A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion, that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness. Mary Wollstonecraft

With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects Mary Wollstonecraft Published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman  was the first great feminist treatise. Wollstonecraft  preached that intellect will always govern and sought  “to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength,  both of mind and body, and to convince them that the  soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of  sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost  synonimous [sic] with epithets of weakness.”