n allies,"
who "spit their rage at eighteen-pence a head, and will return to
Fleet-ditch, more fortunate in being forgotten than their predecessors,
immortalized in the 'Dunciad.'" Peter Burke, in his "Life of Burke," says
that the replies made by Dr. Price, Mrs. Macaulay, and Mary
Wollstonecraft were merely attempts and nothing more. Yet all three were
writers of too much force to be ignored. They were thrown into the shade
because Paine's "Rights of Man," written for the same purpose, was so
much more startling in its wholesale condemnation of government that the
principal attention of the public was drawn to it.

Mary's pamphlet, however, added considerably to her reputation,
especially among the Liberals. It was her first really important work.
Her success encouraged her greatly. It increased her confidence in her
powers and possibilities to influence the reading public. It therefore
proved an incentive to fresh exertions in the same field. Much as she was
interested in the rights of men, she was even more concerned with the
rights of women. The former had obtained many able defenders, but no one
had as yet thought of saying a word for the latter. Her own experience
had been so bitter that she realized the disadvantages of her sex as
others, whose path had been easier, never could. She saw that women were
hindered and hampered in a thousand and one ways by obstacles created not
by nature, but by man. And she also saw that long suffering had blinded
them to their, in her estimation, humiliating and too often painful
condition. A change for the better must originate with them, and yet how
was this possible, if they did not see their degradation?

"Can the sower sow by night,
Or the ploughman in darkness plough?"

Clearly, since she had found the light, it was her duty to illuminate
with it those who were groping in darkness. She could not with a word
revolutionize womankind, but she could at least be the herald to proclaim
the dawn of the day during which the good seed was to be sown. She had
discovered her life's mission, and, in her enthusiasm, she wrote the
"Vindication of the Rights of Women."

CHAPTER V.

LITERARY WORK.

1788-1791.

As has been stated, Mary Wollstonecraft began her literary career by
writing a small pamphlet on the subject of education. Its title, in full,
is "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: with Reflections on Female
Conduct in the more Important Duties of Life."