Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

About the book

"Thoughts on the Education of Daughters" by Mary Wollstonecraft is a conduct book published in 1787. Wollstonecraft's first published work offers practical guidance on educating women from infancy through marriage for Britain's emerging middle class. She encourages mothers to teach daughters analytical thinking, self-discipline, and marketable skills while criticizing fashionable society's superficial education. Though focused on preparing useful wives and mothers, certain passages anticipate her later feminist arguments. The book blends moral instruction with child-rearing advice, reflecting eighteenth-century debates about women's roles in society.