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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions) Paperback – February 19, 2009

by Mary Wollstonecraft (Author), Deidre Shauna Lynch (Editor)

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Arguably the most original book of the eighteenth century, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a pioneering feminist work.

Written during a time of great political turmoil, social anxiety, and against the backdrop of the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft’s argument continues to challenge and inspire. This revised and expanded Third Edition is again based on the 1792 second-edition text and is accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations.

“Backgrounds and Contexts” is also significantly expanded and contains twenty-four works organized thematically into these groupings: “Legacies of English Radicalism,” “Education,” “Wollstonecraft’s Revolutionary Moment,” and “The Wollstonecraft Debate.” Opinions on a variety of reforms that may be compared and contrasted with Wollstonecraft’s include those by John Milton, John Locke, Mary Astell, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hannah More, Richard Price, Edmund Burke, Maria Edgeworth, and William Godwin, among others.

“Criticism” includes six seminal essays on A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Elissa S. Guralnick, Mitzi Myers, Cora Kaplan, Mary Poovey, Claudia L. Johnson, and Barbara Taylor.

A Chronology of Wollstonecraft’s life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

February 19, 2009
Dimensions

5.1 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0393929744
ISBN-13

978-0393929744
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) first achieved fame for her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she extended the radical idea of the "rights of man" to women and laid the groundwork for modern feminism.

Deidre Shauna Lynch (Ph.D. Stanford), The Romantic Period, is Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature and Professor of English at Harvard University. Her books include Loving Literature: A Cultural History, the prize-winning The Economy of Character, and (as co-editor) Janeites: Austen’s Disciples and Devotees and Cultural Institutions of the Novel. She has edited Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Persuasion and the Norton Critical Edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Humanities Center and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and has won multiple teaching awards.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Third edition (February 19, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393929744
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393929744
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.1 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #189,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #335 in Feminist Theory (Books)

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Donald G. Marshall

Helpful edition of a great feminist classic

Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2023

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Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) followed up her defense of the French Revolution against Edmund Burke in her "Vindication of the Rights of Men" (1791) with a second book, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792). It is an extraordinariliy penetrating analysis of the suppression of women in many ways: the withholding of education and concentration on acquiring "accomplishments" that will please men; the blocking of any path to a means of earning their own living instead of having to depend on a husband; the closure of professions, business, politics, and any serious civic career; the corruption of imposing a focus on fashion and even hiring wet-nurses instead of nursing their own children; and most subtly, praising women for beauty, obedience, compliance, instead of for reason and virtue (a demeaning sort of praise). The result of men's domination of women is that women become "cunning" as a way of gaining control even though forced into the role of slaves. Wollstonecraft's account of the endless ways men exert and abuse power over women is penetrating and thorough. It's depressing to realize that almost all of what she says is still relevant! Her style is somewhat clogged--circulocutious, confusingly metaphoric, and often wordier than need be. But the content is so compelling that it repays patient persistence, and virtually every page opens a reader's eyes to some abuse to which he (or perhaps even she) was previously oblivious. A general reader might prefer an edition that simply reprints the text, but as always the Norton Critical Edition gives a reliable text and provides excellent notes, selections from contemporaries that show backgrounds and contexts, a selection of critical commentaries, and a chronology and bibliography. Even if a reader only dips into these materials, I think they make the volume worth the modest price. Most highly recommended!

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L. Emory

Valuable Reading

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2020

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Good quality book. A classic, and a must read. Has many fascinating ideas to discuss and think over.

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philosofee

Gotta love Norton CEs

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2013

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I enjoy Norton critical editions because they give so much attention to the critical tradition and to the textual scholarship. Great book!

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Mark Thomas

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2014

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Great transaction. As described.

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Martin Asiner

Where Feminism All Began

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2010

When Charles Maurice de Talleyrand wrote that the education of women should be limited to the home, Mary Wollstonecraft was annoyed enough to respond by directly addressing him in her Preface. She begins politely with "I am confident you will not throw my work aside" and follows with her hope that he will "weigh what I have advanced respecting the rights of women." Wollstonecraft's entire plea for the rights of women is phrased as a plea for the advancement of both men and women. She writes that men cannot see themselves as advanced beings unless they treat women as equals. She notes that in France, women are seen as distinctively lower than they are in England: "In France the very essence of sensuality has been extracted to regale the voluptuary and a kind of sentimental lust has prevailed, which...has given a sinister sort of sagacity to the French character." As a result, modesty "has been more grossly insulted in France than even in England."

Wollstonecraft sees a direct link between manners and morals. When manners are permitted to be corrupted, it follows that "morality becomes an empty name." She insists that not only must men recognize modesty in women but they must also cultivate it within themselves. This inculcation, she writes, is inextricably tied to education for women: "If she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge." It is only when the good manners of men lead to a widespread restoration of chaste morals in women that the latter can achieve lasting and true virtue. Part of the problem, she writes, is that men embellish or idolize the male notion of female sexuality to the extant that men feel the need to protect women from their own lascivious nature. As far as protecting women and deciding what is in their best interests are concerned, "Who made man the exclusive judge?" Wollstonecraft writes that many tyrants of the past have used similar logic to justify brutality against a minority in that the reasoning of the tyrant surpasses that of the victim. Reason may be used as a faithful guide toward progress only when it is equitably applied to all. When reason is used as a guide rather than a hammer, then the understanding in women that reason would engender would make it likely that women would be better and fitter companions for men. When men use reason as a hammer, then men become tyrants and women victims, and as victims will refuse to remain forever as bonded prisoners in their homes. Men as tyrants will seek extramarital affairs; women may be inclined to do likewise. In this unhappy state, she laments, "What is to preserve private virtue?" When women see reason used against them, then they will have little option but to achieve by low cunning what open virtue cannot.

In the Introduction, Wollstonecraft indicates the driving reason for her writing of this book, that she has "a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore." This misery lies in her conviction that women are subject to overly fawning men who increase the belief in women that they are "rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes." She sees the primary cause as the deliberate miseducation of women, the purpose of which is to heighten their attraction to men as sexual objects and trophy wives rather than to increase their utility as rational wives. Women who gladly primp and focus on their looks do themselves and their men a disservice: "The civilized women of the present century...are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition," which she soon identifies as virtue.

Wollstonecraft lists various ways by which men induce women to see themselves only as superficial adjuncts to men. She mentions "books of instruction" which purport to outline how women ought to behave in the company of men. Such books, she notes with a touch of sarcasm, are written by "men of genius." She further notes that these instruction books are similar to the means by which Moslem men keep their women in a perpetual state as second-class citizens. Wollstonecraft sees no discrepancy between her championing the rights of women and her statement that in some ways, at least, men are the superior sex: "In the government of the physical world, it is observable that the female, in general, is inferior to the male. The male pursues, the female yields--this is the law of nature." From this, she concludes that "This physical superiority cannot be denied--and it is a noble prerogative." Men take what she terms this "law of nature" and modify it by using it as a club "to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment." Women, she laments, react by feeling a sense of being "intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts."

Wollstonecraft views such a heavy-handed, if well meaning, patriarchy as relevant mostly to the middle class, "because they appear to be in the most natural state." Many women of the upper class have long since shed "the seeds of false refinement, immorality, and vanity." Yet, there are still far greater numbers of the feminine rich and famous whom she sees as no less than "weak artificial beings raised above the common wants and affections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!" Her contempt for such upper class denizens is clear: "The education of the rich tends to render them vain and helpless." They possess no goal other than to amuse themselves, the result of which is only "to afford barren amusement."

Part of her ire is vented toward women as she notes with no small touch of sarcasm the inability or unwillingness of women to heed her advice: "My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone." Wollstonecraft urges women to look within themselves to find an inner core of dignity and virtue that she is sure is only lying dormant, waiting for the right moment to appear. What women must learn is to resist the siren call of men, namely that "the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness." Those women who fall victim to such gender ruses "will soon become objects of contempt." Men also use "pretty feminine phrases" to "soften our slavish dependence" merely to heighten women's "weak elegance of mind, exquisite sensibility, and sweet docility of manners." All of this superficial elegance, she decries, is "inferior to virtue." When men play the Renaissance gallant by placing their capes over a mud puddle for delicate ladies to avoid getting bespattered, the result is a woman who has sacrificed the primary objective of being seen and treated as an equal in favor of secondary views that relegate women to second class status.

Wollstonecraft sees a connection between gender and genre. Some modes of writing and style are typically feminine while other more robust methods are distinctively masculine. She declares that the writing style of this book will be free of the curse of patriarchy: "I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style--I aim at being useful and sincerity will render me unaffected; for wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments, than dazzle by the elegance of my language, I shall not waste my time in rounding periods, nor in fabricating the turgid bombast of artificial feelings, which coming from the head, never reach the heart.." Such writing must "avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels and from novels into familiar letters and conversation." When diction that is overly florid flows from either the mouth or the pen, the result is "pretty nothings...that render the domestic pleasures insipid."

The education that women do receive is designed to foster the "libertine notions of beauty" at the expense of "strength of body and mind." As long as women are denied a proper education, then the only way left for them to rise in the world is through the stifling institution of marriage, a process which merely continues the same dreary path of dehumanization that they have known all their lives. Wollstonecraft assumes that rational men will read her book and be sufficiently persuaded to alter their ways. Should men not heed her sage words, then women will have no choice but to use low cunning and guile to achieve what they could not by more traditional means.

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