Happy birthday to Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

 

Happy birthday to Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), English writer and passionate advocate of educational and social equality for women. She outlined her beliefs in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), considered a classic of feminism.

"I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves."

"My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone."

"The beginning is always today."

"[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex."

"Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."

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Image: Penguin Classics