Mary Wollstonecraft\'s 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Women is an incendiary attack on the place of women in 18th-century society.
So radical was her message that it would take until the 20th century for her views to become truly accepted..
If they were not men\'s equals, it was the fault of a society that refused to treat them as such.
Wollstonecraft, in contrast, argued that women\'s apparent triviality was a direct consequence of society failing to educate them.
They not only did not need a rational education - it was assumed that they could not benefit from one.
They were widely considered to be men\'s inferiors, incapable of rational thought.
During the seventeenth century and earlier, it was an entirely standard point of view to consider women as, largely speaking, uneducable.
Mary Wollstonecraft\'s 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Women is an incendiary attack on the place of women in 18th-century society
