Stanzas 1-2 Summary

Lines 1-4

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!
Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest;
O born to rule in partial Law's despite,
Resume thy native empire o'er the breast!

• The poem opens with the word "Yes!" as though the speaker is answering and agreeing with someone else. But whom is she answering? Probably Mary Wollstonecraft, a fellow writer from the late 1700s, and here's why. The title of the poem, "The Rights of Woman," seems like a clear allusion to Mary Wollstonecraft's The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was also published in 1792. Go check out the "What's Up with the Title" and the "Setting" sections for more on the connection with Wollstonecraft.
• So the speaker opens by saying, "Yeah! Let's go, ladies!" and encourages women to rise up and claim their rights. Girl power FTW, etc.
• All women, she says, have certain rights that they aren't yet claiming—this must be why she calls them injured.
• Women have been stomped on for too long, according to our speaker.
• She says that women are "born to rule." That's clear enough. But the rest of line 3 is a bit weird. "Partial" just means "biased" in this context. She's saying that the Law-with-a-capital-L that has kept women oppressed and beaten down is biased against them. So, to put it all together, women are "born to rule" in spite of the Law's prejudice against them. Got it.
• She calls on women to take over their "native" or natural empire over the "breast," or over their hearts and feelings.
• Hmm. This is interesting. Women might be born to rule, according to Barbauld, but their natural place to rule is the realm of feelings. Is she saying that women are only fit to rule over emotions? Or that women need to control their feelings in order to put themselves in charge? This is a bit ambiguous. But hey, we here at Shmoop love us some ambiguity.
• The word "empire" was a loaded word when she was writing in 1792—after all, England's empire was rapidly expanding in the world. So maybe she's saying that women shouldn't just rule at home, but all over the world.

Lines 5-8

Go forth arrayed in panoply divine;
That angel pureness which admits no stain;
Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign,
And kiss the golden sceptre of thy reign.

• Our speaker tells women to go out dressed in fancy armor or ceremonial clothes ("panoply" could mean either). If the women's "panoply" is "divine," does that mean that their mission to rise up and claim their rights is somehow a sacred mission? She might be using this metaphor to suggest that God is on their side in this little battle she's describing. It's possible, though, that she's using irony, so watch out. In this poem, nothing's quite so clear-cut.
• Women are dressed in their fancy armor, but they are somehow also angelic and pure and stainless. But since women aren't literally "angels," and since she's not talking about literal stains on their clothes, this has to be a metaphor. This was a common way of describing women in the 18th and 19th century: they were supposed to represent everything that was good and pure and angelic.
• This seems weird—if women are trying to overthrow men, shouldn't they also be trying to overthrow the stereotype that they're all angelic and pure? There seems to be a contradiction here, but it's hard to tell whether Barbauld is poking fun at the idea of women being angelic and pure, or at the idea of women leading a revolution.
• The speaker tells women that they need to order men to step aside and "resign" their role as rulers, and instead to accept the rule of women. 
• The men should accept women's rule by kissing the woman's "sceptre" (the fancy club-looking thing that you see kings and queens holding in pictures).