On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

It is popularly assumed that Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of Rights of Woman was greeted with shock, horror, and derision when it appeared early in 1792, that forces of reaction massed against this bold attempt to assert equality of woman and spattered Amazon with their pens. With one important exception, every notice Rights of Woman received when it first appeared was favorable. The reviews were split along party lines. Periodicals of radical inclination, sharing Wollstonecraft's philosophical assumptions, sympathetic towards rights of man and events in France, distressed by Edmund Burke's lack of consistency, approved work. While Wollstonecraft did indeed suffer stoning by mob, cause was not the reasonable and noble idea of woman's place in family presented in Rights of Woman. Nor was cause her assertion that the sexes were equal, educational opportunities and even franchise for women..