Mary Wollstonecraft's civic perfectionism

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Notes

1. For an extended biography of Wollstonecraft, see Taylor (2003).

2. See O'Neill (2007) for an excellent discussion of the Wollstonecraft–Burke debate.

3. For more on the relationship between reason, passion and virtue, see Todd (1980), Gatens (1991) and Zaw (1998).

4. It is important to note that Wollstonecraft's argument in Vindication of the Rights of Women is concerned with natural rights as opposed to political rights. She intended to take up the question of political rights in a subsequent volume.

5. Wollstonecraft's argument is informed negatively by Edmund Burke's definition of female beauty in terms of weakness (Sapiro 1992, p. 200). See Davidson (2004) for a good discussion of Wollstonecraft's criticism of the gallantry required to preserve this delicacy.

6. See Craciun (1998) for an extended discussion of the significance of the role of strength in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.