ABSTRACT
In the autumn of 1788, Mary Wollstonecraft was once more thrown on the world. It was then that she formed the resolution of devoting herself to literature and becoming, as she aptly puts it, ‘the first of a new genus.’ Mary Wollstonecraft’s treatise might perhaps with more justice be called the Duties instead of Rights of Woman. The stem Scotch Reformer himself might have applauded the zeal with which Mary Wollstonecraft declaims against the faults and follies of her sex, and the fervour with which she adjures them to consider love-making as the be-all and end-all of existence, but to remember that ‘the plan of life which enables us to carry some knowledge and virtue into another world, is the one best calculated to ensure content in this.’.
