A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
By Mary Wollstonecraft

wollstonecraft_ Born in London on April 27, 1759, Mary Wollstonecraft is considered one of the principal figures in modern feminism. Her works reflected her unmarried middle class experience, emphasizing gender injustice, the failure of the education system for young women, and the position of women in unhappy marriages. Her best known work, Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), argues that to attain virtue, women need access to systemic education. See this biographical essay on Wollstonecraft by Janet Todd. The portrait of Wollstonecraft included here, painted by John Opie (1797), is housed in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

mahometanism_ Source: 1848 lithograph by James Rattray showing an Afgan women under purdahA term used by Westerners to refer to Muslims, in this context Mahometanism is associated with the limited opportunities and oppressed status of women in the eighteenth century. As discussed in The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-Century England (2004) by E. Clery, women were trained to obey their father and husband. This confinement and domesticization was frequently described as "Mahometan" due to the misguided belief among the English that Islam sees women as not possessing souls. Social reformer and leader of the Blue Stockings Society, Elizabeth Montagu lamented in a letter about the effects of such "Mahometan" belief, which is used to justify women's domestic confinement (Clery 136). The image included here, an 1848 lithograph by James Rattray, shows Afgan women under purdah. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

education_ Mary Wollstonecraft noted the absence of proficient education for young women in the eighteenth century and decided to establish a school. Wollstonecraft, along with her sister Eliza, and friend Fanny Blood, opened the school in 1784. The school was established in Newington Green just outside of London. Although the school closed from financial distress in 1785, Wollstonecraft drew from her experience as a teacher and wrote Thoughts on the Education of Daughters with Reflections on Female Conduct in the more important Duties of Life (1787). The above picture shows a plaque dedicated to Mary Wollstonecraft at the Newington Green Primary School near where the school was located in the 18th century. For more information on the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, read this biographical essay written by Sylvana Tomaselli. To look through a copy of Wollstonecraft's Thoughts on the Education of Daughters with Reflections on Female Conduct in the more important Duties of Life click here for an online version of the book from the London School of Economics’ digital library.

trifling_employments_ By "trifling employments," Wollstonecraft refers to the kinds of things elegant women did to employ their time such as needlepoint. Not allowed to participate in the masculine public sphere, women instead spent their time in domestic labor and activities. Many were mothers and homemakers. These activities were not masculine and serious but feminine and trifling. Read more on women’s work in the eighteenth century in this article by Susan E. Jones, also the source of this annotation. The portrait above, via the Frick Collection, is a conversation piece by Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) showing the genteel young ladies Waldegrave engaged in such domestic work.

history_ This is likely a reference to discussions about the hierarchy of genres during the eighteenth century. Dorothee Birke, author of Writing the Reader: Configurations of Cultural Practice in English Novel (2016), explains that historical and philosophical works were seen to have higher value than novels and poetry. The reason behind such a hierarchical placement is the perception of fictional reading to be connected with ignorance as people are fed unrealistic words. Thus, historical and philosophical works which were often based on truth and it reality, were insightful readings that were ranked higher than unrealistic or exaggerated works (Birke 63).

sandford_merton_ Likely a reference to a popular children’s book written in the eighteenth century, Sandford and Merton (1783), by Thomas Day, is about two boys who grow up differently based on social status. According to Stephen Bending and Stephen Bygrave, the book is an indictment of upper class "effete" masculinity (23). Tommy Merton is spoiled by middle class privileges and needs to be re-educated to become as fine a man as Sandford, whose lower-class status challenged him to develop, physically and mentally, into an admirable young man (3-4). Interested viewers can also read an abridged version of Day’s children’s book, published in 1792, at the Internet Archive.

novelists_Wollstonecraft's question refers to an ongoing discussion about the work of novel-reading on young girls' intellectual growth. It was thought dangerous for women to read novels because society feared that they would not, as Anna North writes in "When Novels Were Bad for You," be able to "differentiate between fiction and life."

bubbled_ According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the eighteenth-century the word "bubbled" meant befooled, cheated, or deceived. Here, Wollstonecraft is saying women’s understandings have been fooled by the popularization and distribution of conduct books and their false depiction of women. "Bubbled" in this usage is also derived from the devastating financial bubble in the eighteenth century, including the South Sea Bubble of 1720. Many engravings and satirical prints of the time depict how the people were deceived and cheated financially, most notably, The Bubbler’s Medley, or a Sketch of the Times being Europe’s Memoriam for 1720. The image included here is from the British Museum's online collection. To read more, visit Harvard Business School’s online exhibit on the South Sea Bubble, and the source of this annotation.

conduct_ Source: The Title page of Gregory's conduct book This is most likely a reference to Dr. John Gregory’s A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters, a conduct book written prior to Dr. Gregory’s wife’s passing in 1761 and addressed to his daughters about etiquette, religion, conduct, and behaviors. Wollstonecraft references this book directly in many of her arguments. The image of the book's title page (1795) is from the University of Delaware Special Collections Department is from the National Library of Scotland. View a 1793 edition of A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters at the Internet Archive.

johnson_ Throughout the eighteenth century, St. Paul’s Church Yard was the center of the publishing trade. Wollstonecraft's Vindications was published by Joseph Johnson, a liberal publisher with radical views, who published work by William Godwin, Joseph Priestly, and William Blake. Wollstonecraft lived near St. Paul’s Church Yard and spent many hours in this workshop as Joseph Johnson gave her writing and translating jobs throughout the day. For more on the relationship between Mary Wollstonecraft and Joseph Johnson, see this letter from Wollstonecraft to her publisher reprinted in The American Reader. The image here, from a University of Louisville news article on William Shakespeare's first folio, shows the locations of printers around St. Paul's during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

elegance_ Elegance in the 18th century has a specific meaning when applied to women. According to Robert W. Jones, author of Gender and the Formation of Taste in Eighteenth-Century Britain, feminine elegance is the combination of docility and enticement of men. In the eighteenth century, elegance is feminized with the goal that women should use it to please and seduce men through beauty and refinement. Elegance of the eighteenth century is the area of the pleasing and amiable actions from women to men, these beauty standards were important and a source of intrigue for the culture (Jones 109). The image here, drawn from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, shows An Elegant Lady Playing a Cittern (1770), by Nathaniel Dance-Holland.

virtue_ Mary Wollstonecraft uses "virtue" with its eighteenth-century sense of power. Men were often seen as virtuous because of their physical strength, whereas women acquired virtue through sensibility and virginity. Wollstonecraft argues that true virtue can only exist with knowledge and education. Therefore, women must be properly educated or they would only be mimicking true virtue. Views of Women in Eighteenth Century Literature," published in the International Journal of Communication Research by Adrian Brunello and Florina-Elena Borsan reviews the way that understandings of womanhood shifted in the period, resulting in the need for an exterior display of virtue, rather than true virtue (325-326). clicking here will direct you to the UK National Gallery of Art, showing An Allegory of Virtue and Riches, painted in 1667 by Godfried Schalcken.

schools_ The most common schools available for lower working class families in eighteenth-century were dame schools. An elderly, barely literate, woman would teach reading and sewing for a small fee. Read more in English Heritage’s brochure on England’s School. The image of children learning in a dame school, painted by Thomas Webster (1845), is housed in the Tate Art Museum, London.

sentimental_ The sentimental novel is a genre which rose into popularity in the eighteenth century. This genre is characterized by excessively passionate characters, tearful scenes and dramatic, flowery dialogue. Mary Wollstonecraft may be using the popularity of these novels among young women to explain their apparent lack of rationality rather than claiming irrationality to be a naturally female trait. Read more about the sentimental novel in Encyclopedia Britannica.

novels_As novels became more accessible they became more popular. Some believed that excessive exposure to fiction novels would cause readers to lose touch with reality and identify with characters to the point of mimicking dangerous or immoral behavior. Read more about a popular novel that was blamed for youthful suicides in this article by Frank Furedi from History Today.

ranks_ The different ranks of society in England during the eighteenth century were not simply divided between the rich or poor. According to the eighteenth-century writer Daniel Defoe, there were seven categories: the great, the rich, the middle sort, the working trades, the country people, the poor, and the miserable. The country still relied on agriculture and, although some still died of hunger, there was usually enough food to go around. Trade was increasing and more men and women acquired jobs in industry. However, wealth was unequally distributed, with only 5% of the national income belonging to the general population. Read more in this Encyclopedia Britannica entry for eighteenth-century Britain, and the source of this annotation.

seraglio_ Wollstonecraft’s argument in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is that women spend most of their lives acquiring knowledge to be perfect wives instead of strengthening their minds and bodies to place a man. Because the only way women can rise the world is through marriage, they are being groomed to become lovers much like women in a Turkish seraglio, as Susan Gubar notes in "Feminist Misogyny" (Gubar 151). Wollstonecraft is pointing out the lack of freedom for women. The image included here illustrates the women’s quarter of a seraglio painted in 1873 by John Frederick Lewis. This image is from Wikimedia Commons.

dress_ In the eighteenth century, women were encouraged to focus on their dress, meaning their overall attire, because as Dr. Gregory argues in A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters, it was supposedly natural to them (55). Women were dressed in hope of catching the attention of a man; they would parade, or flaunt themselves to men, hoping to find a husband, which is the only way for a woman to "rise in the world," as Wollstonecraft notes above (9). Wollstonecraft didn’t want women to dress and flaunt themselves only for men’s attention; she wanted women to focus on their own education. This portrait of Madame Pompadour, located in the Alte Pinkothek Museum in Munich and via Wikimedia Commons, provides an example of women’s attire in the 1700s in which Wollstonecraft was advising them not to do. Learn more about eighteenth-century fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

governess_ According to Katheryn Hughes, the governess was one of the most familiar figures in the Romantic period and throughout the Victorian period. Governesses were women who earned their living by teaching and caring for other women’s children. Most governesses lived with their employers and were paid a small salary on top of their board and lodging. The governess was seen as an outsider, not quite fitting in with the family she governed for but not exactly fitting in as a servant either.

manly_ "Manly virtues" in the eighteenth century refers to social behavior that encourages men to be kind, loving, and courageous both in the home and in the public domain. Since masculinity is, as Intertextual War: Edmund Burke and the French Revolution in the Writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, and James Mackintosh by Steven Blakemore, states, a "restrictive misnomer for qualities or virtues that are human," Mary Wollstonecraft opposes men that inveigh against masculine women because of its imitation of manly virtues (Blakemore 42). The portrait here, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough (1748), is housed in the National Gallery London. This painting, via Wikimedia Commons, illustrates manliness in terms of gentility.

phosphorus_ Used by alchemists throughout the seventeenth century, phosphorous was officially designated the thirteenth element by Antoine Lavosier in 1777. Quack physicians incorporated the eerily-glowing phosphorous into their "cure all" medicines. Here, Wollstonecraft may be referring to a long-standing association between the element and its use in false medicines as well as its generation of artificial light. The image included here, The Alchymist, In Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorus (1770) is by Joseph Wright of Derby, via Wikimedia Commons. Read more about the discovery of phosphorus on the personal blog Res Obscura.