The "Essay" is written in the form of a letter to a female friend. It purports to be inspired by a conversation between several gentlemen and ladies. Drake first constructed the rationalist framework used at that time to explain women's intellectual inferiority, especially using John Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. " She then proceeded to show that this rationale was outdated, and in this modern time, women would benefit from a greater knowledge. Only two works using this kind of rationalist argument had been used for a feminist argument before, and only one of those was written in English. Besides her rational arguments, Drake also wrote sketches of various stereotypes among men: the Pedant, the Country Squire, the News-monger, the Bully, the City-Critick, and the Beau. She uses these pictures to remind her readers that men, also, had follies.