From the emotionally-fueled, pointed language used to the radical ideas presented, through-and-through, this piece is a rant. But, that which sets it apart from rants that typically fall upon dismissive ears is its intent. Wollstonecraft is not criticizing the society in which she lives because she’s enraptured in the latest movement/revolution. She is decisively illuminating human foibles, which plague her society, with the intent of changing them. The potency of her words sting not only with a frustration or contempt but also with a hope for something more.
This rant is worth the immortalization of the written form because Wollstonecraft hoped to galvanize a people to see an err in their conventions. She might have “expressed this conviction in a lower key” but she did not for fear of having the “whine of affectation.” Therein her diction and rationale lie the very import of this piece. She is fully aware of the consequence of her words and that they maybe ignored as the mere drone of Enlightenment followers. Yet, she is unphased for she knows that her words are speaking a truth that convention tries to suppress. She is trying to encourage people to do for themselves, the right thing, instead of telling them what to do, as any true leader would. The intent is to make people think; for that is the first step in any meaningful action. She focuses on the treatment of women in her society as a means to express how status quo bounds them to propriety and superficiality but her message is speaking to yet-to-be-imagined generations.
Wollenstonecraft’s piece cannot be done justice in the meager words that I offer now for her words have resonated through epochs of time. We as a people rarely go against that which is expected of us. We follow more than we lead. That is not to say there are not people who try to go against the grain. Yet, of the people who follow the revolutions and rebellions, how many have their own opinion beyond that of pre-fabricated answers to expected questions? Do they have more to say “when arguments are pursued below the surface, or opinions analyzed”? And therein, again, lies the purpose of this piece. We will always live in societies in which certain things will ring true out of the sheer rationality of them, like the idiom “if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.” Yet instead of agreeing to the truths of the statement, Wollenstonecraft would dare to ask ‘how far are you willing to fall? And more importantly, ‘is what your standing for the same thing for which you are falling?’
