The Aristocracy
In this text, Wollstonecraft criticizes the aristocracy and uses imagery to illustrate her arguments. She depicts wealth and nepotism as having a negative impact on personality, saying that inherited wealth makes people become "monsters." She also suggests there is some complacency in the aristocracy: "The rich man may then thank his God that he is not like other men."
The poor
Many of Wollstonecraft's arguments in the text concern unfair wealth distribution, aiming her criticism at the aristocracy. She argues that the poor suffer terrible mistreatment and suffering, saying "but when is his retribution to be made to the miserable, who cry day and night for help, and there is no one at hand to help them." Many of Wollstonecraft's descriptions of the poor are emotive, in an attempt to make Burke understand how his political beliefs are affecting people poorer than himself. For example, she describes the poor as being "cattle" and describes the poor man who "lives by the sweat of his brow" and "has no asylum from oppression."
Femininity
Wollstonecraft's arguments in this text often have a feminist angle. For example, she criticizes Burke's association between beauty, femininity, and weakness, looking at these concepts in relation to his description of Marie Antoinette in Reflections on the Revolution in France. She writes that Burke's ideal society would involve the passivity of women, saying that "you may have convinced them that littleness and weakness are the very essence of beauty... thus confining truth, fortitude, and humanity, within the rigid pale of manly mortals." Here, she criticizes Burke's language and imagery and suggests that there are underlying preconceptions about gender in his writing.
