after a few months, i’m finally done with wollstonecraft’s vindication. what started as research for an assignment turned into a treatise i won’t soon forget—one that will stay with me and continue guiding my opinions far into the future.

despite being written in the late 18th century, much of wollstonecraft’s ideas still feel fresh and remain relevant to this day. her core belief—that women are not naturally inferior, and that society’s expectations of gender instil beliefs and behaviour into men and women from a young age, is a position i feel we lack in feminist spaces even today. 

it’s not without its downfalls—those being wollstonecraft’s rambling tangents about marriage, homosexuality, and masturbation, all of which she opposed. and for a book that describes the oppression of women as ‘slavery’ at least once a page, she only discusses actual slavery once, in passing. in this way, i believe her other works, ‘mary’ and ‘the wrongs of woman’ to have strengths over ‘vindication’, because those contain more of an intersectional style of feminist thought. 

overall i’ve enjoyed my journey with a vindication of the rights of woman immensely, and i can only see myself reading more philosophy from now on. i could talk about this work at length, but i’ll leave it here for now, and end with a very short quote, “the mighty business of female life is to please.”