Wollstonecraft, Mary: Title Commentary

views updated

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: TITLE COMMENTARY

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

CORA KAPLAN (ESSAY DATE 1985)

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

[Image not available for copyright reasons]

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WOLLSTONECRAFT'S HUSBAND WILLIAM GODWIN ON HER VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN, FROM 1798

Never did any author enter into a cause, with a more ardent desire to be found, not a flourishing and empty declaimer, but an effectual champion. She considered herself as standing forth in defence of one half of the human species, labouring under a yoke which, through all the records of time, had degraded them from the station of rational beings, and almost sunk them to the level of the brutes. She saw indeed, that they were often attempted to be held in silken fetters, and bribed into the love of slavery; but the disguise and the treachery served only the more fully to confirm her opposition. She regarded her sex, in the language of Calista, as

"In every state of life the slaves of man:"

the rich as alternately under the despotism of a father, a brother, and a husband; and the middling and the poorer classes shut out from the acquisition of bread with independence, when they are not shut out from the very means of an industrious subsistence. Such were the views she entertained of the subject; and such were the feelings with which she warmed her mind.

Godwin, William. Excerpt from Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft, 1927. Reprint, edited by W. Clark Durant, pp. 53-4. New York: Haskell House, 1969.

[This text has been suppressed due to author restrictions]