Book No. 1 of 2021
I am extremely tired and at this point behind on logging my Book Thoughts so I’m not going to say much. This was a very historically informative read that read both as deeply radical (Wollstonecraft draws a connection between a society with imbalanced power aka the aristocracy, and the oppression of women on all levels) and also deeply of its time (very narrow focus, some casual Anglocentric colonialism, the assumption that all women should aspire to be good mothers, and some weirdly close-minded views on female friendship).
A lot of Vindication still feels very relevant, Wollstonecraft is extremely On Point about the nature of power, and her epic dunking of patriarchal philosophy is pretty great.
Similar Reads
Related: Mary Beard’s Women and Power, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. There was something else but I didn’t write it down and that thought is lost to the abyss now.