Mary Wollstonecraft

Cynthia Guardian

Women Studies 200

Submitted to Betsy Erbaugh

Mary Wollstonecraft

(1759-1797)

“Mary Wollstonecraft was an Anglo-Irish feminist, writer and intellectual woman of her time.”

“I do not wish [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”

Mary Wollstonecraft was born 1759, in London, and was the second of six siblings. Throughout her childhood her family moved around and hardly ever settled in one place. Her father a farmer left his family poor because he was seeking the best area for his agricultural but could never find the best place to settle. Wollstonecraft’s mother lived in servitude and was often abused by Mary’s father until she died in 1790. By the time she was nineteen Wollstonecraft decided she wanted to escape the hardships and instability of her family. She ventured out to live on her own independently and to pursue an education. Wollstonecraft then made a disapproval of existing concepts that women were incompetent of independence, because most women were uneducated and confined to the domestic family household and as a result unable to develop those talents. Wollstonecraft and her sister Eliza Wollstonecraft established a school for women in the 1780s. She then went on to serve as a governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough before settling in London to pursue a career as an editor and a writer. In 1788 she became translator and literary advisor to Joseph Johnson, a publisher of radical books. Her association with Johnson brought her into contact with top intellectuals in London. In 1792, Wollstonecraft published her Vindication on the Rights of Women, which was advocating the equality of men and women. After being publicized she became a well-known feminist author of her time. “Wollstonecraft is usually considered a liberal feminist because her approach is primarily concerned with the individual woman and about rights. She could be considered as a difference feminist in her honoring of women's natural talents and her insistence that women not be measured by men's standards.”

Education:

Public School Education

Self taught

Professional & Activist History:

Established a school for children.

Wrote Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life (1787).

The governess of Lord Kingsborough, living most of the time in Ireland.

She settled in George Street, London, determined to take up a literary career.

Real life experiences make Wollstonecraft become involved with writing feminist works.

Works on Many Essays and Books:

Writes her first book, Mary, a fiction

Maria or the Wrongs of Women

Wollstonecraft asserted that women had strong sexual desires and that it was degrading and immoral to pretend otherwise.

Children's book, Original Stories from Real Life.

Writes A Vindication of The Rights of Women.

Advocating equality of the sexes, and the major doctrines of the later women's movement.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

A series of failed romances also provoked her publications.

Publications:

• Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: with Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life. London, J. Johnson, 1787.
• A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honorable Edmund Burke. London, J. Johnson, 1790; revised, 1790.
• A Vindication of the Rights of Women: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. London, J. Johnson, and Boston, Thomas & Andrews, 1792; second edition, London, J. Johnson, 1792.
• An Historical and Moral View of the Progress of the French Revolution, and the Effect It Has Produced in Europe. London, J. Johnson, 1794.
• Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. London and Wilmington, Delaware, J. Johnson, 1796.

Works About the Author:

• Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, edited by William Godwin. London, J. Johnson, 4 vols. 1798.
• Letters to Imlay. London, Kegan Paul, 1879; New York, Haskell House, 1971.
• The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay. London, Hutchinson, and Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1908.
• Four New Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft and Helen M. Williams, edited by Benjamin P. Kurtz and Carrie C. Autrey. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1937.
• Godwin and Mary: Letters of William Godwin and Wollstonecraft, edited by Ralph Wardle. Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 1966.
• A Wollstonecraft Anthology, edited by Janet Todd. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1977; Cambridge, Polity Press, 1989.
• Collected Letters, edited by Ralph M. Wardle. Ithaca, New York, and London, Cornell University Press, 1979.
• A Wollstonecraft Reader, edited by Barbara H. Solomon and Paula S. Berggren. New York, New American Library, 1983.
• The Collected Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Marilyn Butler, Janet Todd, and Emma Rees-Mogg. London, Pickering & Chatto, 7 vols.1989.
• Political Writings, edited by Janet Todd. London, W. Pickering, and Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1993.
• Editor (as Mr. Cresswick), The Female Reader. London, J. Johnson, 1789; Delmar, New York, Scholars Facsimiles, 1980.

Works Cited

1. About.com

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa082099.htm

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/qu/blquwoll.htm

Kim Britton’s Website:

http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/maryshel/feminist.shtml

History Guide

http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/wollstonecraft.html

Oregon State University Philosophy Dept.: Chronology Of Mary Wollstonecraft

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/wollstonecraft.html