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

Wollstonecraft opens by dedicating her treatise to M. Talleyrand-Perigord. After having read his pamphlet on education in France, Wollstonecraft is attempting to change his opinion regarding female education. She states that she is not writing for herself, nor even for her sex, but for “the whole human race” (1), and claims that she is motivated primarily by the desire to uphold morality and virtue in society.

From here, Wollstonecraft begins by arguing that in France there is far less respect for virtue, manners, and morality than elsewhere. She attributes this indecency to the “social intercourse which has long subsisted between the sexes” (2) and to the lack of education for women. Wollstonecraft says that by furnishing woman with both equitable rights and education, it would not only prepare her to “become the companion of man” (3), but would also ensure that she understands why she ought to be virtuous, that she knows what her domestic and civic duties are, that she is patriotic and thus able to raise patriotic children, and can take a “civil interest” (3) in mankind. 

Wollstonecraft believes that her treatise provides conclusive evidence that to make the human body and mind “more perfect” (3), there should be greater chastity, a thing that will only be achieved when women are not simply “idolized” (3) by men, but are respected for their intelligence, rather than their beauty.