“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners – time to restore to them their lost dignity. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners”
Mary Wollstonecraft

Early life

Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London. Although her family had a comfortable income when she was a child, her father gradually squandered it on speculative projects. Consequently, the family became financially unstable and they were frequently forced to move during Wollstonecraft’s youth. The family’s financial situation eventually became so dire that Wollstonecraft’s father compelled her to turn over money that she would have inherited at her maturity. Moreover, he was apparently a violent man who would beat his wife in drunken rages.

(This means that Mary, in her childhood was not surrounded by good influences referring to her relationship with her father. Seeing him mistreating her mother constantly during her childhood was a painful experience for her. From my point of wiew, it is a quite important fact to take into account because it determined the position that she adopted from these point to her future. *see*)

As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her mother’s bedroom to protect her. Wollstonecraft played a similar maternal role for her sisters, Everina and Eliza, throughout her life. For example, in a defining moment in 1784, she convinced Eliza, who was suffering from what was probably postpartum depression, to leave her husband and infant; Wollstonecraft made all of the arrangements for Eliza to flee, demonstrating her willingness to challenge social norms. The human costs, however, were severe: her sister suffered social condemnation and, because she could not remarry, was doomed to a life of poverty and hard work.

(She was a woman extremely fighter , and due to all this she decided to write her first book, because she felt that was in her hands to demand woman’s  importance. We can realise it when reading the biography the author tell us that she was her mother’s support when she was just a child and when protecting her sister Eliza from her husband who mistreated her. Besides of all this, I think that one thing shocked her deeply was when society repudiated her sister, just because she left her husband because of a postpartum depression.

I suppose that, as a fighter woman was very difficult for her struggling against this society’s disdain, and above all, the cruel distinction between man and women. So, what I can actually say is that the key point, or the main reason why she began to write about the importance of women in society and also feminist topics was because her childhood had a huge influence on her and he needed to overcome those horrible past by means of helping other women.)

She always was surrounded by women. Two friendships shaped Wollstonecraft’s early life. The first was with Jane Arden in Beverley. The two frequently read books together and attended lectures presented by Arden’s father, a self-styled philosopher and scientist. Wollstonecraft revelled in the intellectual atmosphere of the Arden household and valued her friendship with Arden greatly. The second and more important friendship was with Fanny Blood, introduced to Wollstonecraft by the Clares, a couple in Hoxton who became parental figures to her.

In 1778 she  accepted a job as a lady’s companion to Sarah Dawson, a widow living in Bath. However, Wollstonecraft had trouble getting along with the irascible woman (an experience she drew on when describing the drawbacks of such a position in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787)). In 1780 she returned home, called back to care for her dying mother. Rather than return to Dawson’s employ after the death of her mother, Wollstonecraft moved in with the Bloods. She realized during the two years she spent with the family that she had idealized Blood, who was more invested in traditional feminine values than was Wollstonecraft. But Wollstonecraft remained dedicated to her and her family throughout her life.

In order to make a living, Wollstonecraft, her sisters, and Blood set up a school together in Newington Green, a Dissenting community. Blood soon became engaged and after their marriage her husband, Hugh Skeys, took her to Europe to improve her health, which had always been precarious. Despite the change of surroundings Blood’s health further deteriorated when she became pregnant, and in 1785 Wollstonecraft left the school and followed Blood to nurse her, but to no avail. Moreover, her abandonment of the school led to its failure. Blood’s death devastated Wollstonecraft and was part of the inspiration for her first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788).

(What actually shocked me is how the author tried to better herself. In her first book she mainly offers advice on female education to the emerging British middle class. Although dominated by considerations of morality and etiquette and the text also contains basic child-rearing instructions, such as how to care for an infant.

The fact of having seeing mistreatments at an early age, as I pointed out before, is very important and decisive for her writing career , and it is also the reason why she tries to become a kind of saviour. And the starting point is writing this book giving her advices.)

The book encourages mothers to teach their daughters analytical thinking, self-discipline, honesty, contentment in their social position, and marketable skills (in case they should ever need to support themselves). These goals reveal Wollstonecraft’s intellectual debt to John Locke; however, the prominence she affords religious faith and innate feeling distinguishes her work from his. Her aim is to educate women to be useful wives and mothers, because, she argues, it is through these roles that they can most effectively contribute to society. The predominantly domestic role Wollstonecraft outlines for women—a role that she viewed as meaningful—was interpreted by 20th-century feminist literary critics as paradoxically confining them to the private sphere.

Although much of Thoughts is devoted to platitudes and advice common to all conduct books for women, a few passages anticipate Wollstonecraft’s feminist arguments in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

(What here is clear is that Mary was completely devoted to the rest of people. Firstly when she had to go back to take care of her sick mother and later when she took care of her friend Blood. She was also very sensitive, and we can realise that when Blood dies because she finished devastated.

It shows that she is very brave as well. In her book “Mary: A fiction” she defends above all, women’s rights, and this, in those times was unthinkable and a very brave attitude. Through this heroine Wollstonecraft also critiques eighteenth-century sensibility and its damaging effects on women.)

The importance of this book comes from the fact that within a new kind of romance is an important development in the history of the novel because it helped shape an emerging feminist discourse.

In “Original Stories from Real Life” (1788) she goes back to the education’s topic again. Her thought is very advanced for a woman in the eighteen century. She breaks with everything and for this reason she becomes the feminism’s precursor.

She argues that women can be rational adults if they are educated properly as children (not a widely-held belief in the eighteenth century) and contends that the nascent middle-class ethos is superior to the court culture represented by fairy tales and to the values of chance and luck found in chapbook stories for the poor. Wollstonecraft, in developing her own pedagogy, is also responding to the works of the two most important educational theorists of the eighteenth century: John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Frustrated by the limited career options open to respectable yet poor women, she decided, after only a year as a governess, to embark upon a career as an author. Something deplorable and a disreputable profession  for a women in eighteen century. This was a radical choice, since, at the time, few women could support themselves by writing.

(In that sense, we also can see her courage. She was a fighter, one of the first authors, and in those times very few people could support themselves by writing.)

Frustrated by the limited career options open to respectable yet poor women, Wollstonecraft decided, after a year as a governess, to embark upon a career as an author. This was a radical choice, since, at the time, few women could support themselves by writing . As she wrote to her sister Everina in 1787, she was trying to become “the first of a new genus”.

(Moreover, typically it was supposed that women could not be with more than one man at the same time, because it was bad considered. But she, broke the rules and maintained and affair with an artist Henry Fuseli, even though he was already married. She was, she wrote, enraptured by his genius.)

She proposed a platonic living arrangement with Fuseli and his wife, but Fuseli’s wife was appalled, and he broke off the relationship with Wollstonecraft.

She was a revolutionary, she attacked aristocracy and advocated republicanism in her “Reivindication of the rights of men”: it was reviewed by every major periodical of the day and the first edition sold out in three Wollstonecraft’s name on the title page, the reviews began to evaluate the text not only as a political pamphlet but also as the work of a female writer. They contrasted Wollstonecraft’s “passion” with Burke’s “reason” and spoke condescendingly of the text and its female author. This analysis of the Rights of Men prevailed until the 1970s, when feminist scholars began to read Wollstonecraft’s texts with more care and called attention to their intellectualism.

She pursued the ideas she had outlined in Rights of Men in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), her most famous and influential work, which is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the eighteenth century who did not believe women should have an education. She argues that women ought to 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 mere 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.

Wollstonecraft was prompted to write the Rights of Woman after reading Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord’s 1791 report to the French National Assembly, which stated that women should only receive a domestic education; she used her commentary on this specific event to launch a broad attack against sexual double standards and to indict men for encouraging women to indulge in excessive emotion. Wollstonecraft wrote the Rights of Woman hurriedly in order to respond directly to ongoing events; she intended to write a more thoughtful second volume, but she died before completing it.

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. Her ambiguous statements regarding the equality of the sexes have since made it difficult to classify Wollstonecraft as a modern feminist, particularly since the word and the concept were unavailable to her. Although it is commonly assumed now that the Rights of Woman was unfavourably received, this is a modern misconception based on the belief that Wollstonecraft was as reviled during her lifetime as she became after the publication of William Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798). The Rights of Woman was actually well-received when it was first published in 1792. One biographer has called it “perhaps the most original book of [Wollstonecraft’s] century”.

She was totally atypical; she met and fell passionately in love with Gilbert Imlay, an American adventurer. Whether or not she was interested in marriage, he was not, and she appears to have fallen in love with an idealized portrait of the man. While Wollstonecraft had rejected the sexual component of relationships in the Rights of Woman, Imlay awakened her passions and her interest in sex. She soon became pregnant, and on 14 May 1794 she gave birth to her first child, Fanny, naming her after perhaps her closest friend. Then She became single mother what also in those times was unthinkable.

As the political situation worsened, Britain declared war on France, placing all British subjects in France in considerable danger. To protect Wollstonecraft, Imlay registered her as his wife in 1793, even though they were not married. Then she became to call herself Inlay to legitimate her child, and he unhappy with the situation left he.

He promised that he would return to Le Havre where she went to give birth to her child, but his delays in writing to her and his long absences convinced Wollstonecraft that he had found another woman. Her letters to him are full of needy expostulations, explained by most critics as the expressions of a deeply depressed woman but by some as a result of her circumstances—alone with an infant in the middle of a revolution.

(Again Mary suffers rejection; again a man destroys her life. Because of that, she wanted to claim women’s right, because she suffered and wanted to improve of the rest of women if there was some method.

He left her but it did not surprised Mary. The attitude that the author adopts, is the attitude of a brave and dreamy woman, who has suffered very much and wants to go ahead by herself without needing anybody, just with her own effort.)

Seeking Imlay, Wollstonecraft returned to London in April 1795, but he rejected her. In May 1795 she attempted to commit suicide, probably with laudanum, but Imlay saved her life (although it is unclear how). In a last attempt to win back Imlay, she embarked upon some business negotiations for him in Scandinavia, trying to recoup some of his losses. Wollstonecraft undertook this hazardous trip with only her young daughter and a maid. She recounted her travels and thoughts in letters to Imlay, many of which were eventually published as Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in 1796. When she returned to England and came to the full realization that her relationship with Imlay was over, she attempted suicide for the second time.

(She is a brave woman but, as any woman, she is human. Mary finds herself in a very difficult situation, and in complicated times; however, I have to say that this attempt of committing suicide shocked me, because  she was a woman who seemed to be so  brave , fighter and strong. What surprised me is the fact that she looks for him, crawling herself and imploring him. But actually it is necessary to have into account that it was a difficult time.)

Then she met Godwin. Godwin and Wollstonecraft’s unique courtship began slowly, but it eventually became a passionate love affair. Once Wollstonecraft became pregnant, they decided to marry so that their child would be legitimate. Their marriage revealed the fact that Wollstonecraft had never been married to Imlay, and as a result she and Godwin lost many friends.

Death and Godwin’s Memoirs

On 30 August 1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second daughter, Mary. Although the delivery seemed to go well initially, the placenta broke apart during the birth and became infected, a common occurrence in the eighteenth century. After several days of agony, Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia on 10 September. Godwin was devastated:

In January 1798 Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Although Godwin felt that he was portraying his wife with love, compassion, and sincerity, many readers were shocked that he would reveal Wollstonecraft’s illegitimate children, love affairs, and suicide attempts. The Romantic poet Robert Southey accused him of “the want of all feeling in stripping his dead wife naked”.

Life that late eighteenth-century British society would judge either immoral or in bad taste, such as her close friendship with a woman, her love affairs, her illegitimate child, her suicide attempts and her agonizing death. (Because of that, parents were advised against raising their children using her advice. Because she was not considered as a good example anymore.)

Wollstonecraft’s life has been read much more closely than her writing. After the devastating effect of Godwin’s Memoirs, Wollstonecraft’s reputation lay in tatters for a century; she was pilloried by such writers.

Few read Wollstonecraft’s works during the nineteenth century as “her attackers implied or stated that no self-respecting woman would read her work”. One of those few was George Eliot, a prolific writer of reviews, articles, novels, and translations. In 1855, she devoted an essay to the roles and rights of women, comparing Wollstonecraft and Margaret Fuller. Fuller was an American journalist, critic, and women’s right activist who, like Wollstonecraft, had travelled to the Continent, been involved in the struggle for reform, and had a child by a man without marrying him. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, a suffragist and later president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, wrote the introduction to the centenary edition of the Rights of Woman, cleansing the memory of Wollstonecraft and claiming her as the foremother of the struggle for the vote. With the advent of the modern feminist movement, women as politically dissimilar from each other as Virginia Woolf and Emma Goldman embraced Wollstonecraft’s life story and celebrated her “experiments in living”, as Woolf termed them in a famous essay. Many, however, continued to decry Wollstonecraft’s lifestyle and her works were still ignored.

With the emergence of feminist criticism in academia in the 1960s and 1970s, Wollstonecraft’s works returned to prominence. Their fortunes reflected that of the second wave of the feminist movement itself; Wollstonecraft was seen as a paradoxical yet intriguing figure who did not adhere to the 1970s version of feminism.

Wollstonecraft’s work has also had an effect on feminism outside the academy in recent years. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a political writer and former Muslim who is critical of Islam in general and its dictates regarding women in particular, cited the Rights of Woman in her autobiography Infidel and wrote that she was “inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist thinker who told women they had the same ability to reason as men did and deserved the same rights”.

(As we can see here, Mary was the pioneer of the feminist movement and of course source of inspiration for those who came later to demand what she had told before, and this is something very important, because there is always someone who has to give the first step, and she was condemned because of it, she was judged unfairly by everybody, and woman would be free right now if she would not have given the first step, so It is something we have to thank Mary very much indeed.)

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft

URL: The paragrahps high lined  in italics are my own comments added in order to make easier the reading for you and just to support the reason that I pointed out before in my introduction)

OTHER INTERESTING BIOGRAPHIES

This is not just a biography but also another different analysis which can be very interesting. It is called “Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and other contemporaries of Jane Austen. A male voices”

This is a very important website which can help you to understand my explanations and point of view and which complements this text. It can be very useful, so I encourage all of you to read it!

I have published this biography because it contains important  information that I have omitted here in my analisys, because I have just included what I considered more  relevant for the topic that I was going to work in.  I also decided to include it, because it summarizes  her life briefly, so  you can know in a few lines the author’s life. [1]

The second website that I have published here is interesting  as well, because of it contains further details and you can also click on many other authors and having more possibilities to explore Mary’s life, although it takes a little longer to read this text. [2]

This website, from my point of view, is very informative and helpful because what you can find here is several links making reference to the author. It contains an “introduction”, another link called “Mary, the Woman”, you also can find “Publications”, “Posthumous Works”, “The French Revolution”, a “Conclusion”, a “Timeline”, a “Family tree”, the “Origin of Wollstonecraft Family name”, “Quotations”, “Graphics”, “Background information and research material”, “Suggested futher reading” and a “Site map”. [3]

In this paper you also can find relevant information about Mary Wollstonecraft:  her life early influences, the life of Wollstonecraft’s mother, which is also very important to understand her own life and my point of view in this paper. This site is very useful because you can also find here Mary’s background and her relationship with people who meant something in her life, like Elisabeth (her sister) or Fanny Blood. At the same time in this site there is a lot of information about her writing ” A vindication of Rights of  Woman”. [4]

This are very complete biographies you can check and contrast, they contain many details of the author’s life: [1] [2] [3] [4]. In the last one you can find the information written below:  Biography, pedagogical Writings, moral and Political Writings, reputation, bibliography, primary Sources, bibliographies, studies, other Internet Resources,  and related Entries.

This is also a very important one, because it contains details of her childhood, about her grandfather a so on, it is interesting to read it because it helps you to understand her life. The influences which determined her life. [1]

Biographical essays

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