The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote this line in the early phase of modern feminist political thought, during the Enlightenment-era debates about natural rights, education, and legitimate authority. In late-18th-century Britain, arguments for monarchy’s “divine right” were increasingly challenged by republican and liberal ideas, especially in the wake of the American and French Revolutions. Wollstonecraft adapts that political language to marriage, criticizing the assumption that husbands possess an inherent, quasi-sacred authority over wives. The remark appears in her polemical defense of women’s rational equality and her insistence that domestic relations should be governed by reason and justice rather than inherited power.

The sentence draws a pointed analogy: if enlightened people can dispute kings’ supposed God-given sovereignty, they should also be able to dispute husbands’ presumed sovereignty within the household. Wollstonecraft exposes “divine right” as a rhetorical cover for domination, whether in politics or marriage. The phrase “without danger” underscores how challenging patriarchal authority could invite social, legal, or economic retaliation, especially for women. By framing marital hierarchy as a political problem, she treats the family as a site of power relations rather than a private realm exempt from critique. The line thus advances her broader claim that women’s subordination is maintained by custom and ideology, not nature.