ABSTRACT
The very words, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” which was the title of the book, are held, without examination, to claim emancipation alike from law, from custom, and from morality. In her lonely lodging near Blackfriars, Mary Wollstonecraft had been writing an original work during the scant time she could give to it from her labours of translation. “The main argument” of the work “is built on this simple principle, that if woman be prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice. In the carrying out of this argument the most noticeable fact is the extraordinary plainness of speech, and this it was which caused all or nearly all the outcry.
