ABSTRACT
Wollstonecraft's psychology of the well-ordered soul and its Platonic associations with the well-ordered state thus stand in stark contrast with the widely accepted belief that the well-regulated and happy country is one based on subordination. Wollstonecraft's account of reason in the Vindications should, therefore, be appreciated as an affirmation of the validity of women engaging in the very practice of theology and philosophy. Reason imagined as the emanation of divinity therefore gives Wollstonecraft a theology of deiformity that, as Taylor describes, underpinned her ability to transcend a constructed image of gender that saw women pursue the ideal of coquettish dependent. For Wollstonecraft, as for Richard Price, self-determination is politicised. Wollstonecraft adopts this idea of self-determination at the individual, civil and religious levels. Wollstonecraft's rationalist rejection of tradition in her Vindication of the Rights of Men lays the foundation for the feminist arguments of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
