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

“The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, faded, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers.”

Wollstonecraft states that women, in her time and in her society, are degraded and debased, not behaving as virtuous and moral individuals. Here, she uses the metaphor of a flower which, being placed in soil which is too fertile, only blooms once, fiercely and very briefly, before dying. The flower metaphor describes how women are taught only to be beautiful and pleasing, attributes that quickly fade and which cannot be preserved over the course of a lifetime. This serves as the foundation of her argument—she wants to improve the standing of women, within secular society and as Christians. She argues that women are only debased because of the “false system of education” or, rather, the lack of proper education women receive. As a result, her treatise serves to argue for equal education, so that women might not just bloom once and instead continually grow and develop over the course of their lives.

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists—I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”

Here, Wollstonecraft critiques the way in which women are typically treated by men—as though they are ignorant children and not “rational creatures.” She addresses women directly, imploring them to try to acquire “strength” instead of the soft, frail attributes typically ascribed to women. She argues against the feminine