ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the development and changes in Mary Wollstonecraft commentary that parallel the increasing inclusion and interest in her works other than the second Vindication, as well as the complexity and intertwining of the themes in Wollstonecraft's work. Some works prior to the two Vindications do contain themes that are relevant to the discussion of Wollstonecraft's philosophical style and the relation of style to content. The first expectation of Wollstonecraft's work is that she is arguing for the authority of reason over passion, the second is that she is adopting a particular mode of writing: "masculine" rational discourse. Wollstonecraft herself writes "sensibly" in order to persuade the reader of the importance of sensibility. In so doing she intentionally smudges the boundaries between creative or imaginative writing, and reasoned or philosophical writing; and specifically she explicitly smudges the boundaries between poetry and philosophy.
