Mary Wollstonecraft and Women's Rights in the Enlightenment

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, was a groundbreaking feminist work that advocated for women's education and equal rights, challenging the prevailing views of women as weak and inferior to men.

Source 1

I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792

Question 1

Short answer

Identify one Enlightenment principle that influenced the writing of this excerpt.

Question 2

Short answer

Describe one social implication of the ideas expressed in the excerpt.

Question 3

Short answer

Explain one way that Enlightenment thinkers like Wollstonecraft affected political or social change between 1750 and 1900.

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