Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” (1792) is heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” (1784). She begins her manifesto by asking how a man is different from a savage and then proceeds to say that the answer is obvious – in reason.
Wollstonecraft builds on Kant’s argument that laziness and cowardice are the reasons why individuals rely on guidance from others, rather than their own reason, by stating that a mind must be strong to form its own principles, however intellectual cowardice prevails and men avoid that task. As a result, men fall back on plausible prejudices already absorbed by society instead of using their own reason to conjure up their own conclusions.
Thus, the prejudice of women being the weak and sensitive sex prevails. Both men and women, live their lives believing that women are weak minded and irrational. At an early age society teaches that a woman’s mind is weaker than a man’s mind, justifying it with the fact that a woman’s body is weaker than that of a man’s. This conclusion seems fully plausible, however if investigated further, one will find that that is not the case. A woman’s mind is as fully capable of reason as a man’s mind.
However, individuals refuse to do this further investigation of the “facts” that are taught to them. They refuse to use reason to form their own conclusions and opinions simply because it is easier to rely on what others are preaching. Also, individuals are scared to propose novel ideas because they might be shun from society altogether. However, Mary Wollstonecraft calls to everyone, if not men, then at least women, to stop these prejudices and urges them to use their own reason.
