A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Main ideas

• Women’s subordination traced to education and dependency, not nature.
• Virtue defended as a human capacity rather than a gendered ornament.
• Marriage, manners and citizenship criticised as linked institutions.

Important themes

Reading context

Published in 1792 in the wake of the French Revolution, arguing that women appear frivolous because they are educated into frivolity, and that a republic cannot rest on the subjection of half its members.

How to approach it

The introduction and chapters 2 and 4 carry the argument. Her target is Rousseau's account of women's education, so knowing that makes the polemic land.