Nothing is known for certain about Sophia, except that her writing demonstrates that she is obviously well educated. Sophia's works are often attributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who brought the knowledge of the small pox vaccine from Turkey to England. Eventually, Edward Jenner would receive credit for "discovering" the vaccine around 1796. Long before Jenner's "discovery" Montagu had had her children vaccinated using the Turkish technique and had tried to interest the court in the method.

      In 1673 the French Roman Catholic cleric (who eventually renounced his religion for Protestantism) published De L'Egalite des deus Sexes (The Equality of the Sexes). An English translation appeared in 1677. Sophia may have used this work as her primary reference, reshaping it and adding other material. However the work came about, Sophia published Woman not Inferior to Man in 1739, which was immediately responded to by a "Gentleman" in Man Superior to Woman (1740). Sophia responded in kind with Woman's Superior Excellence over Man later in 1740.

      That same year, three other major feminist works were printed: The Woman's Labour by Mary Collier; the sixth essay in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's periodical, The Nonsense of Common-Sense, and an article in The Gentleman's Magazine on "male usurpation of female occupations".

      Woman's Superior Excellence over Man (1740) takes up "a Gentleman's" challenge to show that woman is not only equal to man but is superior to him. Her position can be summed up in one paragraph:

      It is more than plain, then that whenever the Women have been upon any degree of equal advantage with the Men, they have always run at least parallel with them in most things, and even outstript them in some particulars: and that there are almost an infinity of our sex, who had they had the like advantages would have made an equal progress with them in useful knowledge.

      Sophia goes on to rail against women's disadvantages, to blame men for socializing women into creatures whose primary interests are in fashion and ornamentation, and to plead with women to educate themselves and their posterity.

      Sophia's interpretation of the creation story is one of the earliest interpretations to challenge the traditional translation of biblical texts. She notes that the line generally translated as "Thy desire shall be to thy husband" should be better translated as "He shall domineer over thee." If that is the case, then these words of God were not uttered in the form of a precept any more than the words to Adam that men, meaning both rich and poor men, shall eat bread by the sweat of their brow. Just as all men were not condemned to lives of perpetual drudgery, women were not condemned to be perpetual slaves of their husbands.

      In a more humorous vein, Sophia is the first writer to call Adam a "rough draught." Further, God made Eve from Adam's rib so that she might have a sympathetic tie to that "stupefied mortal." Finally, man "is as much beneath the perfection of Woman as those rude half-shapen blocks, which the first Egyptians erected into deities, were short of the beauties of those masterpieces of art which the ablest statuaries have since produced."

      "Our adversary seems to triumph mightily in the scriptural texts he has produced to authorize his tyrannic usurpation of authority over us. But surely he did not sufficiently weigh them, or he wou'd have found how little they are to his purpose. Unable to justify their subjecting us from any laws of nature, he has recourse to divine laws; but happily for us these are as little favorable to his purpose as the others, which we shall see upon a fair examination. The first law he pretends to quote against us is from the words which God spoke to Eve, in Gen 3. Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee, as our English translators have render'd this passage; tho' I think the Latin is Et ipse dominabitur tui, which may equally be translated, and he shall domineer over thee. But let the text be translated which way best pleases my antagonist: Who does not see plainly from the whole chapter, that these words were not utter'd by God in form of precept, any more than those to Adam, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the ground. And if this had been a precept it must bind all Men to eat bred at the sweat of their brows, whether rich or poor, noble or ignoble. All then these passages can import is the curse which the ALMIGHTY declared our first parents to have enrail'd on themselves and their posterity, in consequence of their joint disobedience: Which curse to the Men was perpetual drudgery, and to us Women that we shou'd stoop our easy tempers to the savages of our husbands, till we taught those ungenerous creatures to take advantage from our meekness to enslave domineer and play the hectors over us . . . .

      The pretty whimsical slight of imagination, with which our adversary diverts himself, concerning the creation of both sexes, may for ought I know supply the place of demonstration with the witling of his own sex, who seldom think any thing so convincing an argument as profanity. If I had less compassion than I have for the gentleman's weakness; I cou'd laugh along with him: Or if I cou'd think it lawful to be merry with scripture subjects; I wou'd make bold to retort his joke upon himself. I cou'd easily show him how very forced is the jest he labors t divert us with, and how much more natural it is to conjecture that Man being form'd a mere rough draft of that finish'd creature Woman, God snatch'd from the lumpish thing the few graces and perfections he found in it, to add them to the many he design'd to enrich her with. And if he did entail upon her a rib of that stupefied mortal, it was out of pure pity to him, that Woman bias'd by the sympathetic tie might with less repugnance stoop her exalted soul to some regard for him. I will not, however, carry the jest so far as my adversary thinks proper to do. I am not so weak to think the Creator, in order to make Woman the Complete being she is, had any need to produce any rude sketch of her, Man: Neither do I trouble my head whether the production of him can be justly deem'd a complete creation in the strict sense of the word or not. This I know, there need but five senses to compare them together, to perceive that Man among the works of nature is as much beneath the perfection of Woman as those rude half-shapen blocks, which the first Egyptians erected into deities, were short of the beauties of those masterpieces of art which the ablest staturaries have since produced. And why heaven has been pleased to place so wide a difference between creatures of the same species, I can best answer by retorting the test quoted by this gentleman, and recurring to that unsearchable wisdom of him who had it in his power of the same lump to make one vessel to honor, and the other to dishonor."

      Sophia, Woman's Superior Excellence over Man in Moria Ferguson, First Feminists British Women Writers 1578 - 1799, U. of Indiana Press, 1985, my excerpt is taken from pages 277-278

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