SOURCE: Vlasopolos, Anca. “Mary Wollstonecraft's Mark of Reason in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Dalhousie Review 60, no. 3 (autumn 1980): 462-71.

In the following essay, Vlasopolos claims that A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was written for “men of reason,” whom Wollstonecraft recognized as being the owners of power and able to implement the ideals she espoused.

Underneath the tough talk of the speaking voice in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman hides a number of concessions to male readers and covert strategies for the defense of Wollstonecraft's sex and person. In a century in which philosophers and artists dissociated Reason and Sensibility and in which the upholders of Reason began to win important political victories, Wollstonecraft's awareness of audience shows astuteness. Moreover, her emphasis on Reason to the virtual exclusion of passions from human faculties serves to strengthen her credentials as thinker, to separate her...