Religion in the Age of Enlightenment
Keywords
Mary Wollstonecraft, Enlightenment, Feminisms
Abstract
"This female philosopher indignantly rejects the idea of a sex in the soul, pronouncing the sensibility, timidity and tenderness of women, to be merely artificial refinements of character, introduced and fostered by men;' writes the appalled (and fictional) Hindu philosopher Shahcoolen in Benjamin Silliman's series The Letters of Shahcoolen (1802). Published not long after Mary Wollstonecraft's manifesto, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ( 1796), Silliman's series dedicates four epistles to detailing the nature and influence of the "regenerating system of this female lunatic." Another detractor brands Wollstonecraft "an unsex'd female" in a poetic satire on the author's manifesto and her fellow female "combatants" in "the new field of the Rights of Woman."
Recommended Citation
Givens Johnson, Rachael
(2015)
"Equal Portions of Heavenly Fire: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Sexless Soul,"
Religion in the Age of Enlightenment: Vol. 5, Article 7.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rae/vol5/iss1/7