RETURN TO HOME PAGE

As Scott says above many of the views which Mary Wollstonecraft puts over in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman remain controversial and an important contribution to feminist thought and discourse today. Her life was as controversial if not more so at the time as her printed works. Her reputation has proven either an embarrassment or an inspiration to subsequent feminists dependant upon the prevailing social circumstances and moral currents prevalent at the time. This essay will examine some examples of her life and her work in relation to their importance to subsequent feminist thought.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s life was certainly unusual for the standards of the late eighteenth century and would be seen as the sort of life to be condemned by Tory bigots today as a symptom of the permissive society. Neither she nor her circle of friends had any respect for family values or the sanctity of marriage. In fact she claimed to be married to her lover Imlay merely to be allowed to stay in France. This fictional marriage was later disproved by her actual marriage to William Godwin in March 1797 just five months before she gave birth to her second daughter Mary. Following her death on 10 September 1797 ten days after the birth of her daughter. Godwin published Posthumous Works of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It is mainly upon these frank accounts that the knowledge of her life is based

Mary Wollstonecraft’s background was of a middle class family slowly spiralling to failure. She was born in 1759, second of seven children to a bourgeois urban family. Her father took the family around the whole of England. Slowly reducing the family’s wealth and status through "financial and emotional extravagance" In 1778 Wollstonecraft left home and took a job as a lady’s companion which was one of the few jobs open to a middle class woman. In 1784 she helped her sister flee her husband, although whether this was actually what her sister wanted or part of Wollstonecraft’s ideological game playing is open to debate. Wollstonecraft left her job as lady’s companion in 1787 to live alone on her earnings from writing. Her first book was on the conduct of women (Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: with Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of life) this showed her views on the nature of the lower and upper classes as disparaging upper class women as wastrels and seeing the lower classes as childlike and able only to copy the example of the middle class. During this time she published her second book, Mary a novel which was a thinly disguised version of her own early life.

In 1790 she wrote and published A Vindication of the Rights of Men as "a Letter to the right honourable Edmund Bourke" as a reply to his Reflections on the Revolution in France which changed her status from that of successful hack writer to social critic and public figure. This was followed in 1792 by A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was dedicated to Talleyrand following his production of a pamphlet advising universal education for French boys but pushing girls towards domestic education only. Wollstonecraft wrote on the first page to ensure her message got through to its intended audience "Sir having read with great pleasure a pamphlet which you have lately published, I have decided to dedicate this volume to you - the first dedication which I have ever written, to induce you to read it with attention."

Whether he did or not is unclear, however many others did at the time and since have treated it as a base rock of feminist thought.

As Kelly points out above, in Wollstonecraft’s books A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft tried to influence French Revolution in a feminist direction. They were both written not as Miriam Brody Kramnick describes The Rights of Woman as "the feminist declaration of independence" but as rapid answers to pressing questions.

This was at the time of the British cultural revolution and Mary Wollstonecraft was part of a middle class which was trying to change society into its own image. Middle class culture was developing at the time around an increasing number of magazines, newspapers, booksellers, publishers and libraries. Whereas ruling class and working class culture remained dependent upon the traditions of face to face direct contact Mary Wollstonecraft used this new middle class culture to put across her ideas. This meant that although her writings were designed for immediate effect, (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman took only six weeks to Write) they have lasted and continued to be interpreted up to the present.

A Vindication of The Rights of Woman can be seen from a modern perspective as the most important of a number of feminist books published at the time. Other works included The Gleanor, by Judith Sargent Murray and Alcuin: A Dialogue by Charles Brockden Brown’. Such ideas of extending the rights of man to woman seem obvious to us with hindsight but at the time were revolutionary and much of feminist thought still depends upon their foundations. Even Wollstonecraft’s radical friends such as Godwin did not see the position of women as one of great importance.

What Wollstonecraft wanted was equality with middle class man for middle class woman. This was due to her own perspective as a bourgeois woman herself. She in fact saw working class women as in a more dignified position (despite their drudgery and financial hardships) than the middle class and advocated that middle class women advance themselves through hard work. It was the idleness of mind and body which she feared not overwork and economic dependence.

Mary Wollstonecraft argued that women in the present state (in 1792) were inferior due to repression and their own compliance with their fitting in with the male defined role of femininity. Vindication "defined with brutal clarity an idea vital to later feminism - that femininity is an artificial construct." This again showed the middle class based nature of Vindication and of Mary Wollstonecrafts ideas in which she attacked femininity which she saw as male imposed weakness as her main target to rid woman of inequality. Her main objective was to make women human not win them equal political rights to men. Despite this she was at the forefront of radical views in education. She asked for universal education to the age of nine for boys and girls, which was unheard of at the time An example of her thoughts on the role of women in their own oppression and man’s encouragement of the continuation of that oppression is found in her Letters from Sweden:

In this she is clearly describing her own life’s experiences of swimming against the tide.

Her views on whether the situation of women is the fault of those women for being weak or of society for pushing them into that role seam to be ambiguous. "She makes demands for women then doubles back and says that womanhood should be beside the point." In Vindication

she calls for µa revolution in female mannersã Then goes on to ask:

This question of whether women should become more like men to become equal or whether it is society at fault for valuing femininity less than masculinity has troubled subsequent feminists as much as it appears to have done Wollstonecraft.

Her influence on subsequent generations can be seen by the number of books still written on her. No account of feminism is complete without her name appearing in its background or introduction. As Walters says in The Rights and Wrongs of Women:

Feminists in the nineteenth century saw her life as an embarrassment and her ideas as inspiring and worthy of study.Today her ideas appear commonplace and have been said by numerous others since, while her life seams one of courage and struggle to live out her ideals when they were new and more threatening to men than they are today, against a hostile background of intolerance and oppression.

Her ideas on education for women and upon the instruction of her class (the middle class) on how to increase the status of middle class women to that of men were the subjects she concentrated upon in A Vindication. However, her pursuit of an independent life for herself against the prevailing culture of female dependence upon men can be seen as the inheritance and inspiration for future generations of women. 

Gary Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft, 1996, MacMillan Press Ltd

RETURN TO HOME PAGE