Michael: Alright Kevin, five-word review for a book written in 1792 about women's rights. Kevin: Reason good, fainting bad, pay me. Michael: Close! And surprisingly accurate. The book we're talking about today is so foundational, so radical for its time, that its author was essentially 'cancelled' for a hundred years because of it. Kevin: A hundred years? What could possibly be so dangerous in a book that it gets you blacklisted for a century? That's a legacy. Michael: It's an incredible story. We're diving into A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by the amazing Mary Wollstonecraft. And to give you a sense of who she was, this is a woman who was largely self-taught, born into a difficult, financially unstable family, who basically willed herself into becoming one of Europe's most formidable public intellectuals. Kevin: Okay, so she was a fighter from the start. That makes sense. You’d have to be, to write a book that gets you cancelled. So what was her big, dangerous idea?

Michael: Her big idea starts with a brutal diagnosis of her society. She looked at the way women were educated and saw a system designed not to build them up, but to make them pleasing, dependent, and ultimately, weak. She called it a "barren blooming." Kevin: A 'barren blooming.' That's poetic and brutal. What does it mean? Michael: It means women were cultivated like flowers, to be beautiful and delicate for a short time, but with no real substance, no strength, no 'fruit.' They were taught accomplishments—a little French, how to play the piano, how to look pretty—but their reason, their intellect, was actively discouraged. She said they were kept in a state of "perpetual childhood." Kevin: So it's like the 18th-century version of an Instagram influencer culture—all about the performance of a perfect life, but with no real depth underneath? Michael: Exactly. And she saw this as a profound moral crisis. She tells this story of a wealthy woman she knew, a "woman of fashion," who was the perfect product of this system. This lady prided herself on her 'delicacy' and her 'puny appetite,' and spent her days lounging on a sofa. Kevin: Sounds like a rough life. Michael: Well, here's the twist. An old gentlewoman, who had fallen on hard times and who this lady owed a debt of gratitude to, became dependent on her. And this 'delicate' woman of fashion treated her with absolute cruelty, insulting her constantly. Wollstonecraft's point was that this education didn't just make women silly; it made them morally bankrupt. It created, in her words, "irrational monsters." Kevin: Wow. So the 'delicacy' was just a cover for cruelty. The system wasn't just failing women, it was making them into bad people. Michael: Precisely. But she took the argument to a place that was truly shocking for her time. To show how artificial and unjust this system was, she used a powerful, and deeply controversial, analogy. Kevin: I'm ready for it. Michael: She compared the subjugation of women to the institution of chattel slavery. She pointed to the colonial sugar trade, which was built on the brutalization of African slaves, and said that both women and slaves existed only to, in her words, "sweeten the cup of man." Kevin: Hold on. She went there? In 1792, she directly compared the lives of privileged, high-society European women to enslaved Africans? That must have caused an absolute firestorm. Michael: It was an incredibly audacious move. She wrote, and this is a direct quote: "Is one half of the human species, like the poor African slaves, to be subject to prejudices that brutalize them... only to sweeten the cup of man?" Kevin: That is a mic-drop moment in history. I can't even imagine the reaction. But what was her point with such a provocative comparison? Surely, she wasn't saying their suffering was identical. Michael: No, and that's the genius of it. Her point wasn't about comparing levels of suffering. It was about exposing the logic of oppression. She was arguing that both systems—patriarchy and slavery—were built on the same lie: that one group of people is naturally inferior and exists to serve the other. She argued that just as slaves were kept in chains, women were kept in the chains of 'propriety' and ignorance. Both were artificial, man-made systems designed to maintain power. Kevin: So she was attacking the very foundation of the social order. She was saying that the 'proper' lady and the enslaved person were both victims of the same kind of dehumanizing prejudice. Michael: Exactly. She believed women were, as she put it, "made slaves to their persons," forced to be alluring so men would guide their "tottering steps." She saw it as a gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless. And she had this absolutely devastating phrase for what this system reduced women to. She feared they were "born only to procreate and rot." Kevin: 'Procreate and rot.' That's chilling. Okay, so she paints a very bleak picture. The system is broken, it's creating monsters, and it's fundamentally unjust. What was her fix? Did she have a plan to break out of the cage?

Michael: She did. And her solution was just as radical as her diagnosis. It wasn't just 'let's send girls to school.' It was a call for a total revolution in what it meant to be an educated person. She called for a rational education. Kevin: What's the difference between a 'rational education' and just... education? Michael: For Wollstonecraft, the education of her day was about instilling obedience and superficial skills. A rational education was about cultivating the one thing she believed made us human: reason. She argued that virtue isn't gendered. There shouldn't be 'male virtues' and 'female virtues.' There are only human virtues—like wisdom, courage, and integrity—and both men and women should strive for them. Kevin: That feels so obvious now, but I guess it was revolutionary then. The idea that men and women should aim for the same moral goals. Michael: It completely dismantled the existing framework. And it led to her most famous clarification. People were afraid that if women became educated and rational, they'd want power over men. And Wollstonecraft's response was crystal clear. She wrote, "I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves." Kevin: Oh, I love that. It’s not about flipping the hierarchy, it’s about dismantling it. It's about autonomy. Self-governance. Michael: Exactly. And she didn't just leave it as a philosophical idea. She proposed a concrete, practical plan. In the book, she lays out what was then an apparently unprecedented proposal: government-sponsored, free, public, co-educational, local elementary schools. Kevin: Wait, what? She was basically proposing the modern public school system... in 1792? And co-ed, no less! People must have thought she was completely out of her mind. Michael: It was centuries ahead of its time. She specified that these schools should be for children aged five to nine, for "rich and poor" alike, and "absolutely free and open to all classes." Her vision remarkably overlaps with the UN's Millennium Development Goals and the Convention on the Rights of the Child from the late 20th century. Kevin: That's just staggering. So she's not just a philosopher, she's a policy wonk. But I have to ask, what about the men in this equation? Was she just seeing them as the villains in this story? Michael: That’s a great question, and the answer is no. This is another one of her brilliant insights. She believed that the oppression of women ultimately degraded men as well. She argued for mutual improvement. Here’s the quote: "the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of man will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet." Kevin: 'Worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet.' That is a savage and brilliant line. So, by oppressing women, men were corrupting their own virtue. Their freedom was intertwined. Michael: Precisely. She saw it as a system that damaged everyone. Freeing women wasn't just for women's sake; it was for the sake of all humanity. A society can't be truly virtuous if half of its population is kept in a state of ignorant servitude. Kevin: This all sounds so logical, so powerful, and frankly, so morally right. Which brings me back to my first question. If her arguments were this solid, why on earth would she get 'cancelled' for it? What happened?

Michael: Ah, this is where the story takes a tragic and fascinating turn. The backlash wasn't really about the book's ideas, at least not at first. It was about Mary Wollstonecraft's life. The book was actually quite successful initially. But she died tragically young, at 38, from an infection after giving birth to her second daughter. Kevin: That daughter being Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, right? Michael: The very same. And after Wollstonecraft's death, her grieving husband, the philosopher William Godwin, decided to write a tribute to her. He published a book called Memoirs of the Author of 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'. He meant it to celebrate her genius. Kevin: I feel a 'but' coming. Michael: A huge 'but.' Godwin was a radical thinker who believed in total transparency. So, in the memoir, he honestly detailed her entire life. Her love affairs, her unofficial 'republican' marriage, the fact that her first child was born outside of a formal marriage, and even her suicide attempts after a brutal heartbreak. Kevin: Oh, no. In the 1790s? He basically doxxed his own dead wife's private life to a society that was absolutely not ready for it. Michael: Exactly. The public reaction was catastrophic. The anti-revolutionary press, who already saw her ideas as dangerous, seized on it. They used her life as a 'morality tale,' a warning of the profligate, chaotic path that women's rights would lead to. Her brilliant arguments were completely overshadowed by scandal. Her reputation was destroyed. Kevin: So her ideas were thrown out not because they were wrong, but because she didn't live the life of a 'proper' lady. That's infuriating. Michael: It is. And for decades, her work fell into disrepute, especially in Britain. But here's the cool part: the ideas didn't die. They just went underground. We have this amazing piece of evidence from a private letter. In 1843, the famous French philosopher Auguste Comte wrote to John Stuart Mill, another giant of philosophy. Kevin: What did he say? Michael: He confessed that Wollstonecraft's "strange book" had influenced him profoundly in his youth. And then he says this, which I love: "All thinkers who seriously like women as something more than pretty playthings have nowadays passed through a similar phase, I believe." Kevin: Wow. So her book became a secret rite of passage for intellectuals who actually respected women. It was an underground classic. Michael: It was! And it popped up in other strange ways. There was a fake edition sold in Paris that was then translated and became a bestseller in Brazil in the 1830s, making her famous there, even though it wasn't technically her book. Her ideas were so powerful they spread even through piracy and misattribution. Kevin: That's wild. So how did she make the comeback from cancelled pariah to feminist icon? Michael: It took about a century. By the late 19th century, the women's suffrage movements were gaining steam, and they needed a philosophical founder, a symbol. They rediscovered Wollstonecraft. Leaders like Millicent Fawcett in Britain edited new editions of her book. Her life, once a source of scandal, was reinterpreted as the heroic struggle of an independent woman. She was reclaimed. Kevin: So the very things that were used to destroy her reputation—her independence, her unconventional life—became the reasons she was celebrated a hundred years later. Michael: Exactly. She was finally seen not as a cautionary tale, but as the pioneer she was. And today, she's globally recognized as the philosophical founder of feminism. Her ideas on education, human rights, and self-governance laid the groundwork for so much of what came after.

Kevin: What an incredible journey for a single book. From radical bestseller to scandalous trash to foundational text of a global movement. Michael: It really shows the staying power of a truly profound idea. Wollstonecraft's core argument was so potent because it wasn't just about 'women's rights' in a narrow sense. It was about the universal human right to develop one's reason and virtue. Kevin: Right. Her point was that a society that deliberately cripples the minds of half its population can never be truly enlightened or just. It's a poison that affects everyone. Michael: And that's why it's still so relevant. She was fighting against a system that encouraged women to trade their independence for approval, their reason for the fleeting power of being 'pleasing.' Kevin: So what's the one thing we should really take away from her, almost 250 years later? Michael: I think it comes back to that one perfect line: "I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves." It’s a timeless call for inner sovereignty. And it leaves us with a really powerful question to reflect on. Kevin: What's that? Michael: It makes you wonder, in what ways are we still encouraged, in our own lives and in our modern culture, to trade our independence for approval? To choose being pleasing over being rational? Kevin: That’s a heavy question, and a good one to end on. Her voice is still challenging us. Michael: It absolutely is. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.