. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative
, a history of the French Revolution
, a conduct book
, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships, received more attention than her writing.
Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.
You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track — the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.
Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.
I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment.
Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.
Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.