Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century
BritishThe Kingdom of Great Britain, also known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, in existence from 1707 to 1801...
writer, philosopher, and feminist. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a
travel narrativeTravel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
, a history of the
French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for
A Vindication of the Rights of WomanA Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the...
(1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attention than her writing because of her unconventional and often tumultuous personal relationships. After two ill-fated affairs, with
Henry FuseliHenry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of German-Swiss origin....
and
Gilbert ImlayGilbert Imlay was an officer in the American Revolutionary War , a businessman and an author. He had a brief affair with Mary Wollstonecraft that resulted in the birth of a daughter, Fanny Imlay....
(by whom she had a daughter,
Fanny ImlayFrances "Fanny" Imlay was the illegitimate daughter of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the American commercial speculator Gilbert Imlay....
), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher
William GodwinWilliam Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and one of the first modern proponents of anarchism...
, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight, ten days after giving birth to her second daughter, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. Her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later
Mary ShelleyMary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
, would go on to author
FrankensteinFrankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, generally known simply as Frankenstein, is a novel written by Mary Shelley. Shelley started writing when she was 18 and the novel was published when she was 21. The first edition was published anonymously in London in . Shelley's name appears on the second...
.
After Wollstonecraft's death, William Godwin published a
MemoirMemoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is William Godwin's biography of his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ....
(1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the
feminist movementThe Suffrage movement is a series of campaigns on issues such as reproductive rights , domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. The goals of the movement vary from country to country, e.g...
at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding
feminist philosophersFeminist philosophy refers to philosophy approached from a feminist perspective. Feminist philosophy involves both attempts to use the methods of philosophy to further the cause of the feminist movements, and attempts to criticise or re-evaluate the ideas of traditional philosophy from within a...
, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.
Early life
Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in
SpitalfieldsSpitalfields is an area in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday UpMarket, and...
,
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
. Although her family had a comfortable income when she was a child, her father gradually squandered it on speculative projects. Consequently, the family became financially unstable and they were frequently forced to move during Wollstonecraft's youth. The family's financial situation eventually became so dire that Wollstonecraft's father compelled her to turn over money that she would have inherited at her maturity. Moreover, he was apparently a violent man who would beat his wife in drunken rages. As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her mother's bedroom to protect her. Wollstonecraft played a similar maternal role for her sisters, Everina and Eliza, throughout her life. For example, in a defining moment in 1784, she convinced Eliza, who was suffering from what was probably
postpartum depressionPostpartum depression , also called postnatal depression, is a form of clinical depression which can affect women, and less frequently men, after childbirth. Studies report prevalence rates among women from 5% to 25%, but methodological differences among the studies make the actual prevalence rate...
, to leave her husband and infant; Wollstonecraft made all of the arrangements for Eliza to flee, demonstrating her willingness to challenge social norms. The human costs, however, were severe: her sister suffered social condemnation and, because she could not remarry, was doomed to a life of poverty and hard work.
Two friendships shaped Wollstonecraft's early life. The first was with Jane Arden in
BeverleyBeverley is a market town, civil parish and the county town of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, located between the River Hull and the Westwood...
. The two frequently read books together and attended lectures presented by Arden's father, a self-styled philosopher and scientist. Wollstonecraft reveled in the intellectual atmosphere of the Arden household and valued her friendship with Arden greatly, sometimes to the point of being emotionally possessive. Wollstonecraft wrote to her: "I have formed romantic notions of friendship…I am a little singular in my thoughts of love and friendship; I must have the first place or none." In some of Wollstonecraft's letters to Arden, she reveals the volatile and depressive emotions that would haunt her throughout her life.
The second and more important friendship was with Fanny Blood, introduced to Wollstonecraft by the Clares, a couple in
HoxtonHoxton is an area in the London Borough of Hackney, immediately north of the financial district of the City of London. The area of Hoxton is bordered by Regents Canal on the north side, Wharf Road and City Road on the west, Old Street on the south, and Kingsland Road on the east.-Origins:'Hogesdon'...
who became parental figures to her; Wollstonecraft credited Blood with opening her mind. Unhappy with her home life, Wollstonecraft struck out on her own in 1778 and accepted a job as a
lady's companionA lady's companion was a woman of genteel birth who acted as a paid companion for women of rank or wealth. The term was in use in the United Kingdom from at least the 18th century to the mid 20th century. It was related to the position of lady-in-waiting, which by the 19th century was only applied...
to Sarah Dawson, a widow living in Bath. However, Wollstonecraft had trouble getting along with the irascible woman (an experience she drew on when describing the drawbacks of such a position in
Thoughts on the Education of DaughtersThoughts on the education of daughters: with reflections on female conduct, in the more important duties of life is the first published work of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Published in 1787 by her friend Joseph Johnson, Thoughts is a conduct book that offers advice on female education...
(1787)). In 1780 she returned home, called back to care for her dying mother. Rather than return to Dawson's employ after the death of her mother, Wollstonecraft moved in with the Bloods. She realized during the two years she spent with the family that she had idealized Blood, who was more invested in traditional feminine values than was Wollstonecraft. But Wollstonecraft remained dedicated to her and her family throughout her life (she frequently gave pecuniary assistance to Blood's brother, for example).
Wollstonecraft had envisioned living in a female utopia with Blood; they made plans to rent rooms together and support each other emotionally and financially, but this dream collapsed under economic realities. In order to make a living, Wollstonecraft, her sisters, and Blood set up a school together in
Newington GreenNewington Green is an open space in Islington, London that gives its name to the surrounding area. The Newington Green area is roughly bounded by Ball's Pond Road to the south, Petherton Road to the west, the line Green Lanes-Mathias Road to the north, and Boleyn Road to the east...
, a
DissentingEnglish Dissenters were English Christians who separated from the Church of England. They opposed State interference in religious matters, and founded their own communities in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries...
community. Blood soon became engaged and after their marriage her husband, Hugh Skeys, took her to Europe to improve her health, which had always been precarious. Despite the change of surroundings Blood's health further deteriorated when she became pregnant, and in 1785 Wollstonecraft left the school and followed Blood to nurse her, but to no avail. Moreover, her abandonment of the school led to its failure. Blood's death devastated Wollstonecraft and was part of the inspiration for her first novel,
Mary: A FictionMary: A Fiction is the first and only complete novel written by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. It tells the tragic story of a heroine's successive "romantic friendships" with a woman and a man...
(1788).
"The first of a new genus"
After Blood's death, Wollstonecraft's friends helped her obtain a position as
governessA governess is a woman employed to teach and train children in a private household. In contrast to a nanny or a babysitter, she concentrates on teaching children, not their physical needs...
to the daughters of the
Anglo-IrishAnglo-Irish was a term used historically to describe a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until 1871, or to a lesser...
Kingsborough family in Ireland. Although she could not get along with Lady Kingsborough, the children found her an inspiring instructor; Margaret King would later say she "had freed her mind from all superstitions". Some of Wollstonecraft's experiences during this year would make their way into her only children's book,
Original Stories from Real LifeOriginal Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness is the only complete work of children's literature by eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Original Stories begins with a frame story, which...
(1788).
Frustrated by the limited career options open to respectable yet poor women—an impediment which Wollstonecraft eloquently describes in the chapter of
Thoughts on the Education of DaughtersThoughts on the education of daughters: with reflections on female conduct, in the more important duties of life is the first published work of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Published in 1787 by her friend Joseph Johnson, Thoughts is a conduct book that offers advice on female education...
entitled "Unfortunate Situation of Females, Fashionably Educated, and Left Without a Fortune"—she decided, after only a year as a governess, to embark upon a career as an author. This was a radical choice, since, at the time, few women could support themselves by writing. As she wrote to her sister Everina in 1787, she was trying to become "the first of a new genus". She moved to London and, assisted by the liberal publisher
Joseph JohnsonJoseph Johnson was an influential eighteenth-century London bookseller. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...
, found a place to live and work to support herself. She learned French and German and translated texts, most notably
Of the Importance of Religious Opinions by
Jacques NeckerJacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:Necker was born in Geneva, Switzerland...
and
Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children by
Christian Gotthilf SalzmannChristian Gotthilf Salzmann was the founder of the Schnepfenthal institution, a school dedicated to new modes of education ....
. She also wrote reviews, primarily of novels, for Johnson's periodical, the
Analytical ReviewThe Analytical Review was a periodical established in London in 1788 by the publisher Joseph Johnson and the writer Thomas Christie. Part of the Republic of Letters, it was a gadfly publication, which offered readers summaries and analyses of the many new publications issued at the end of the...
. Wollstonecraft's intellectual universe expanded during this time, not only from the reading that she did for her reviews but also from the company she kept: she attended Johnson's famous dinners and met such luminaries as the radical pamphleteer
Thomas PaineThomas Paine was an author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Born in England, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 in time to participate in the American Revolution...
and the philosopher
William GodwinWilliam Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and one of the first modern proponents of anarchism...
. The first time Godwin and Wollstonecraft met, they were both disappointed in each other. Godwin had come to hear Paine, but Wollstonecraft assailed him all night long, disagreeing with him on nearly every subject. Johnson himself, however, became much more than a friend; she described him in her letters as a father and a brother.
While in London, Wollstonecraft pursued a relationship with the artist
Henry FuseliHenry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of German-Swiss origin....
, even though he was already married. She was, she wrote, enraptured by his genius, "the grandeur of his soul, that quickness of comprehension, and lovely sympathy". She proposed a platonic living arrangement with Fuseli and his wife, but Fuseli's wife was appalled, and he broke off the relationship with Wollstonecraft. After Fuseli's rejection, Wollstonecraft decided to travel to France to escape the humiliation of the incident, and to participate in the revolutionary events that she had just celebrated in her recent
Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). She had written the
Rights of Men in response to
Edmund Burke'sEdmund Burke PC was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his opposition to the French Revolution...
conservative critique of the
French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
in
Reflections on the Revolution in FranceReflections on the Revolution in France , by Edmund Burke, is one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution...
(1790) and it made her famous overnight. She was compared with such leading lights as the theologian and controversialist
Joseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...
and Paine, whose
Rights of ManRights of Man , by Thomas Paine, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights, and their national interests. It defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke's attack in Reflections on the Revolution in France...
(1791) would prove to be the most popular of the responses to Burke. She pursued the ideas she had outlined in
Rights of Men in
A Vindication of the Rights of WomanA Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the...
(1792), her most famous and influential work.
France and Gilbert Imlay
Wollstonecraft left for
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in December 1792 and arrived about a month before
Louis XVI was guillotinedThe execution of Louis XVI by guillotine on 21 January 1793 on place de la révolution in Paris was a major event of the French Revolution and a message from the French revolutionaries to all the European monarchies...
. France was in turmoil. She sought out other British visitors such as
Helen Maria WilliamsHelen Maria Williams was a British novelist, poet, and translator of French-language works. A religious dissenter, she was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution; she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror, but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her...
and joined the circle of expatriates then in the city. Having just written the
Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft was determined to put her ideas to the test, and in the stimulating intellectual atmosphere of the
French revolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
she attempted her most experimental romantic attachment yet: she met and fell passionately in love with
Gilbert ImlayGilbert Imlay was an officer in the American Revolutionary War , a businessman and an author. He had a brief affair with Mary Wollstonecraft that resulted in the birth of a daughter, Fanny Imlay....
, an American adventurer. Whether or not she was interested in marriage, he was not, and she appears to have fallen in love with an idealized portrait of the man. While Wollstonecraft had rejected the sexual component of relationships in the
Rights of Woman, Imlay awakened her passions and her interest in sex. She soon became pregnant, and on 14 May 1794 she gave birth to her first child,
FannyFrances "Fanny" Imlay was the illegitimate daughter of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the American commercial speculator Gilbert Imlay....
, naming her after perhaps her closest friend. Wollstonecraft was overjoyed; she wrote to a friend: "My little Girl begins to suck so MANFULLY that her father reckons saucily on her writing the second part of the R[igh]ts of Woman" (emphasis hers). She continued to write avidly despite not only her pregnancy and the burdens of being a new mother alone in a foreign country but also the growing tumult of the French Revolution. While at
Le HavreLe Havre is a city in north-western France situated on the right bank of the mouth of the Seine River as it flows into the Bay of the Seine in the English Channel. It is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Haute-Normandie region. The inhabitants of the city are called Havrais or...
in northern France, she wrote a history of the early revolution,
An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution, which was published in London in December 1794.
As the political situation worsened, Britain
declared warThe First Coalition was the first major concerted effort of multiple European powers to contain Revolutionary France. It took shape after the French Revolutionary Wars had already begun....
on France, placing all British subjects in France in considerable danger. To protect Wollstonecraft, Imlay registered her as his wife in 1793, even though they were not married. Some of her friends were not so lucky; many, like Thomas Paine, were arrested, and some were even guillotined. (Wollstonecraft's sisters believed she had been imprisoned.) After she left France, she continued to refer to herself as "Mrs Imlay", even to her sisters, in order to bestow legitimacy upon her child.
Imlay, unhappy with the domestic-minded and maternal Wollstonecraft, eventually left her. He promised that he would return to Le Havre where she went to give birth to her child, but his delays in writing to her and his long absences convinced Wollstonecraft that he had found another woman. Her letters to him are full of needy expostulations, explained by most critics as the expressions of a deeply depressed woman but by some as a result of her circumstances—alone with an infant in the middle of a revolution.
England and William Godwin
Seeking Imlay, Wollstonecraft returned to London in April 1795, but he rejected her. In May 1795 she attempted to commit suicide, probably with
laudanumLaudanum , also known as opium tincture or thebaic tincture is an alcoholic herbal preparation containing approximately 10% opium and 1% morphine . It is made by combining ethanol with opium latex or powder...
, but Imlay saved her life (although it is unclear how). In a last attempt to win back Imlay, she embarked upon some business negotiations for him in
ScandinaviaScandinavia is a geographical region in northern Europe that includes, and is named after, the Scanian Province. It consists of the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark...
, trying to recoup some of his losses. Wollstonecraft undertook this hazardous trip with only her young daughter and a maid. She recounted her travels and thoughts in letters to Imlay, many of which were eventually published as
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and DenmarkLetters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a deeply personal travel narrative by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. The twenty-five letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to...
in 1796. When she returned to England and came to the full realization that her relationship with Imlay was over, she attempted suicide for the second time, leaving a note for Imlay:
Let my wrongs sleep with me! Soon, very soon, I shall be at peace. When you receive this, my burning head will be cold. . . . I shall plunge into the Thames where there is least chance of my being snatched from the death I seek. God bless you! May you never know by experience what you have made me endure. Should your sensibility ever awake, remorse will find its way to your heart; and, in the midst of business and sensual pleasure, I shall appear before you, the victim of your deviation from rectitude.
She then went out on a rainy night and "to make her clothes heavy with water, she walked up and down about half an hour" before jumping into the
River ThamesThe River Thames is a major river flowing through southern England. While best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows through several other towns and cities, including Oxford, Reading and Windsor....
, but a stranger saw her jump and rescued her. Wollstonecraft considered her suicide attempt deeply rational, writing after her rescue, "I have only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and misery. But a fixed determination is not to be baffled by disappointment; nor will I allow that to be a frantic attempt, which was one of the calmest acts of reason. In this respect, I am only accountable to myself. Did I care for what is termed reputation, it is by other circumstances that I should be dishonoured."
Gradually, Wollstonecraft returned to her literary life, becoming involved with
Joseph Johnson'sJoseph Johnson was an influential eighteenth-century London bookseller. His publications covered a wide variety of genres and a broad spectrum of opinions on important issues...
circle again, in particular with
Mary HaysMary Hays was an English novelist and feminist.- Early years :Mary Hays was born in Southwark, London on Oct.13,1754. Almost nothing is known of her first 17 years. In 1779 she fell in love with John Eccles who lived in Gainsford Street, where she also lived. Their parents opposed the match but...
,
Elizabeth InchbaldElizabeth Inchbald, née Simpson was an English novelist, actress, and dramatist.- Life :Daughter of John Simpson , head of a Roman Catholic Suffolk farming family. Elizabeth was educated with her sisters at home. At the age of 19 she went to London in order to act. Young and alone, she was...
, and
Sarah SiddonsSarah Siddons was a British actress, the best-known tragedienne of the 18th century. She was the elder sister of John Philip Kemble, Charles Kemble, Stephen Kemble, Ann Hatton and Elizabeth Whitlock. She was most famous for her portrayal of the Shakespearean character: Lady Macbeth, a character...
through
William GodwinWilliam Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and one of the first modern proponents of anarchism...
. Godwin and Wollstonecraft's unique courtship began slowly, but it eventually became a passionate love affair. Godwin had read her
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and later wrote that "If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book. She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius which commands all our admiration." Once Wollstonecraft became pregnant, they decided to marry so that their child would be legitimate. Their marriage revealed the fact that Wollstonecraft had never been married to Imlay, and as a result she and Godwin lost many friends. Godwin received further criticism because he had advocated the abolition of marriage in his philosophical treatise
Political JusticeEnquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners outlines the political philosophy of the eighteenth-century philosopher William Godwin....
. After their marriage on 29 March 1797, they moved into two adjoining houses, known as The Polygon, so that they could both still retain their independence; they often communicated by letter. By all accounts, theirs was a happy and stable, though tragically brief, relationship.
Death and Godwin's Memoirs
On 30 August 1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second daughter,
MaryMary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
. Although the delivery seemed to go well initially, the
placentaThe placenta is an organ unique to mammals that connects the developing fetus to the uterine wall. The placenta supplies the fetus with oxygen and food, and allows fetal waste to be disposed of via the maternal kidneys...
broke apart during the birth and became infected, a common occurrence in the eighteenth century. After several days of agony, Wollstonecraft died of
septicaemiaSepsis is a serious medical condition that is characterized by a whole-body inflammatory state and the presence of a known or suspected infection.
on 10 September. Godwin was devastated: he wrote to his friend Thomas HolcroftThomas Holcroft was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer.-Early life:He was born in Orange Court, Leicester Fields, London. His father had a shoemaker's shop, and kept riding horses for hire; but having fallen into difficulties was reduced to the status of hawking peddler...
, "I firmly believe there does not exist her equal in the world. I know from experience we were formed to make each other happy. I have not the least expectation that I can now ever know happiness again." She was buried at Old Saint Pancras ChurchyardSt Pancras Old Church is a Church of England parish church in central London. It is believed to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in England, and is dedicated to the Roman martyr Saint Pancras, although the building itself is largely Victorian...
, and a memorial to her was constructed there, though both her and Godwin's remains were later moved to BournemouthBournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the Borough of Bournemouth, England. The town has a population of 163,444 according to the 2001 Census, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is the largest town on the south coast and the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...
. Her tombstone reads, "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Born 27 April 1759: Died 10 September 1797."
In January 1798 Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of WomanMemoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is William Godwin's biography of his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ....
. Although Godwin felt that he was portraying his wife with love, compassion, and sincerity, many readers were shocked that he would reveal Wollstonecraft's illegitimate children, love affairs, and suicide attempts. The RomanticRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
poet Robert SoutheyRobert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
accused him of "the want of all feeling in stripping his dead wife naked" and vicious satires such as The Unsex'd FemalesThe Unsex'd Females, a Poem , by Richard Polwhele, is a polemical intervention into the public debates over the role of women at the end of the eighteenth century. The poem is primarily concerned with what Polwhele characterizes as the encroachment of radical French political and philosophical...
were published. Godwin's Memoirs portrays Wollstonecraft as a woman deeply invested in feeling who was balanced by his reason and as more of a religious skeptic than her own writings suggest. Godwin's views of Wollstonecraft were perpetuated throughout the nineteenth century and resulted in poems such as "Wollstonecraft and Fuseli" by British poet Robert BrowningRobert Browning was an English poet and milly playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
and that by William RoscoeWilliam Roscoe , was an English historian and miscellaneous writer.He was born in Liverpool, where his father, a market gardener, kept a public house called the Bowling Green at Mount Pleasant. Roscoe left school at the age of twelve, having learned all that his schoolmaster could teach...
which includes the lines:
- Hard was thy fate in all the scenes of life
- As daughter, sister, mother, friend, and wife;
- But harder still, thy fate in death we own,
- Thus mourn'd by Godwin with a heart of stone.
Legacy
Wollstonecraft has had what scholar Cora Kaplan labels a "curious" legacy: "for an author-activist adept in many genres… up until the last quarter-century Wollstonecraft's life has been read much more closely than her writing". After the devastating effect of Godwin's Memoirs, Wollstonecraft's reputation lay in tatters for a century; she was pilloried by such writers as Maria Edgeworth-Biography:Maria Edgeworth was born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, the second child of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Anna Maria Edgeworth née Elers and thus an aunt of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth. On her father's second marriage in 1773, she went with him to Ireland, where she eventually was to settle...
, who patterned the "freakish" Harriet Freke in BelindaBelinda is an 1801 novel by the Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. It was first published in three volumes by Joseph Johnson of London in 1801, and was later reprinted by Pandora Press in 1986...
(1801) after Wollstonecraft. Other novelists such as Mary HaysMary Hays was an English novelist and feminist.- Early years :Mary Hays was born in Southwark, London on Oct.13,1754. Almost nothing is known of her first 17 years. In 1779 she fell in love with John Eccles who lived in Gainsford Street, where she also lived. Their parents opposed the match but...
, Charlotte Turner SmithCharlotte Turner Smith was an English poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility....
, Fanny BurneyFrances Burney , also known as Fanny Burney and, after her marriage, as Madame d’Arblay, was an English novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in King’s Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to musical historian Dr Charles Burney and Mrs Esther Sleepe Burney...
, and Jane WestJane West [née Iliffe] , who published as "Prudentia Homespun" and "Mrs. West," was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and writer of conduct literature and educational tracts.- Life :...
created similar figures, all to teach a "moral lesson" to their readers. As Wollstonecraft scholar Virginia Sapiro makes clear, few read Wollstonecraft's works during the nineteenth century as "her attackers implied or stated that no self-respecting woman would read her work". One of those few was George EliotMary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
, a prolific writer of reviews, articles, novels, and translations. In 1855, she devoted an essay to the roles and rights of women, comparing Wollstonecraft and Margaret FullerSarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, more commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was a journalist, critic and women's rights activist associated with the American transcendental movement. She was the first full-time female book reviewer in journalism...
. Fuller was an American journalist, critic, and women's right activist who, like Wollstonecraft, had travelled to the Continent, been involved in the struggle for reform (in this case the Roman RepublicThe Roman Republic was a state declared on on February 9, 1849, when the government of Papal States was temporarily overthrown by a republican revolution led by Carlo Armellini, Giuseppe Mazzini and Aurelio Saffi...
), and had a child by a man without marrying him. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, a suffragist and later president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage SocietiesThe National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies , also known as the Suffragists was an organisation of women's suffrage societies in the United Kingdom.-Formation and campaigning:...
, wrote the introduction to the centenary edition of the Rights of Woman, cleansing the memory of Wollstonecraft and claiming her as the foremother of the struggle for the vote. With the advent of the modern feminist movementThe Suffrage movement is a series of campaigns on issues such as reproductive rights , domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. The goals of the movement vary from country to country, e.g...
, women as politically dissimilar from each other as Virginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
and Emma GoldmanEmma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire , Goldman emigrated to the...
embraced Wollstonecraft's life story and celebrated her "experiments in living", as Woolf termed them in a famous essay. Many, however, continued to decry Wollstonecraft's lifestyle and her works were still ignored.
With the emergence of feminist criticismFeminist criticism is a type of literary criticism, which was developed in the late 1960s, focusing on the role of women in literature. Two important representatives are Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir who claim that women are a subject and no object....
in academia in the 1960s and 1970s, Wollstonecraft's works returned to prominence. Their fortunes reflected that of the second wave of the feminist movement itself; for example, in the early 1970s, six major biographies of Wollstonecraft were published that presented her "passionate life in apposition to [her] radical and rationalist agenda". Wollstonecraft was seen as a paradoxical yet intriguing figure who did not adhere to the 1970s version of feminism—"the personal is the political". In the 1980s and 1990s, yet another image of Wollstonecraft emerged, one which described her as much more a creature of her time; scholars such as Claudia Johnson, Gary Kelly, and Virginia Sapiro demonstrated the continuity between Wollstonecraft's thought and other important eighteenth-century ideas regarding topics such as sensibilitySensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...
, economics, and political theory.
Wollstonecraft's work has also had an effect on feminism outside the academy in recent years. Ayaan Hirsi AliAyaan Hirsi Ali is a Dutch feminist, Intelectual writer, and politician. She is the estranged daughter of the Somali scholar, politician, and revolutionary opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse. She is a prominent critic of Islam, and her screenplay for Theo Van Gogh's movie Submission led to death...
, a political writer and former Muslim who is critical of Islam in general and its dictates regarding women in particular, cited the Rights of Woman in her autobiography InfidelInfidel is an autobiographical book and New York Times bestseller by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, published in 2007. It is a translation of the Dutch book Mijn Vrijheid , which was released on September 29, 2006. It was released in English on February 1, 2007...
and wrote that she was "inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist thinker who told women they had the same ability to reason as men did and deserved the same rights".
Educational works
The majority of Wollstonecraft's early productions centre around the topic of education; she assembled an anthology of literary extracts "for the improvement of young women" entitled The Female Reader and she translated two children's works, Maria Geertruida van de Werken de Cambon's Young Grandison and Christian Gotthilf Salzmann'sChristian Gotthilf Salzmann was the founder of the Schnepfenthal institution, a school dedicated to new modes of education ....
Elements of Morality. Her own writings also addressed the topic. In both her conduct bookConduct books are a genre of books that attempt to educate the reader on social norms. As a genre, they began in the mid-to-late Middle Ages, although antecedents such as The Maxims of Ptahhotep are among the earliest surviving works...
Thoughts on the Education of DaughtersThoughts on the education of daughters: with reflections on female conduct, in the more important duties of life is the first published work of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Published in 1787 by her friend Joseph Johnson, Thoughts is a conduct book that offers advice on female education...
(1787) and her children's bookChildren's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve and is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes exclude young-adult fiction, comic books, or other genres. Books specifically for children existed by the 17th century...
Original Stories from Real LifeOriginal Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness is the only complete work of children's literature by eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Original Stories begins with a frame story, which...
(1788), Wollstonecraft advocates educating children into the emerging middle-class ethos: self-discipline, honesty, frugality, and social contentment. Both books also emphasize the importance of teaching children to reason, revealing Wollstonecraft's intellectual debt to the important seventeenth-century educational philosopher John LockeJohn Locke was an English physician and philosopher regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political...
. However, the prominence she affords religious faith and innate feeling distinguishes her work from his and links it to the discourse of sensibilitySensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...
popular at the end of the eighteenth century. Both texts also advocate the education of women, a controversial topic at the time and one which she would return to throughout her career, most notably in A Vindication of the Rights of WomanA Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the...
. Wollstonecraft argues that well-educated women will be good wives and mothers and ultimately contribute positively to the nation.
Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
Published in response to Edmund Burke'sEdmund Burke PC was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after relocating to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his opposition to the French Revolution...
Reflections on the Revolution in FranceReflections on the Revolution in France , by Edmund Burke, is one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution...
(1790), which was a defence of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of EnglandThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the oldest among the communion's thirty-eight independent national and regional churches...
, Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) attacks aristocracyAristocracy is a form of government, in which a few of the most prominent citizens rule. This may be a hereditary elite, or it may be by a system of cooption where a council of prominent citizens add leading soldiers, merchants, land owners, priests, and lawyers to their number...
and advocates republicanismRepublicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of Republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context. The sometimes contrary definitions are all covered in...
. Hers was the first response in a pamphlet war that subsequently became known as the Revolution ControversyThe Revolution Controversy, a British debate over the French Revolution, lasted from 1789 through 1795. A pamphlet war began in earnest after the publication of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France , which surprisingly supported the French aristocracy...
, in which Thomas Paine'sThomas Paine was an author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Born in England, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 in time to participate in the American Revolution...
Rights of ManRights of Man , by Thomas Paine, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights, and their national interests. It defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke's attack in Reflections on the Revolution in France...
(1792) became the rallying cry for reformers and radicals.
Wollstonecraft attacked not only monarchy and hereditary privilege but also the language that Burke used to defend and elevate it. In a famous passage in the Reflections, Burke had lamented: "I had thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her [Marie AntoinetteMarie Antoinette ; was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I....
] with insult.—But the age of chivalry is gone." Most of Burke's detractors deplored what they viewed as theatrical pity for the French queen—a pity they felt was at the expense of the people. Wollstonecraft was unique in her attack on Burke's gendered language. By redefining the sublimeIn aesthetics, the sublime In aesthetics, the sublime In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublimis ([looking up from] under the lintel, high, lofty, elevated, exalted) is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or...
and the beautiful, terms first established by Burke himself in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and BeautifulA Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a 1757 treatise on aesthetics, written by Edmund Burke. It attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant....
(1756), she undermined his rhetoric as well as his argument. Burke had associated the beautiful with weakness and femininity and the sublime with strength and masculinity; Wollstonecraft turns these definitions against him, arguing that his theatrical tableaux turn Burke's readers—the citizens—into weak women who are swayed by show. In her first unabashedly feminist critique, which Wollstonecraft scholar Claudia L. JohnsonClaudia L. Johnson is the Murray Professor of English Literature at Princeton University; she is also currently chairperson of the English department. Johnson specializes in Restoration and eighteenth-century British literature, with an especial focus on the novel. She is also interested in...
argues remains unsurpassed in its argumentative force, Wollstonecraft indicts Burke's defence of an unequal society founded on the passivity of women.
In her arguments for republican virtue, Wollstonecraft invokes an emerging middle-class ethos in opposition to what she views as the vice-ridden aristocratic code of manners. Influenced by EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
thinkers, she believed in progress and derides Burke for relying on tradition and custom. She argues for rationality, pointing out that Burke's system would lead to the continuation of slaverySlavery is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation...
, simply because it had been an ancestral tradition. She describes an idyllic country life in which each family can have a farm that will just suit its needs. Wollstonecraft contrasts her utopiaUtopia is a name for an ideal community or society, that is taken from Of the Best State of a Republic, and of the New Island Utopia, a book written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system...
n picture of society, drawn with what she says is genuine feeling, to Burke's false feeling.
The Rights of Men was Wollstonecraft's first overtly political work, as well as her first feminist work; as Johnson contends, "it seems that in the act of writing the later portions of Rights of Men she discovered the subject that would preoccupy her for the rest of her career". It was this text that made her a well-known writer.
Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society and then proceeds to redefine that position, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men. Large sections of the Rights of Woman respond vitriolically to conduct bookConduct books are a genre of books that attempt to educate the reader on social norms. As a genre, they began in the mid-to-late Middle Ages, although antecedents such as The Maxims of Ptahhotep are among the earliest surviving works...
writers such as James FordyceJames Fordyce, DD , was an 18th-century clergyman. He is best known for his collection of sermons published in 1766 as Sermons for Young Women, popularly known as Fordyce's Sermons. Due to his great skill at public speaking, he was a popular orator...
and John GregoryJohn Gregory was an eighteenth-century Scottish physician, medical writer and moralist.Gregory, the grandson of James Gregory, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland to the professor of medicine James Gregorie and Anna Chalmers, his father's second wife...
and educational philosophers such as Jean-Jacques RousseauJean Jacques Rousseau was a major philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought.His novel, Emile: or, On Education, which he considered his most...
, who wanted to deny women an education. (Rousseau famously argues in ÉmileEmile, or On Education was considered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. On its first appearance in 1762 it was publicly burned....
(1762) that women should be educated for the pleasure of men.)
Wollstonecraft states that currently many women are silly and superficial (she refers to them, for example, as "spaniels" and "toys"), but argues that this is not because of an innate deficiency of mind but rather because men have denied them access to education. Wollstonecraft is intent on illustrating the limitations that women's deficient educations have placed on them; she writes: "Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison." She implies that, without the encouragement young women receive from an early age to focus their attention on beauty and outward accomplishments, women could achieve much more.
While Wollstonecraft does call for equality between the sexes in particular areas of life, such as morality, she does not explicitly state that men and women are equal. What she does claim is that men and women are equal in the eyes of God. However, such claims of equality stand in contrast to her statements respecting the superiority of masculine strength and valour. Wollstonecraft famously and ambiguously writes: "Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the order of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue. I speak collectively of the whole sex; but I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple direction, as that there is a God." Her ambiguous statements regarding the equality of the sexes have since made it difficult to classify Wollstonecraft as a modern feminist, particularly since the word and the concept were unavailable to her.
One of Wollstonecraft's most scathing critiques in the Rights of Woman is of false and excessive sensibilitySensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...
, particularly in women. She argues that women who succumb to sensibility are "blown about by every momentary gust of feeling" and because they are "the prey of their senses" they cannot think rationally. In fact, she claims, they do harm not only to themselves but to the entire civilization: these are not women who can help refine a civilization—a popular eighteenth-century idea—but women who will destroy it. Wollstonecraft does not argue that reason and feeling should act independently of each other; rather, she believes that they should inform each other.
In addition to her larger philosophical arguments, Wollstonecraft also lays out a specific educational plan. In the twelfth chapter of the Rights of Woman, "On National Education", she argues that all children should be sent to a "country day school" as well as given some education at home "to inspire a love of home and domestic pleasures." She also maintains that schooling should be co-educationalMixed-sex education , is the integrated education of males and females in the same institution. The opposite situation is described as single-sex education...
, arguing that men and women, whose marriages are "the cement of society", should be "educated after the same model."
Wollstonecraft addresses her text to the middle-class, which she describes as the "most natural state", and in many ways the Rights of Woman is inflected by a bourgeoisHistorically, the bourgeoisie were a social class of people, characterized by their ownership of capital and the related culture. They were a part of the middle or merchant classes of European feudalism, where their power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those...
view of the world. It encourages modesty and industry in its readers and attacks the uselessness of the aristocracy. But Wollstonecraft is not necessarily a friend to the poor; for example, in her national plan for education, she suggests that, after the age of nine, the poor, except for those who are brilliant, should be separated from the rich and taught in another school.
Novels
Both of Wollstonecraft's novelA novel is a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s criticize what she viewed as the patriarchal institution of marriage and its deleterious effects on women. In her first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788), the eponymous heroine is forced into a loveless marriage for economic reasons; she fulfils her desire for love and affection outside of marriage with two passionate romantic friendshipThe term romantic friendship refers to a very close but non-sexual relationship between friends, often involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that which is common in modern Western societies, for example holding hands, cuddling, and sharing a bed....
s, one with a woman and one with a man. Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798), an unfinished novel published posthumously and often considered Wollstonecraft's most radical feminist work, revolves around the story of a woman imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband; like Mary, Maria also finds fulfilment outside of marriage, in an affair with a fellow inmate and a friendship with one of her keepers. Neither of Wollstonecraft's novels depict successful marriages, although she posits such relationships in the Rights of Woman. At the end of Mary, the heroine believes she is going "to that world where there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage," presumably a positive state of affairs.
Both of Wollstonecraft's novels also critique the discourse of sensibilitySensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...
, a moral philosophy and aesthetic that had become popular at the end of the eighteenth century. Mary is itself a novel of sensibility and Wollstonecraft attempts to use the tropes of that genre to undermine sentimentalism itself, a philosophy she believed was damaging to women because it encouraged them to rely overmuch on their emotions. In The Wrongs of Woman the heroine's indulgence on romantic fantasies fostered by novels themselves is depicted as particularly detrimental.
Female friendships are central to both of Wollstonecraft's novels, but it is the friendship between Maria and Jemima, the servant charged with watching over her in the insane asylum, that is the most historically significant. This friendship, based on a sympathetic bond of motherhood, between an upper-class woman and a lower-class woman is one of the first moments in the history of feminist literature that hints at a cross-class argument, that is, that women of different economic positions have the same interests because they are women.
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)
Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a deeply personal travel narrativeTravel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
. The twenty-five letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on ScandinaviaScandinavia is a geographical region in northern Europe that includes, and is named after, the Scanian Province. It consists of the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark...
and its peoples to philosophical questions regarding identity to musings on her relationship with ImlayGilbert Imlay was an officer in the American Revolutionary War , a businessman and an author. He had a brief affair with Mary Wollstonecraft that resulted in the birth of a daughter, Fanny Imlay....
(although he is not referred to by name in the text). Using the rhetoric of the sublimeIn aesthetics, the sublime In aesthetics, the sublime In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublimis ([looking up from] under the lintel, high, lofty, elevated, exalted) is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or...
, Wollstonecraft explores the relationship between the self and society. Reflecting the strong influence of RousseauJean Jacques Rousseau was a major philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought.His novel, Emile: or, On Education, which he considered his most...
, Letters Written in Sweden shares the themes of the French philosopher's Reveries of a Solitary WalkerReveries of a Solitary Walker is an unfinished book by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written between 1776 and 1778. It was the last of a number of works composed toward the end of his life which were deeply autobiographical in nature...
(1782): "the search for the source of human happiness, the stoic rejection of material goods, the ecstatic embrace of nature, and the essential role of sentiment in understanding". While Rousseau ultimately rejects society, however, Wollstonecraft celebrates domestic scenes and industrial progress in her text.
Wollstonecraft promotes subjective experience, particularly in relation to nature, exploring the connections between the sublime and sensibilitySensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...
. Many of the letters describe the breathtaking scenery of Scandinavia and Wollstonecraft's desire to create an emotional connection to that natural world. In so doing, she gives greater value to the imagination than she had in previous works. As in her previous writings, she champions the liberation and education of women. In a change from her earlier works, however, she illustrates the detrimental effects of commerce on society, contrasting the imaginative connection to the world with a commercial and mercenary one, an attitude she associates with Imlay.
Letters Written in Sweden was Wollstonecraft's most popular book in the 1790s. It sold well and was reviewed positively by most critics. GodwinWilliam Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and one of the first modern proponents of anarchism...
wrote "if ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book." It influenced RomanticRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
poets such as William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets...
, who drew on its themes and its aesthetic.
See also
- 90481 Wollstonecraft
90481 Wollstonecraft is a Main-belt Asteroid discovered on February 16, 2004 by J. Dellinger and D. Wells at Needville.It was named for Mary Wollstonecraft . - External links :*-References:...
- Godwin-Shelly family tree
- Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft
This timeline lists important events relevant to the life of Mary Wollstonecraft , a British writer, philosopher, and feminist....
List of works
This is a complete list of Mary Wollstonecraft's works; all works are the first edition and were authored by Wollstonecraft unless otherwise noted.
- —.Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life
Thoughts on the education of daughters: with reflections on female conduct, in the more important duties of life is the first published work of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Published in 1787 by her friend Joseph Johnson, Thoughts is a conduct book that offers advice on female education...
. London: Joseph Johnson, 1787.
- —.Mary: A Fiction
Mary: A Fiction is the first and only complete novel written by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. It tells the tragic story of a heroine's successive "romantic friendships" with a woman and a man...
. London: Joseph Johnson, 1788.
- —.Original Stories from Real Life: With Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness
Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness is the only complete work of children's literature by eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Original Stories begins with a frame story, which...
. London: Joseph Johnson, 1788.
- Necker, Jacques
Jacques Necker was a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of Louis XVI, a post he held in the lead-up to the French Revolution in 1789.-Early life:Necker was born in Geneva, Switzerland...
. Of the Importance of Religious Opinions. Trans. Mary Wollstonecraft. London: Joseph Johnson, 1788.
- —.The Female Reader: Or, Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse; selected from the best writers, and disposed under proper heads; for the improvement of young women. By Mr. Cresswick, teacher of elocution [Mary Wollstonecraft]. To which is prefixed a preface, containing some hints on female education. London: Joseph Johnson, 1789.
- de Cambon, Maria Geertruida van de Werken. Young Grandison. A Series of Letters from Young Persons to Their Friends. Trans. Mary Wollstonecraft. London: Joseph Johnson, 1790.
- Salzmann, Christian Gotthilf
Christian Gotthilf Salzmann was the founder of the Schnepfenthal institution, a school dedicated to new modes of education ....
. Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children; with an introductory address to parents. Trans. Mary Wollstonecraft. London: Joseph Johnson, 1790.
- —.A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France is a political pamphlet, written by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism...
. London: Joseph Johnson, 1790.
- —.A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Moral and Political Subjects
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the eighteenth-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the...
. London: Joseph Johnson, 1792.
- —."On the Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character in Women, with Strictures on Dr. Gregory's Legacy to His Daughters". New Annual Register (1792): 457–466. [From Rights of Woman]
- —.An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution; and the Effect It Has produced in Europe. London: Joseph Johnson, 1794.
- —.Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. London: Joseph Johnson, 1796.
- —."On Poetry, and Our Relish for the Beauties of Nature". Monthly Magazine (April 1797).
- —. The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman is Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman...
. Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; unfinished]
- —."The Cave of Fancy". Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; fragment written in 1787]
- —."Letter on the Present Character of the French Nation". Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; written in 1793]
- —."Fragment of Letters on the Management of Infants". Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; unfinished]
- —."Lessons". Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; unfinished]
- —."Hints". Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; notes on the second volume of Rights of Woman, never written]
- —.Contributions to the Analytical Review
The Analytical Review was a periodical established in London in 1788 by the publisher Joseph Johnson and the writer Thomas Christie. Part of the Republic of Letters, it was a gadfly publication, which offered readers summaries and analyses of the many new publications issued at the end of the...
(1788–1797) [published anonymously]
Primary works
- Butler, Marilyn
Marilyn Butler is a British literary critic. She was Rector of Exeter College, Oxford from 1993 to 2004, and was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge, from 1986 to 1993...
, ed. Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution Controversy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-28656-5.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-231-13142-9.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler. 7 vols. London: William Pickering, 1989. ISBN 0-8147-9225-1.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman. Eds. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. Toronto: Broadview Literary Texts, 1997. ISBN 1-55111-088-1.
Biographies
- Flexner, Eleanor. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography. New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1972. ISBN 0-6981-0447-1.
- Godwin, William
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and one of the first modern proponents of anarchism...
. Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1798. Eds. Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker. Peterborough: Broadview Press Ltd., 2001. ISBN 1-55111-259-0.
- Gordon, Lyndall. Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Great Britain: Virago, 2005. ISBN 1-84408-141-9.
- Hays, Mary
Mary Hays was an English novelist and feminist.- Early years :Mary Hays was born in Southwark, London on Oct.13,1754. Almost nothing is known of her first 17 years. In 1779 she fell in love with John Eccles who lived in Gainsford Street, where she also lived. Their parents opposed the match but...
. "Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft". Annual Necrology (1797–98): 411–460.
- Jacobs, Diane. Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. USA: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN 0-349-11461-7.
- St Clair, William. The Godwins and the Shelleys: The biography of a family. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1989. ISBN 0-8018-4233-6.
- Sunstein, Emily. A Different Face: the Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1975. ISBN 0-06-014201-4.
- Todd, Janet
Janet Margaret Todd is a Welsh-born academic and a well-respected author of many books on women in literature. Todd was educated at Cambridge University and the University of Florida, where she undertook a doctorate on the poet John Clare...
. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2000. ISBN 0-231-12184-9.
- Tomalin, Claire
Claire Tomalin is an English biographer and journalist. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge.She was literary editor of the New Statesman and of the Sunday Times, and has written several noted biographies...
. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Rev. ed. 1974. New York: Penguin, 1992. ISBN 0-14-016761-7.
- Wardle, Ralph M. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1951.
Other secondary works
- Conger, Syndy McMillen. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Language of Sensibility. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8386-3553-9.
- Falco, Maria J., ed. Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. University Park: Penn State Press, 1996. ISBN 0-271-01493-8.
- Favret, Mary. Romantic Correspondence: Women, politics and the fiction of letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-41096-7.
- Janes, R. M. "On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman". Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (1978): 293–302.
- Johnson, Claudia L.
Claudia L. Johnson is the Murray Professor of English Literature at Princeton University; she is also currently chairperson of the English department. Johnson specializes in Restoration and eighteenth-century British literature, with an especial focus on the novel. She is also interested in...
Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 0-226-401847.
- Jones, Chris. "Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindications and their political tradition". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-78952-4.
- Jones, Vivien. "Mary Wollstonecraft and the literature of advice and instruction". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-78952-4.
- Kaplan, Cora. "Mary Wollstonecraft's reception and legacies". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-78952-4.
- Kaplan, Cora. "Pandora's Box: Subjectivity, Class and Sexuality in Socialist Feminist Criticism". Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986. ISBN 0-86091-151-9.
- Kaplan, Cora. "Wild Nights: Pleasure/Sexuality/Feminism". Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986. ISBN 0-86091-151-9.
- Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: St. Martin's, 1992. ISBN 0-312-12904-1.
- Myers, Mitzi. "Impeccable Governess, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children's Books". Children's Literature 14 (1986):31–59.
- Myers, Mitzi. "Sensibility and the 'Walk of Reason': Mary Wollstonecraft's Literary Reviews as Cultural Critique". Sensibility in Transformation: Creative Resistance to Sentiment from the Augustans to the Romantics. Ed. Syndy McMillen Conger. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-8386-3352-8.
- Myers, Mitzi. "Wollstonecraft's Letters Written . . . in Sweden: Towards Romantic Autobiography". Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 8 (1979): 165-85.
- Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ISBN 0-226-67528-9.
- Richardson, Alan. "Mary Wollstonecraft on education". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-78952-4.
- Sapiro, Virginia. A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN 0-226-73491-9.
- Taylor, Barbara. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-66144-7.
- Todd, Janet. Women's Friendship in Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. ISBN 0-231-04562-X
External links
- Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by William Godwin
William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and one of the first modern proponents of anarchism...
, at Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain...
- Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1796 edition) at Google Books
- An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution at libertyfund.org
- Biography of Wollstonecraft by Jane Johnson Lewis from about.com
- Wollstonecraft concordance
- Mary Wollstonecraft: A 'Speculative and Dissenting Spirit' by Janet Todd
Janet Margaret Todd is a Welsh-born academic and a well-respected author of many books on women in literature. Todd was educated at Cambridge University and the University of Florida, where she undertook a doctorate on the poet John Clare...
at www.bbc.co.uk
- "Mary" by William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the...
at sterneck.net