Page:Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885).djvu/98

82 was so much more startling in its wholesale condemnation of government that the principal attention of the public was drawn to it.

Mary's pamphlet, however, added considerably to her reputation, especially among the reformers. It was her first really important work. Her success encouraged her greatly. It increased her confidence in her powers and possibilities to influence the reading public, and it proved, therefore, an incentive to fresh exertions in the same field. Much as she was interested in the rights of men, she was even more concerned with the rights of women: the former had obtained many able defenders, but no one had as yet thought of saying a word for the latter. Her own experience had been so bitter that she realized the disadvantages of her sex as others, whose path had been easier, never could. She saw that women were hindered and hampered in a thousand and one ways by obstacles created not by nature, but by man. And she also saw that long suffering had blinded them to their, in her estimation, humiliating and too often painful condition.

Clearly, since she had found the light, it was her duty to illuminate with it those who were groping in darkness. She could not with a word revolutionize womankind, but she could at least be the herald to proclaim the dawn of the day during which the good seed was to be sown. She had discovered her life's mission, and, in her enthusiasm, she wrote the Vindication of the Rights of Women.