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
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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.
Some instances of the folly which the ignorance of women generates; with concluding reflections on the moral improvement that a revolution in female manners may naturally be expected to produce