Mary Wollstonecraft's life is the fascinating story of a nonconformist seeking her way in an English society that had no place for her. She was born in London, the second of seven children, to an abusive, alcoholic father and a submissive, victimized mother. While still a child, Wollstonecraft had to take a great deal of responsibility for her family. She frequently intervened--even taking blows in the protection of her mother.
As a young woman, Wollstonecraft showed remarkable intellectual ability, despite the fact that she was largely self-taught. Following a period as a grade-school teacher, and at the urging of close friends, she took up writing. She published her first work, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, in 1786. Over the next six years, Wollstonecraft worked extensively as a writer, book reviewer, and translator for the London publishing house of Joseph Johnson. Among the works published in this period were her Original Stories (1788), her autobiographical novel Mary (1788), and her response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, the classic A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790; revised 1791). The work for which Wollstonecraft is best known is A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792.
Beginning in 1793, Wollstonecraft was involved in a series of scandals. She conceived a child out of wedlock, was mentioned in a treason trial, married twice, and twice attempted suicide. In this tumultuous period, she also managed to publish her Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution (1794). In 1797, she died from complications following the birth of her second daughter. This second child, also named Mary, went on to fame as the author of the classic horror novel Frankenstein (1818), and as the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN
In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft argues that women's voices are missing because women are denied educational opportunities. Since reason is the key characteristic of human beings, anyone denied the possibility of developing reason, male or female, will seem inferior. If women were more "rationally educated, they could take a more comprehensive view of things ..." and participate more fully in philosophy.
In the selection that follows, Wollstonecraft acknowledges that the women in her society were intellectually inferior. But the reason for this inferiority had nothing to do with "sexual character." Rather they were "inferior" because they had been taught to focus all their attention on becoming docile beauties attractive to men.
(Click here for our selection from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.)
By Forrest Baird © 2000 by Prentice Hall from Philosophic Classics, Volume III