Educators once justified excluding women from schools on the grounds that they were intellectually inferior. How does Wollstonecroft unravel the logic of this position?
Mary Wollstonecraft does an excellent job of defending women's rights in this essay excerpt from her book. She uses logical arguments to claim that women are not inferior to men in the aspect of intellectualism. In the first paragraph she supports her claim with transitions like, "It is acknowledged that..." -These transitions make her argument much stronger, as they imply that she is not a radical thinker, or at least she is not the only one who feels this way. One of her main claims is that society has created a restriction on the intellectual and physical development of women by forcing them to concentrate their time on attracting males, which she makes clear in her reference to marriage being the only way a woman can rise up. She also claims that women are not even considered human beings according to society, but rather "insignificant objects of desire." Wollstonecroft acknowledges that women must rely on men for some aspects of life because they are truly inferior in strength of body. She exposes this argument as a slippery slope fallacy stating that because men are physically superior, they are stronger in all ways. She then directly attacks mean, a fallacy in itself, claiming that if men worked to gain better values such as women, then society would be more equal for women would have opportunity enough to become equals intellectually. She ends her essay by stating that women are not only innately smarter but that this advantage will ultimately rule over physical strength because, "intellect will always govern."
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