History

Education, reason and logic are important for women as it introduces them to equal opportunities that men are also offered.

Introduction
Through her book  A vindication of the rights of woman (Cracium    16), Mary Wollstonecraft argues that education, good reason and logic would guide a woman make the right decisions in their lives as well as make them be good mothers and wives.

Discussion
Mary Wollstonecraft was born on 1759 in Spitalfields, London in a family of seven children (Cracium    23). Her paternal grandfather was a wealthy master weaver who had left a huge fortune but her father squandered his fair of inheritance and this led to the constant movement of the family from one place to another as he tried to launch himself in different areas such as farming. Due to this constant moving, Mary found herself in Barking, Epping, Beverly in Yorkshire, East London in Hoxton and Wales. Mary never got the chance to a decent education and at the age of eighteen, she left her familys home and never returned.

In the year 1778, she became a companion to Mrs. Dawson and resided at Bath, then moved back to London in the year 1781 to nurse her mother who was ill at that time. Her mother passed on after a while in 1782 and she went to reside with her best friend Fannys family. Mary left them in the winter of 1783 to attend to her sister Eliza and her newborn baby. It was during this period that Mary passed through a lot of tough times in her life. Her sister was mistreated by her husband but Mary intervened and took her sister away and they went into hiding. After a short period following this, Mary Wollstonecraft opened her own school for girls at the age of twenty-four at Newington Green with the help of her sisters. It was at this place that Mary met the moral and political thinker the Reverend Richard Price who was the head of Newingtons thieving Dissenting community after hearing him preach (Wildhaber  Hays     18). This proved to be an important encounter for Mary and after a few years she raised to his defense in a vindication of the rights of men. This was in the year 1790 and it was in this period that she met her friend and future publisher Joseph Johnson. In the year 1785, she went for a trip to Lisbon, Portugal to see her friend, Fanny who was expecting a child. On the ship she was traveling in, she met and nursed a man who was suffering from consumption the whole length of the voyage. Her first novel, Mary, a fiction that was published in 1788 related to this experience in her ship.

When she arrived in Portugal, she gained a critical opinion of the country, its culture and society that seemed to be ruled by irrationality and superstitions. Her stay in Portugal was a short and unhappy one as even her friend Fanny lost her baby after delivery. When she returned to England, she found her school in a calamitous state (Wildhaber  Hays     48). It did not become a reliable and stable source of income and it rather became a source of worries furthermore after a while it went down the drain.
After this, she became a nanny to the children of a patriarch family in an Estate in Ireland for a short while. She went back to London and her friend Joseph Johnson a publisher gave her some literary employment. Mary spent most of her time writing and translating and it was during this period that she also met other radical intellectuals and thinkers. Little by little, she became acquainted with a few people who discussed politics frequently (Cracium    76).

In 1786, Mary wrote Thoughts on the Education of Daughters but it was during the French Revolution that she became renowned due to her deep-seated beliefs. The philosophy of freedom, parity and fraternity were viewed as an opening to the struggle against nobility and for a democratic society. There was a venomous reaction from the rich nobility and their followers. Those who supported the revolution were viewed as precarious and were attacked at every chance. The first book that criticized the revolution was Edmund Burkes Reflections on the Revolution in France. This book attacked the Revolution and the devoted supporters. Mary read this book and decided to respond it in writing and she came up with the book -A vindication of the Rights of Man that was in defense of the principles of the Revolution (Wildhaber  Hays     78). Though the book was not well written, it became an instant success, she became popular, and soon her name was known.

In the year 1791, Mary began writing the book- A vindication of the rights of woman. This book is considered a classic of feminist documentation. Mary argued in this book that in many cases, marriage was nothing but a property relation and that the poor education women received could not meet the high vision from the society and it unquestionably guaranteed them a despondent life. According to Mary Wollstonecraft, the womens specialty was the home as it was the foundation for the public, state and social life. She also implored that men also had duties that they had to perform in the family as well as the fact that women had duties to the country too (Cracium    136). She argued that it was extremely vital for a lady to be educated as she was first and foremost responsible for enlightening the young in the family setting. Mary further argues and says that educating women would surely strengthen the marriage relationship. However, her personal view on marriage contradicted this point considering what she had witnessed in her personal life. She further argued that a stable marriage was one where there existed a partnership between a husband and wife as it was a social bond between two individuals (Wildhaber  Hays     108). Therefore, a woman needed to have equal knowledge and logic to uphold the partnership.

Mary also acknowledged the fact that women were also sexual beings as the men were. Therefore, both loyalty and chastity applied to both men and women for a successful marriage. It was required that men participate in their role of duty over sexual pleasure (Wollstonecraft      186). She also points out that by valuing duty more than pleasure did not necessarily mean that feelings were not important but her outmost goal according to her ethics and beliefs. She called this harmony reason as it was a necessary thing to have and besides most of her friends were philosophers. She criticized women who constantly engaged in beauty and fashion as it lowered their reason and made them to insufficiently retain their role in the marriage partnership and thus reduced their effectiveness as child educators, and this made them less devoted as citizens attraction (Wollstonecraft, Macdonald  Scherf    241) .

However, in her vindication she makes it clear her stand only when both woman and man are free, they should equally exercise their responsibilities to both the family and the state and pure freedom can be the result of this. In addition, she is convinced that if women are given equal and quality education  one that recognizes their duty to educate their own children, be on equal terms with their husbands and one that recognizes that women as well as man are both creatures of reason.

Conclusion
From her book, the vindication of the rights of woman  (Cracium    93), she wanted women to become rational and independent people whose sense of worth came from their inner perception of knowledge instead of been imprisoned in a loop of false expectations that can make them potentially miserable in the long run. For them to achieve this, they had to be educated and their minds and bodies trained and the result of this, they would be good mothers to their children, wives to their husbands and worthwhile citizens. On top of all this, education would make them human beings ruled by rationale and characterized by self-control. The book also contained many social and political proposals, which ranged to the suggestion that women should be granted equal political rights as men as well as to be elected as representatives of their own just like the men (Wollstonecraft,      106). Mary argued that it was vital for women to be taught the relevant skills so that they could be able to support themselves as well as their families in case they became widows so that they never have to remarry for financial reasons therefore, they could continue to support their children. She also claimed that with the good education, women could also join professions that were only characterized by men, for example doctors. She also urges women to explore all areas including politics, as they could also become fine leaders. The book also spoke at length on how women could make their marriages last and in her opinion marriages should have camaraderie as a basis rather than physical attraction (Wollstonecraft, Macdonald  Scherf    106). Mary embraced the social and economic consequences of her vision of happy marriages that were based on friendship and not only mutual attraction. In the book-A vindication of rights of woman, she points out France as a country ruled by false notion with moral and political degeneration.

Although Mary was encouraged by her friend and publisher, Joseph Johnson, she did not receive a lot of support from fellow intellectuals throughout her life.  Few lady authors did support her but many mocked her because of what she believed in and at that time, it seemed impossible for her to accomplish her beliefs.

Presently, it may be immature to visualize that equalizing educational opportunities in women will guarantee proper equality for women.