A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Wollstonecraft): Prose Style

Wollstonecraft did not employ the formal argumentation or logical prose style common to 18th-century philosophical writings when composing her own works. The Rights of Woman is a long essay that introduces all of its major topics in the opening chapters and then repeatedly returns to them, each time from a different point of view. It also adopts a hybrid tone that combines rational argument with the fervent rhetoric of sensibility.

           In the 18th century, sensibility was a physical phenomenon that came to be attached to a specific set of moral beliefs. Physicians and anatomists believed that the more sensitive people's nerves are, the more emotionally affected they would be by their surroundings. The emotional excess associated with sensibility also theoretically produced an ethic of compassion: those with sensibility could easily sympathise with people in pain.

          By the time Wollstonecraft was writing the Rights of Woman, sensibility had already been under sustained attack for a number of years. Sensibility, which had initially promised to draw individuals together through sympathy, was now viewed as profoundly separatist; novels, plays, and poems that employed the language of sensibility asserted individual rights, sexual freedom, and unconventional familial relationships based only upon feeling.

           In attempting to navigate the cultural expectations of female writers and the generic conventions of political and philosophical discourse, Wollstonecraft constructs a unique blend of masculine and feminine styles in the Rights of Woman. She uses the language of philosophy, referring to her work as a “treatise” with “arguments” and “principles”. However, Wollstonecraft also uses a personal tone, employing “I” and “you”, dashes and exclamation marks, and autobiographical references to create a distinctly feminine voice in the text. The Rights of Woman further hybridizes its genre by weaving together elements of the conduct books and genres often associated with women, while at the same time claiming that these genres could be used to discuss philosophical topics such as rights.

             While she claims to write in a plain style so that her ideas will reach the broadest possible audience, she actually combines the plain, rational language of the political treatise with the poetic, passionate language of sensibility to demonstrate that one can combine rationality and sensibility in the same self. Wollstonecraft defends her position not only with reasonable arguments but also with ardent rhetoric. Wollstonecraft is smart and intelligent, and her style of writing pretty much follows this same pattern for the rest of the book. She constantly lays out basic principles, and then uses them as a foundation for building larger observations about society.