capitalism

546 Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797)
The French Revolution (1789) was a pivotal event for
Wollstonecraft, who viewed it as a struggle for individual
liberty against tyrannical monarchy. When Price publicly
argued that Britain should support the rights that the French
were exercising to dethrone a bad king, the statesman
Edmund Burke replied with Reflections on the Revolution
in France in which he argued in favor of the French monarchy.
In turn, Wollstonecraft wrote “A Vindication of the
Rights of Men” (1790) in support of Price and revolution
and against social practices such as the slave trade.
Wollestonescraft’s pamphlet was well received by other
radicals, such as Thomas Paine. Her manifesto, Vindication
of the Rights of Woman, appeared the following year. In it,
she examined women’s education, the status of woman and
her rights, as well as the role of private versus public life.
She excoriated the educational system for keeping women
in “ignorance and slavish dependence,” she advocated the
identical rights of women and men, and famously referred
to marriage as “legal prostitution.” The Vindication also
argued against monarchy.
In 1792, Wollstonecraft moved to France to witness the
revolution. Her book, Historical and Moral View of the
Origin and Progress of the French Revolution (1794), documents
her disillusionment, which sprang from the
Revolution’s violence, chaos, and unrealized goals. While in
France, Wollstonecraft became pregnant by the American
writer Gilbert Imlay, whom she did not marry and by
whom she was abandoned. With her newborn daughter,
Wollstonecraft followed Imlay back to London in 1795,
where she twice attempted suicide over the failed romance.
In 1796, her book Letters Written during a Short Residence
in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark was published; it mixed
travelogue with political theory and emotional outbursts.
Recovering from Imlay, Wollstonecraft rejoined the London
radicals, among whose ranks were Paine, William Blake,
and William Wordsworth. She reestablished contact with
Godwin—the founder of philosophical anarchism—with
whom she had quarreled years before, and they soon
became lovers. They married in 1797, although both had
repudiated marriage in their writings. Soon thereafter, Mary
gave birth to a second daughter, Mary, who would later
marry Percy Bysshe Shelley and write Frankenstein among
several other novels. Less than 2 weeks later, Wollstonecraft
died of septicemia.
In 1798, a heartbroken Godwin published the
Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, which included
her unfinished novel Maria, or, the Wrongs of Woman: A
Posthumous Fragment and his own Memoirs of the Author
of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Maria likened the
life of working women to imprisonment. The Memoirs candidly
described Wollstonecraft’s struggles due to her sex,
including Imlay’s betrayal, her illegitimate daughter, and
single motherhood. Wollstonecraft’s legacy, which rests on
the pioneering Vindication of the Rights of Woman, has
been enhanced by the drama and tragedy of her life, which
is often pointed to as a reminder of the high price women
paid for freedom.
See also Feminism and Women’s Rights; French Revolution;
Godwin, William; Price, Richard
Further Readings
WME
Falso, Maria J., ed. Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1996.
Ferguson, Moira, and Janet Todd. Mary Wollstonecraft. Boston:
Twayne, 1984.
Flexner, Eleanor. Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Putnam, 1972.
George, Margaret. One Woman’s “Situation”: A Study of Mary
Wollstonecraft. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.
Godwin, William. Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication
of the Rights of Woman. London, 1798; New York:
Penguin, 1987.