Mary Wollstonecraft on Women’s Education
Found in: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft appended a letter to Tallyrand to the beginning of her A Vindication of the Rights of Women that outlines the fundamentals of the arguments that follow in the text. In it, she provides clear reasons for her focus on the importance of women’s education.
Women’s Rights
Contending for the rights of women, my main argument is built upon this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on general practice. And how can women be expected to co-operate unless she knows why she ought to be virtuous? unless freedom strengthens her reason till she comprehends her duty, and see in what manner is connected with her real good. If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation of woman at present shuts her out from such investigations.
–Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women