masculine tyranny or
feminine incompetency, but to the fundamental misconception of the
relations of the sexes. Therefore, what she had to do was to awaken
mankind to the knowledge that women are human beings, and then to insist
that they should be given the opportunity to assert themselves as such,
and that their sex should become a secondary consideration. It would have
been useless for her to analyze their rights in detail until she had
established the premises upon which their claims must rest. It is true
she contends for their political emancipation. "I really think," she
writes, "that women ought to have representatives instead of being
arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in the
deliberations of government." And she also maintains their ability for
the practice of many professions, especially of medicine. But this she
says, as it were, in parenthesis. These necessary reforms cannot be even
begun until the equality of the sexes as human beings is proved beyond a
doubt. The object of the "Vindication" is to demonstrate this equality,
and to point out the preliminary measures by which it may be secured.

The book is now seldom read. Others of later date have supplanted it.
Conservative readers are prejudiced against it because of its title. The
majority of the liberal-minded have not the patience to master its
contents because they can find its propositions expressed more
satisfactorily elsewhere. Yet, as a work which marks an epoch, it
deserves to be well known. A comprehensive analysis of it will therefore
not be out of place.

It begins strangely, as it appears to this generation, with a dedication
to Talleyrand. Mary had seen him often when he had been in London, and
only knew what was best in him. She admired his principles, being
ignorant of his utter indifference to them. He had lately published a
pamphlet on National Education, and this was a subject upon which, in
vindicating women's rights, she had much to say. He had, in pleading the
cause of equality for all men, approached so closely to the whole truth
that she thought, once this was pointed out to him, he could not fail to
recognize it as she did. If he believed that, in his own words, "to see
one half of the human race excluded by the other from all participation
in government was a political phenomenon that, according to abstract
principles, it was impossible to explain," he could not logically deny
that prescription was