Rights against tradition
Read the reply to Burke to see how Wollstonecraft sets rights grounded in reason against the authority of inheritance and custom.
An original introduction. This guide accompanies the work; it is neither the complete text nor a translation.
Situating the text
Published anonymously in November 1790 and soon reissued under her name, it was among the first replies to Burke, appearing months before Paine’s Rights of Man. Its polemical tone drew criticism, but it sets out the political framework that the later Vindication extends to women. Written as a public letter to Edmund Burke, this reply to his Reflections on the Revolution in France defends Richard Price and the principles of 1789. Wollstonecraft attacks reverence for inherited rank, property and custom, points to the suffering of the poor and of enslaved people that Burke’s eloquence passes over, and grounds rights in reason and the equal moral worth of persons.
Following the arguments
Hereditary privilege : Hereditary property and rank, rather than merit, entrench the privileges that Burke presents as the wisdom of tradition. Sentimental politics : Burke’s pity for the French queen reveals an aesthetic of rank that stays indifferent to the poor and to slaves. Natural rights : Rights derive from the rational and moral nature that God gives every person, not from ancient charters or prescription.
Continuing the reading
Read it alongside the passages of Burke that it quotes, and note where the attack on his sentimental style anticipates the critique of female education. Published anonymously in November 1790 and soon reissued under her name, it was among the first replies to Burke, appearing months before Paine’s Rights of Man. Its polemical tone drew criticism, but it sets out the political framework that the later Vindication extends to women.
Wollstonecraft’s defence of women grows out of a wider critique of hereditary privilege and of politics conducted as sentiment.
Your turn to think.
- What does Wollstonecraft find wrong with Burke’s appeal to the wisdom of our ancestors?
- Whose suffering does she say Burke’s eloquence leaves out of view?
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