Mary Wollstonecraft›A Vindication of the Rights of Woman›Property, Dependence, and Degradation

Property, Dependence, and Degradation

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Mary Wollstonecraft

5 min read · 0 reads

Wollstonecraft argues that the degradation of women is not an accident of nature but a structural consequence of their economic dependence. Where property confers respect and independence confers virtue, those who own nothing and depend on everything are corrupted by that dependence — not because they are weak but because weakness is the only rational response to powerlessness.

The Poisoned Fountain

Chapter IX — on the pernicious effects of unnatural distinctions — opens with an image of structural causation that runs throughout Wollstonecraft's analysis: the evils of society flow from the excessive respect paid to property. When property — rather than reason, virtue, or talent — is the basis for social esteem, everyone is corrupted by the scramble for it, and those excluded from it entirely are corrupted most of all.

From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind. For it is in the most polished society that noisome reptiles and venomous serpents lurk under the rank herbage; and there is voluptuousness pampered by the still sultry air, which relaxes every good disposition before it ripens into virtue.

Read in text · Ch. 10 →

Dependence as Moral Corruption

Women in Wollstonecraft's society are almost entirely economically dependent: on fathers before marriage, on husbands after. This dependence produces a systematic corruption of character. A being who must please in order to survive will develop the arts of pleasing — cunning, flattery, dissimulation — in preference to the arts of thinking. The dissembler who must read others' desires to survive cannot be expected to cultivate the independence of mind that virtue requires.

The Reform Required

Wollstonecraft's solution is structural, not merely educational: women must have access to the economic independence that makes genuine virtue possible. This means not only better schooling but the right to participate in civic and professional life — to earn, to own, and to act independently of male patronage. Without economic independence, even the best-educated woman is reduced to managing her dependence more skillfully rather than escaping it.

The argument appears in Chapter IX of the Vindication. Wollstonecraft's analysis of property and dependence anticipates later socialist-feminist critiques, though her own framework remains within Enlightenment liberalism.

Related Concepts