The mood of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is critical. Wollstonecraft aims to highlight the shortcomings of society so that her reader is able to question why women aren’t given the education and training in reason that they deserve. She encourages the reader to be critical of the way that their society is structured. By emphasizing reason and knowledge as primary values, she calls upon her reader to prize these in their contemplation of the structure of the society around them. Her emphasis on reason makes it difficult for the reader to ignore it as a measurement of value and meaning. As early as at the beginning of Chapter One, she uses persuasive language to incite her reader’s sense of reason, saying:
Consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness, must be estimated by the degree of reason, virtue, and knowledge, that distinguish the individual, and direct the laws which bind society: and from the exercise of reason, knowledge and virtue naturally flow, is equally undeniable, if mankind be viewed collectively.
In sections like the one above, Wollstonecraft creates a clear sense of injustice. She emphasizes the discrepancy between how society’s emphasis on reason functions, and how the education of women ensures their exclusion from this natural system. Her ability to make the reader critical of their own society in turn creates a mood of determination. By clearly highlighting the errors in education, she encourages the reader to embrace her proposed solution. She writes with a sense of determination that is infectious, and the reader cannot help but be furious and galvanized along with her.
