Anna Letitia Barbauld The Rights Of Woman

“The Rights of Woman” by Anna Letitia Barbauld was written in 1825 and according to the text, a “a response—seemingly favorable until the last two stanzas—to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication in of the Rights of Woman” (48). Barbauld herself received an interesting education, not only from her father, but through “exposure to an educational system that the Dissenters had designed with their sons in mind” (39). Barbauld’s poem, specifically the start of it, is an empowering take on a serious issue of the time. Despite the odd direction it takes as it ends, it still provides a certain call to arms for women. Her poem certainly brings forth confusion over what Barbauld was feeling, considering how the poem begins with an affirmative “yes” and

I thought it was empowering, even starting with a simple “yes.” It’s as if Barbauld is answer some question, possibly one over if women are being treated poorly. It was definitely an attention getter from the start, which was one of the reasons why I chose this poem for the module. It’s as if the “injured Woman” is already beginning to arise; she knows that there is a problem and she’s asking women to stand up and “assert they right!” They are equal to men and therefore should stand up for themselves as such. Women have come against such strife, that Barbauld thinks it’s time to rule because they’ve been “too long degraded, scorned, opprest.” You can see that women have obviously been treated unfairly, especially by the adjectives that Barbauld uses: “degraded, scorned, opprest.” Even though something like this wasn’t new information for me when I began to read this poem, it was still interesting to see it put into such words. I thought it was interesting that Barbauld used “Woman” in the first line, instead of the plural form, women. It felt like she was simultaneously calling for a woman in general, possibly the reader, or Woman as a hole. Despite the singularity of it, it still felt like this was meant for every woman. Women have rights, ones that have been taken away due to the “Law” and it’s time for the injured women to stand up and get them back. I thought the phrase she uses, “Resume they native empire o’er the

What I found surprisingly for this poem was the use of war-like symbols in it. I felt like the beginning of it, with the “Yes,” was a call for arms. A call for women to start standing up and fighting for their rights. Then