ABSTRACT
Mary Wollstonecraft response to Milton's Eve in the second chapter of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she draws on a popular dispute in her time over whether or not Islam denied women souls, as well as an afterlife. It also expresses her fear that Western patriarchal society will dismiss women as 'soul-less', and therefore insignificant creatures. Her comment implicitly connects education with the soul, or, to put it more precisely, the lack of an education with the state of being 'soul-less'. It is at once a remark inherently ingrained by social class, and yet framed within an ideology aimed at social freedom, particularly for women. Wollstonecraft's entire argument consequently responds to a strategic allusion in the very second paragraph of her introduction. She almost immediately associates 'Mahometanism' with the predominant Protestant British male ethic; that is, she uses Mohammedanism as a metaphor for British patriarchy at large, an oppressive system.
