Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

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Mary Wollstonecraft’s

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

(1792) is considered the ur-document of modern liberal feminism. Adapting the language of the rights of man that Wollstonecraft first tested in

A Vindication of the Rights of Men

(1790), her second

Vindication

applied the revolutionary rhetoric of universal rights to women. As a result Wollstonecraft’s essay has been considered alongside other eighteenth-century texts, such as Olympe de Gouges’

Declaration of the Rights of Woman

(1791) and Abbe Raynal’s

History of the Indies

(1770) as early attempts to transform the eighteenth-century discourse of the rights of man into what we now recognize as a more inclusive human rights discourse.

Both of Wollstonecraft’s Vindications were written in response to Edmund Burke’s

2650 words

Citation: DeLucia, JoEllen. "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 December 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6886, accessed 19 March 2024.]

6886 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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