ABSTRACT
Mary Wollstonecraft holds that the truly moral work is one that not only comes from genuine feelings, but is simply and honestly expressed. While Wollstonecraft is best known primarily for her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and then, perhaps, secondarily for her Vindication of the Rights of Men, she also wrote fiction both for children and for adults, travel letters, reviews, and advice on the education of daughters. Wollstonecraft had come to see how the “failures” in behavior to which female conduct books are addressed are a product of the social system in which these women live. More sophisticated criticism of Wollstonecraft’s writing style has focused on how the second Vindication is an attempt to utilize the authority of male discourse to legitimate her arguments for the rights of women and on the tensions and the possibilities that this creates.
