ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the depiction of masculinity in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men (VRM). In addition to depicting Edmund Burke as unmanly, Wollstonecraft presents most men as unmanned by the current social and political structures that Burke so vigorously defended. Whole groups of men suffer from compromised manliness in Wollstonecraft’s reckoning although the reasons for, and sources of, their mitigations vary. As a consequence, manly men are hypothetical rather than tautological in VRM. A reconstruction of Wollstonecraft’s scattered remarks reveals that manliness is a cognitive, psychic, and normative concept; it is not primarily about male embodiment. Manliness provides a shorthand for the clutch of qualities Wollstonecraft admires – rationality, independence, liberty, exertion, overcoming challenges, self-control, self-respect, respect for others as equals, and the ability to live among those others on equal terms. She sees the French Revolution as paving the way for the realization of genuine and widespread manliness.
