In her essay “Mary Wollstonecraft and the Separation of Poetry and Politics,” ¹ Catharine Villanueva Gardner offers an interpretation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s work that challenges the commonly accepted notion of moral philosophy.  Gardner contends that A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Wollstonecraft’s most famous work and the one most often accepted as philosophical) does not strictly adhere to the form of the rational Enlightenment treatise, as is often assumed.  Instead, Gardner contends, the work is informed by Wollstonecraft’s notion of sensibility and, as such, smudges the boundaries between rational philosophy and a more intimate, emotional style of expression.  Gardner’s main goal in this essay is to identify Wollstonecraft’s notion of sensibility, as it is expressed in the Vindication and her other works, and to argue that this notion has a philosophical significance which changes the way Wollstonecraft’s works should be read.  In particular, Gardner points out that many of the weaknesses commonly associated with the Vindication will be seen to depend on the notion of it as an Enlightenment treatise; they will disappear once that classification is challenged.  
    According to Gardner, most writers criticizing Wollstonecraft have accepted the Vindication almost without question as an Enlightenment treatise, i.e. one which is, by definition, associated with the emphasis of reason over passion (in a “reason/passion dichotomy” (83).  These writers base their opinion of the Vindication as an Enlightenment treatise on its argumentative form and on Wollstonecraft’s own stated appreciation for reason.  As a result, they have assumed that Wollstonecraft accepts and endorses the reason/passion dichotomy and chooses to work entirely within the rationalist/Enlightenment framework.  One of the passages from the Vindication most often used to defend this interpretation is: “I shall be employed about things, not words! And, anxious to render my sex more respectable members of society, I shall try to avoid that flowery diction which has slided from essays into novels, and from novels into familiar letters and conversations” (quoted in Gardner, 102).  Gardner argues that, contrary to popular opinion, this statement does not indicate Wollstonecraft’s complete support of Enlightenment rationality.  Gardner argues that Wollstonecraft holds contempt for traditionally feminine “flowery diction,” but that Wollstonecraft contrasts this objectionable form with “true sensibility.”  According to Gardner, it is this notion of sensibility, which is neither perfectly rational nor completely non-rational, that informs all of Wollstonecraft’s work.  

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