Mary Wollstonecraft — "The very constitution of civil society has been framed in the interest of men."
The very constitution of civil society has been framed in the interest of men.
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More from Mary Wollstonecraft
"I am not a philosopher, but a woman of feeling."
"I have been so much accustomed to hear of the rights of men, that I begin to ask, what are the rights of women?"
"The woman who has not been taught to respect herself, will not respect others."
"I am a child of nature, who has been taught to think; and I will not resign my birthright for a mess of pottage."
"I am not a slave to any system, nor a devotee to any sect."
About Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
English writer and proto-feminist philosopher whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is the founding text of modern feminist theory. Closely associated with Thomas Paine (Rights of Man co-conspirator and revolutionary contemporary) and William Godwin (her husband and philosopher of anarchism). For an intellectual contrast, see Edmund Burke, Anglo-Irish conservative and parliamentarian — Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) was the explicit target of Wollstonecraft's first book — A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), written in the weeks after Burke's appeared. She extended the argument to women in her second Vindication two years later. Burke's tradition-and-prescription conservatism is the worldview Wollstonecraft's career was structured against.