The Vindications

Written as a passionate riposte to Talleyrand's report to the French National Assembly, in which he declared that women needed only a domestic education, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the traditional view of decorative femininity and deplored the educational restrictions and the 'mistaken notions of female excellence'; that degraded women and kept them in a state of 'slavish dependence'. Indeed, independence, 'the grand blessing of life', was at the heart of Wollstonecraft's philosophy, and it is a mark of the profound influence of her words that Virginia Woolf, writing almost a century and a half later, could state that 'her originality has become our commonplace'. As a companion piece, this volume also includes A Vindication of the Rights of Men - an earlier influential pamphlet advocating republicanism and social equality. The two Vindications, taken together, showcase Wollstonecraft's rhetorical talents, as well as her brilliance and depth of thought as an anti-establishment polemist and social reformer.