19 Mary Wollstonecraft

19.4.7: Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights, whose focus on women’s rights, and particularly women’s access to education, distinguished her from most of male Enlightenment thinkers.

Learning Objective

Summarize the ways in which Wollstonecraft’s philosophy differed from the other Enlightenment thinkers

Key Points

  • Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. She was the major female voice of the Enlightenment. Until the late 20th century, however, Wollstonecraft’s life, received more attention than her writing.
  • The majority of Wollstonecraft’s early works focus on education. She advocates educating children into the emerging middle-class ethos: self-discipline, honesty, frugality, and social contentment. She also advocates the education of women, a controversial topic at the time and one which she would return to throughout her career.
  • In response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which was a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England, Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism.
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) 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 claims that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be “companions” to their husbands, rather than just wives.
  • Scholars of feminism still debate to what extent Wollstonecraft was, indeed, a feminist; while she 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.
  • Wollstonecraft addresses her writings to the middle class, and represents a class bias by her condescending treatment of the poor.

Key Terms

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A 1792 work by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft that is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft argues that women should have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be “companions” to their husbands, rather than just wives.
Reflections on the Revolution in France
A political pamphlet written by the Irish statesman Edmund Burke and published in 1790. One of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution, it is a defining tract of modern conservatism as well as an important contribution to international theory.
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
A 1790 political pamphlet written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism. It was the first response in a pamphlet war sparked by the publication of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England.

 

 

 

Woman’s Voice at the Age of Enlightenment

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children’s book. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft’s life, which encompassed an illegitimate child, passionate love affairs, and suicide attempts, received more attention than her writing. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. She died at the age of 38, eleven days after giving birth to her second daughter, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. The second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, became an accomplished writer herself as Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

After Wollstonecraft’s death, her widower published a memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement 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 philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie (c. 1797), National Portrait Gallery, London

Despite the controversial topic, the Rights of Woman received favorable reviews and was a great success. It was almost immediately released in a second edition in 1792, several American editions appeared, and it was translated into French. It was only the later revelations of her personal life that resulted in negative views towards Wollstonecraft, which persisted for over a century.

 

Education Theory

The majority of Wollstonecraft’s early works focus on education. She assembled an anthology of literary extracts “for the improvement of young women” entitled The Female Reader. In both her conduct book Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and her children’s book Original Stories from Real Life (1788), Wollstonecraft advocates educating children into the emerging middle-class ethos of 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 17th-century educational philosopher John Locke. Both texts also advocate the education of women, a controversial topic at the time, and one which she would return to throughout her career. Wollstonecraft argues that well-educated women will be good wives and mothers, and ultimately contribute positively to the nation.

 

A Vindication of the Rights of Man

Published in response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which was a defense of constitutional monarchy, aristocracy, and the Church of England, and an attack on Wollstonecraft’s friend, Richard Price, Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790) attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism. Wollstonecraft attacked not only monarchy and hereditary privilege, but also the gendered language that Burke used to defend and elevate it. Burke associated the beautiful with weakness and femininity, and the sublime with strength and masculinity. Wollstonecraft turns these definitions against him, arguing that his theatrical approach turn Burke’s readers—the citizens—into weak women who are swayed by show. In her first unabashedly feminist critique, Wollstonecraft indicts Burke’s defense 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 Enlightenment 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 slavery, simply because it had been an ancestral tradition.

 

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) 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 just 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 the writers, who wanted to deny women an education.

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. She claims that men and women are equal in the eyes of God. However, such statements of equality stand in contrast to her statements respecting the superiority of masculine strength and valor. Her ambiguous position regarding the equality of the sexes have since made it difficult to classify Wollstonecraft as a modern feminist. Her focus on the rights of women does distinguish Wollstonecraft from most of her male Enlightenment counterparts. However, some of them, most notably Marquis de Condorcet, expressed a much more explicit position on the equality of men and women. Already in 1790, Condorcet advocated women’s suffrage.

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 bourgeois 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.

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