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

The tyranny of power, and its ability to subordinate and degrade specific groups of people, is a common theme throughout many works of literature, and even today remains at the intersection of a range of social and political movements. Wollstonecraft identifies a number of different hierarchies within her society, all of which wield a form of tyrannical rule, degrading both the tyrants and those forced to do their bidding at the cost of their own virtue and morality. Firstly, Wollstonecraft sees the monarch as a kind of tyrannical rule; then there is the tyranny of wealth that enables a few to be idle for most of their life while everyone else must work; finally, there is the tyranny of men over women. For Wollstonecraft, tyranny can be defined by its dependence on “obedience, unconditional obedience” (159), which she sees as “the catch-word of tyrants” (159).

Most men expect women—their wives, sisters, and daughters—to obey them unquestioningly. Wollstonecraft suggests that men are able to derive such tyrannical power from the perceived sexual differences that imply that women, being weak and without reason, must require the guidance of a man: “this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize” (10). More so, this power is allowed to perpetuate simply because—much like the tyranny of kings—it has never been questioned, and so a “woman ought to be subjected because she has always been so” (47).

According to Wollstonecraft, hierarchies exist in every stratum of society: within the church, within a home, within a school, even within a group of women. Wherever hierarchies exist, they have the capacity to bring with them a tyrannical wielding of power. She sees that women, even as they are subject to the rules of men, also tyrannize each other. Unlike men—who with work and a profession might rise up through society—women must rely upon marriage alone to secure them a higher place in the hierarchy. As a result, women are set into competition against one another because “they are all running the same race” (199), a race they can only win by becoming more pleasing or better dressed than other women. Wollstonecraft offers an alternative to this; she suggests that if women were educated as equals to men, there would no longer be a hierarchy of men over women, as women might enter the same professions as men and could rely upon themselves instead of upon their husbands. Being independent would also mean that men no longer have power and authority over women, thus reducing the tyranny infecting society.

This text relies heavily upon Christianity and the importance of leading a moral and Christian life. During Wollstonecraft’s era, Christianity and religiosity played a central role in the individual’s life, and social reputation and respectability rested upon practicing chastity, morality, and virtue. Wollstonecraft’s argument for educating women—as is the case for much of her rhetoric—is centered upon rendering women, and thus society, more virtuous and moral, an argument that would have held a lot of sway in her time.

Principally, Wollstonecraft criticizes the virtues and morality women practice as being no more that “false refinement, immorality, and vanity” (8). She says that women are taught to practice coyness, weakness, and manners in society. These attributes are primarily ones that contribute to the appearance of modesty and virtue, rather than the behaviors of a truly moral and virtuous woman. Instead, Wollstonecraft suggests that it is “from the exercise of reason, [that] knowledge and virtue naturally flow” (11), and that “purity of mind” (129)—true chastity—is “something nobler than innocence, it is the delicacy of reflections, and not the coyness of ignorance” (129).

She attacks society for being concerned only with the “reputation” of women, meaning chastity, rather than moral and virtuous behavior in other aspects of life. This “reputation” is then mistaken for the morals and virtues of a person. Wollstonecraft says that “it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason” (21), and as women do not have the exercise of their own reason—being subordinate to men and denied a proper education—they cannot possibly practice truly virtuous behavior until they are treated and expected to be man’s equal.