A review by ominousevent
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

A truly wild read - some fairly modern-sounding feminist ideas juxtaposed with very protestant, gender-essentialist (and misogynistic) ones. Wollstonecraft was so ahead of her time in some ways - e.g. her consistent support of better and broader education for women - that the rest of her opinions seem terribly regressive by comparison. Because, today, they would be! She  has little to no concern for anyone who is not white and at least middle-class (although she advocates for the education of even poor children! ... up to the age of nine),  assures the reader that none of her suggested improvements need take women out of their proper place in the domestic sphere, and holds virtue and marriage in the highest esteem. But, to use a very imperfect analogy, it would be a mistake to judge an early building block by the standards of a finished house.

The prose is stultifying and Wollstonecraft is intensely moralistic, which can make the book hard to get through, but she also pours scorn on Rousseau, which is a good time.