A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects

Wollstonecraft begins by describing the attributes she believes fundamentally differentiate man from “brutes” (11), or animals: “reason, virtue and knowledge” (11). However, Wollstonecraft says that men have only used these attributes to “justify prejudices” (11), rather than to improve themselves—which was what God intended—employing them only to deprive other men of rights and equality: “to urge prescription as an argument to justify the depriving men (or women) of their natural rights, is one of the absurd sophisms which daily insult common sense” (12).

Rousseau, writing around the same time as Wollstonecraft, also lamented the depravity of his fellow man but advocated for a return to nature—an argument Wollstonecraft disagrees with. She says, instead, that the purpose of man is to rise above his brutish nature, precisely because man’s veneration for God is a higher and more moral emotion, and one that beasts and animals are unable to share: “Why should [God] lead us from love of ourselves to the sublime emotions which the discovery of his wisdom and goodness excites, if these feelings were not set in motion to improve our nature” (14).

Rejecting Rousseau’s solution of a return to nature, Wollstonecraft turns to what she believes to be the reason behind man’s degradation: the existence of hierarchies, such as the monarchy, which degrade humans by forcing them to flatter others and to subordinate themselves, instead of seeking self-improvement: “Surely it is madness to make the fate of thousands depend on the caprice of a weak fellow creature, whose very station sinks him necessarily below the meanest of his subjects!” (15).