Mary Wollstonecraft Enlightenment Analysis

During the Enlightenment, many great ideas and questions were posed that challenged the given norms at the time. For example, many enlightenment thinkers challenged religion, looking at the world from a deist perspective, while others challenged style of government. Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the few female enlightenment thinkers, focused on challenging traditional gender norms in her society. Wollstonecraft was a highly influential person in the Enlightenment through her writings on needing women’s education, as well as her views on women’s rights, such the outdated views of her time, and that men and women needed to be equal. Mary Wollstonecraft believed that men and women should have equal education, as well as that they should learn the same material. Women should have these schooling opportunities to make them educated and become a productive member of society. A French diplomat named Talleyrand’s proposal to the French government made Wollstonecraft angry. This proposal stated that once girls reached eight-years old, they had to stay home and learn only household skills until they married. This was horrible to Wollstonecraft, as this would severely limit women’s education. Additionally, parents were in charge of raising their children through “reason” and without education the children will end up behaving wildly. Specifically, women are the ones to teach the children, …show more content…
Her belief in equal education was her effort to make women part of society rather that being uninformed people who lived to get married. Also, her reconstruction of gender norms in femininity was very important, as it also challenges the societal constructs laid out. As a whole, Mary Wollstonecraft was a progressive, significant enlightenment thinker, who would forever change the way that women were in