Book Review: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

Reading this book in the 21st century, it is difficult to comprehend the discrimination women faced some three centuries ago. While we can take for granted now that girls should receive the same education as boys, and have the same opportunities, the concept of females receiving higher education was laughable. However, while the idea may have been controversial in the late 18th century, we still see the flaws of society today in terms of education.

I can see why the book is controversial when it was first released. Some of the ideas are radical and turns the standard conventions on its head — plenty of these ideas are still up for debate to this day. Some of these ideas I find absurd. For example, Wollstonecraft argues for a relationship between man and woman that is ruled by friendship rather than passion, where there is mutual respect and rationality rules above sense. From someone who’s been in the friend zone many times, I’m not entirely taken to this idea.

In the light of marriage, she goes as far to say “an unhappy marriage is often very advantageous to a family, and that the neglected wife is, in general, the best mother.” My gut feeling tells me that the neglected wife tends to be depressed mothers and thus not the best mothers, and that unhappy marriage often results in divorce. Wollstonecraft assumes that love and passion is temporary, and sooner or later dies off. She may have a point, but love and passion is not binary — rather, it is a spectrum, and families last years because their love and passion will move to and fro the spectrum.

Oftentimes, her writings goes into tangents which detracts from her main arguments. For example, when speaking of national education, she devoted a subsection on religion. Wollstonecraft uses long sentences, which sometimes make for an exhausting read, and demands the most of the reader. Despite all this, “Vindication” remains an essential read. The essence of the book in regard to the education of women is still relevant.

I am a big believer in girls receiving the same level of education that is traditionally encouraged to boys. Look at the tech industry — it is rare to see female developers, although admittedly more females are joining the tech industry (where the industry still discriminates them). “Vindication” therefore, is still a relevant text, far from being outdated. It is an important doctrine which other feminists refer to for their own discourses — women such as Woolf.

Women are trained at the time only for the sake of marriage (as my partner pointed out, the term “slavery of marriage” is apt). Women are seldom trained for rational thinking, and only measured by superficial accomplishments — speaking French, singing, playing the piano, anything but to be independent. The middle class social structures at the era are immoveable and women tend to the losers. Insensitivity and coquetry only leads to competition with other women, and to be incapable mothers, assuming that the children are sent away for private education.

Part of the blame falls on important writers of the era to entrench the ideas of how women should be treated differently — writers like Rousseau, who is often quoted in the book. A lot of the blame is simply the inheritance of culture: mothers teach their children to be beautiful, so that they will have a husband who can provide them security. Wollstonecraft tears down these self-propagating ideas which create more harm than good over the long term.

Read “Vindication” if you are a feminist, but read it especially if you are not. I find this quote to capture the essence of her intentions in writing the book:

‘Educate women like men,’ says Rousseau, ‘and the more they resemble our sex the less power they have over us.’ This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but power over themselves.