Wollstonecraft"s Vindication and Revolutionary Enthusiasm - "The Progress of those Glorious Principles"

Wollstonecraft"s Vindication and Revolutionary Enthusiasm

&nbsp;&nbsp;Wollstonecraft began writing A Vindication of The Rights of Woman, questioning why women should not have the same rights as men, while criticizing the new constitution of 1791 that excluded women from the political arena and conferred citizenship only on men. She argued that the "glorious principles"(86) that inspired the French Revolution also included the rights of women. The only way for a woman to have rights was through a reasonable and equal education along with the abolishment of the dominant bourgeois gender definition of the female as the subordinate helpmate of the male.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;For Wollstonecraft, the French Revolution created a political space that allowed women to participate in a public sphere previously unavailable. In A Vindication of The Rights of Woman, she emphasized work rather than inherited wealth and social rank, plotting the middle-class cultural revolution against aristocratic values. By perceiving that the gender inequality of revolutionary France and British society threatened the development of a genuine democracy, Wollstonecraft attempted to initiate her own revolution, what she defined as "a revolution in female manners" (133).<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus, in contrast to a masculine Romantic enthusiasm that affirmed the rights and feelings of the natural man, Wollstonecraft suggested an equally revolutionary enthusiasm grounded on a belief in the rational capacity and equality of woman. Appealing to the Enlightenment rationalists of her day, she grounded her social revolution on a logical argument that the female gender must have both souls and the mental capacity to think correctly.