede the growth of virtue, by vitiating the mind that submits or domineers; that is ever employed to procure nourishment for the body, or amusement for the mind" (81).