Mary Wollstonecraft (Alicia Shupe)
Painting by John Opie c. 1797
Born April
27, 1759 to Edward John Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon, Mary was the second
of seven children. Mary’s father was a violent man who bullied and abused both
herself and her mother. Mary began to earn her own living at nineteen years
old, and worked as a lady’s companion in Bath. When her mother’s health began
to fail, Mary returned home to nurse her, and after her death, she lived with
her good friend Fanny Blood’s family. In 1783, Mary helped her sister Eliza
escape from an unhappy marriage by hiding her sister until a legal separation
could be obtained. After which, the sisters, along with Mary’s friend Fanny,
established a school in Newington Green. Mary’s experiences as a schoolteacher
would eventually be drawn upon to write Thoughts
on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More
Important Duties of Life (1787).
In 1787-88,
Wollstonecraft began working in London as a literary translator for Joseph
Johnson, who had published Thoughts. Johnson
was a publisher of “radical” texts, and it was in his employ that she began
writing and publishing her own radical intellectual works concerning the
treatment and education of women. Her novel, Mary, A Fiction was published in 1788 and is still considered one
of her most radical texts. In it, she considers marriage as a patriarchal
institution which diminishes rather than enriches the women who participate in
it.
In accordance
with her gender and station in life as a child, Mary did not receive an
extensive formal education, however, her time spent as a literary translator
and reviewer coupled with her own curiosity helped to introduce her to a world
of authors, including Leibniz (plato.stanford.edu). Wollstonecraft contributed
to Joseph Johnson’s Analytical Review
both as a reviewer and as an editorial assistant. It was in the course of this
work that in 1789 she reviewed a speech given by her friend Richard Price to
the Revolution Society. His speech was later attacked by Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France,
and those attacks prompted Wollstonecraft to take up her pen in Price’s defense
in A Vindication of the Rights of Men
(1790). The publication of Vindication
marked the beginning of Wollstonecraft’s career as a political writer, and in
1791 she began writing A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects.
To date, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
remains Wollstonecraft’s most famous and influential work. In it, she critiques
the notions of women as helpless and argues for equality of the sexes. Wollstonecraft
noted that women were often allowed to become silly and foolish and that this
plight could be remedied if they were allowed an education equal to that of the
men. “Education held the key to achieving a sense of self-respect and anew
self-image that would enable women to put their capacities to good use” instead
of becoming frustrated by their marital captivity and becoming tyrants to their
children and servants (historyguide.org).
In 1792,
Wollstonecraft met Gilbert Imlay, an American merchant and author, in France.
The two began a romantic relationship the result of which was the birth of
Mary’s daughter, Fanny, who was named for her friend Fanny Blood, in 1794.
However, Mary and Gilbert were never married and the relationship was a
miserable one which eventually ended in Imlay rejecting Wollstonecraft
completely. In 1795, one year after Fanny’s birth, Mary attempted suicide twice
due to her chronic unhappiness, but it was spring of 1796 before she and Imlay
ended their relationship for good. Later that summer, Wollstonecraft met
William Godwin whom she would marry in 1797. Godwin was the father of Mary’s
second and most famous daughter, author Mary Shelley. Shelley was born August
30th 1797, however, Wollstonecraft suffered complications and died
ten days later.
Wollstonecraft
was a true feminist radical in her time, and the arguments of her Vindication would later set the doctrine
for the women’s rights movement with the work returning to prominence during
the second wave of the feminist movement in 1960s and 1970s
(thefamouspeople.com).
Sources:
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