Of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman?

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ollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a groundbreaking text for white, middle-class women only. Discuss.

This text by Wollstonecraft, responds to the educational theorist and politicians of the 18th century, who believed that education should not be destined for women. She strongly believes that women deserve education because of their important role in society. Her book was a response to the report that was issued by Talleyrand at the national assembly in France. This report stated that women should only be awarded an education with household’s characteristics. Wollstonecraft responded by asserting that men and women are born with the same abilities to reason, therefore they should enjoy just as much education, power, …show more content…

She wanted to improve all of education, so she argued for the innovation of national public school system that boys and girls would access equally, free from charge. The schools would be paid for by public taxes. Mary Wollstonecraft also believed that children until the age of nine be educated together, which was even more radical than anything proposed before. The idea of co-educational schooling was simply viewed as nonsense by many educational thinkers of the time. However, she argues that women will never totally free unless they learn not to be dependent on men; therefore they should attend school together. Women will learn to regard marriage as holy when brought up alongside men and grow to be their companion and not mistress. Both sexes would acquire modesty “without those sexual distinctions that taint the mind.” She states that if society is ever going to advance and become a rational democracy it needs to educate the masses. This kind of ideology would have been very innovative and groundbreaking for educational theorist, especially men who would not have thought of assembly boys and girls in the same educational system.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman covers a range of ideas relating to the condition of women. From this analysis, we can extrapolate, that Wollstonecraft’s text was an important and innovative mindset that was unusual to many men and women of that period. The beginning of the feminist ideology, the belief in a co-educational system sprung from Wollstonecraft’s

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