Mary Wollstonecraft

Lore & Background

Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London, the second of seven children of Elizabeth Dixon and Edward John Wollstonecraft. Her father squandered the family's income on speculative projects, causing financial instability and frequent moves. He was apparently a violent man who would beat his wife in drunken rages; as a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her mother's bedroom to protect her. In 1784, she persuaded her sister Eliza, suffering from what was probably postpartum depression, to leave her husband and infant, arranging the escape herself—a demonstration of her willingness to challenge social norms, though the human costs were severe: Eliza suffered social condemnation and, unable to remarry, was doomed to poverty. Two friendships shaped her early life: with Jane Arden in Beverley, with whom she read books and attended lectures, and with Fanny Blood, whom Wollstonecraft credited with opening her mind. After Blood's death in 1785, Wollstonecraft worked as a governess to the daughters of the Kingsborough family in Ireland. Frustrated by limited career options for poor but respectable women, she moved to London in 1787 to become an author, a radical choice. Assisted by the liberal publisher Joseph Johnson, she translated texts, wrote reviews for the Analytical Review, and attended Johnson's famous dinners, meeting Thomas Paine and the philosopher William Godwin. She pursued a relationship with the married artist Henry Fuseli, proposing a platonic living arrangement, but Fuseli's wife was appalled and he broke off the relationship. After Fuseli's rejection, she traveled to France.

Reader's Guide

Wollstonecraft's significance lies in her foundational role in feminist philosophy. Her best-known work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but appear so only due to lack of education, and that both sexes should be treated as rational beings, imagining a social order founded on reason. She also wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) in response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, which made her famous overnight. Her legacy was long overshadowed by attention to her unconventional personal life, which included two ill-fated affairs—with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay)—and a marriage to the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. After her death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. With the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, her advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. She died at age 38, 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, who became an accomplished writer and author of Frankenstein.

Did You Know?

• Wollstonecraft died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, who later wrote Frankenstein.
• She wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men in response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, completing it in less than a month.
• As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside her mother's bedroom door to protect her from their father's violent rages.
• In 1784, she arranged for her sister Eliza to leave her husband and infant, a decision that led to Eliza's social condemnation and lifelong poverty.
• Wollstonecraft's widower William Godwin published a Memoir of her life in 1798, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century.