A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft | James L. Cooper and Sheila McIsaac Cooper (essay date 1973)
James L. Cooper and Sheila McIsaac Cooper (essay date 1973)
SOURCE: Cooper, James L. and Sheila McIsaac Cooper. “Mary Wollstonecraft: Enlightenment Rebel.” In The Roots of American Feminist Thought, pp. 15-24. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1973.
[In the following essay, Cooper and Cooper offer a general introduction to Wollstonecraft's background and her interest in sexual equality before discussing the significance of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a foundational text for American feminist thought.]
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) shocked genteel Englishmen and Americans “with the most indecent rhapsody … ever penned by man or woman.” A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was nonetheless “so run after” that on occasion there was “no keeping it long enough to read it leisurely.”1 It attracted immediate public notice that ensured its author's fame and notoriety as a champion of women's...
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