A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is not a fictional text, and so doesn’t have a cast of characters in any traditional sense. However, Wollstonecraft’s work is written in response to a number of other prominent writers and thinkers from her era. She cites these writers throughout the text in order to argue against their viewpoints, often seeking to show the hypocrisy or immorality of their beliefs. Wollstonecraft herself features prominently in this work, both as the narrative voice and the source of the beliefs and arguments that frame the work.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a personal, emphatic, and often highly-opinionated work. Wollstonecraft employs emotive language throughout, for example using terms like “slavishly” (202) and “disgusting” (202) to describe the behavior of children when pandered to by their mothers, or using exaggerated turns of phrase: “Oh! Virtue, thou art not an empty name! All that life can give—thou givest!” (126). She also directly addresses both the reader and “my sisters” (138)—women—at key moments in the text, calling explicitly for individuals to make the changes she demands.

Furthermore, she writes the majority of this text from the first-person—“I”—which illustrates very clearly that this is a

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