ABSTRACT
It is popularly assumed that Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was greeted with shock, horror, and derision when it appeared early in 1792, that the forces of reaction massed against this bold attempt to assert the equality of woman and spattered the Amazon with their pens. With one important exception, every notice the Rights of Woman received when it first appeared was favorable. The reviews were split along party lines. Periodicals of radical inclination, sharing Wollstonecraft's philosophical assumptions, sympathetic towards the rights of man and events in France, distressed by Edmund Burke's lack of consistency, approved the work. While Wollstonecraft did indeed suffer "stoning by the mob," the cause was not "the reasonable and noble idea of woman's place in the family" presented in the Rights of Woman. Nor was the cause her assertion that "the sexes were equal, educational opportunities and even the franchise for women.".
