Origins of Feminism

The same ideas by which the Founding Fathers justified the American Revolution were used in the following century by the nation's first feminists to legitimize their sexual revolution. It was a British woman who first saw the logical connection between American libertarian values and woman's right. Living at the time of the American Revolution, Mary Wollstoncraft believed the much-discussed rights of man should be extended to include women. She was the first person to discuss woman's place in society in explicitly political terms. Her pioneering essay, A Vindication of Rights of Women (1792), was known throughout the 1800s as the "feminist bible."

Wollstonecraft's first political tract, A Vindication of Rights of Women (1792), had been written to refute Edmund Burke's recently published essay, Reflections on the Revolution in France, which denied the the legitimacy of the revolution. The success of her Vindication encouraged her to continue political writing. Shortly after completing it, she followed it with the essay on women.

Wollstonecraft began The Rights of Women by asserting that God had given "natural rights" to both sexes. Just as it was not God's intention for men to be enslaved by tyrants, so too, she claimed, it was not God's intention for women to be enslaved by men. Furthermore, she concluded, just as French and American men were justified in rising up against unjust monarchs, so women were justified in revolting against the tyranny of husbands, fathers, and brothers

Onto..Part 2 of Origins

This page is based on the book "The History of Women in America" by Carol Hymowitz & Michaele Weissman and notes from my women in history college class. Please check out the links page it has loads of links to wonderful pages pertaining women's history from around the world. Thanks.

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