Mary Wollstonecraft (UK:/ˈwʊlstənkrɑːft/WUUL-stən-krahft,US:/-kræft/-kraft;[1] 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an English writer and philosopher best known for her advocacy ofwomen's rights.[2][3] Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional (at the time) personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the foundingfeminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.
During her brief career she wrote novels, treatises, atravel narrative, a history of theFrench Revolution, aconduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known forA Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but appeared to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines asocial order founded on reason.
After two ill-fated affairs, withHenry Fuseli andGilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter,Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopherWilliam Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38 leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. She died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter,Mary Shelley, who became an accomplished writer and the author ofFrankenstein.
Wollstonecraft's widower published aMemoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. However, with the emergence of thefeminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important.
Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 inSpitalfields, London.[4] She was the second of the seven children of Elizabeth Dixon and Edward John Wollstonecraft.[5] 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.[6] 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. As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her mother's bedroom to protect her.[7] Wollstonecraft played a similar maternal role for her sisters, Everina and Eliza, throughout her life. In a defining moment in 1784, she persuaded Eliza, who was suffering from what was probablypostpartum 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.[8]
Two friendships shaped Wollstonecraft's early life. The first was withJane Arden inBeverley. 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, sometimes to the point of being emotionally possessive. Wollstonecraft wrote to her: "I have formed romantic notions of friendship ... I am a little singular in my thoughts of love and friendship; I must have the first place or none."[9] In some of Wollstonecraft's letters to Arden, she reveals the volatile and depressive emotions that would haunt her throughout her life.[10] The second and more important friendship was withFanny (Frances) Blood, introduced to Wollstonecraft by the Clares, a couple inHoxton who became parental figures to her; Wollstonecraft credited Blood with opening her mind.[11]
Unhappy with her home life, Wollstonecraft struck out on her own in 1778 and accepted a job as alady's companion to Sarah Dawson, a widow living inBath. However, Wollstonecraft had trouble getting along with the irascible woman (an experience she drew on when describing the drawbacks of such a position inThoughts on the Education of Daughters, 1787). In 1780 she returned home upon being called back to care for her dying mother.[12] 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 Fanny and her family throughout her life, frequently giving pecuniary assistance to Blood's brother.[13]
Wollstonecraft had envisioned living in a female utopia with Blood; they made plans to rent rooms together and support each other emotionally and financially, but this dream collapsed under economic realities. In order to make a living, Wollstonecraft, her sisters and Blood set up a school together inNewington Green, aDissenting community. Blood soon became engaged and, after her marriage, moved toLisbon, Portugal with her husband, Hugh Skeys, in hopes that it would improve her health which had always been precarious.[14] 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.[15] Moreover, her abandonment of the school led to its failure.[16] Blood's death devastated Wollstonecraft and was part of the inspiration for her first novel,Mary: A Fiction (1788).[17]
After Blood's death in 1785, Wollstonecraft's friends helped her obtain a position asgoverness to the daughters of theAnglo-IrishKingsborough family in Ireland. Although she could not get along with Lady Kingsborough,[18] the children found her an inspiring instructor; one of the daughters,Margaret King, would later say she "had freed her mind from all superstitions".[19] Some of Wollstonecraft's experiences during this year would make their way into her only children's book,Original Stories from Real Life (1788).[20]
Frustrated by the limited career options open to respectable yet poor women—an impediment which Wollstonecraft eloquently describes in the chapter ofThoughts on the Education of Daughters entitled "Unfortunate Situation of Females, Fashionably Educated, and Left Without a Fortune"—she decided, after only 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".[21] She moved to London and, assisted by the liberal publisherJoseph Johnson, found a place to live and work to support herself.[22] She learned French and German and translated texts,[23] most notablyOf the Importance of Religious Opinions byJacques Necker andElements of Morality, for the Use of Children byChristian Gotthilf Salzmann. She also wrote reviews, primarily of novels, for Johnson's periodical, theAnalytical Review. Wollstonecraft's intellectual universe expanded during this time, not only from the reading that she did for her reviews but also from the company she kept: she attended Johnson's famous dinners and met the radical pamphleteerThomas Paine and the philosopherWilliam Godwin. The first time Godwin and Wollstonecraft met, they were disappointed in each other. Godwin had come to hear Paine, but Wollstonecraft assailed him all night long, disagreeing with him on nearly every subject. Johnson himself, however, became much more than a friend; she described him in her letters as a father and a brother.[24]
In London, Wollstonecraft lived on Dolben Street, inSouthwark; an up-and-coming area following the opening of the firstBlackfriars Bridge in 1769.[25] While in London, she formed connections with members of theBlue Stockings Society[26][27] and pursued a relationship with the artistHenry Fuseli, even though he was already married. She was, she wrote, enraptured by his genius, "the grandeur of his soul, that quickness of comprehension, and lovely sympathy".[28] 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.[29] After Fuseli's rejection, Wollstonecraft decided to travel to France to escape the humiliation of the incident, and to participate in the revolutionary events that she had just celebrated in her recentVindication of the Rights of Men (1790). She had written theRights of Men in response to the Whig MPEdmund Burke's politically conservative critique of theFrench Revolution inReflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and it made her famous overnight.Reflections on the Revolution in France was published on 1 November 1790, and so angered Wollstonecraft that she spent the rest of the month writing her rebuttal.A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke was published on 29 November 1790, initially anonymously;[30] the second edition ofA Vindication of the Rights of Men was published on 18 December, and this time the publisher revealed Wollstonecraft as the author.[30]
Wollstonecraft called the French Revolution a "gloriouschance to obtain more virtue and happiness than hitherto blessed our globe".[31] Against Burke's dismissal of the Third Estate as men of no account, Wollstonecraft wrote, "Time may show, that this obscure throng knew more of the human heart and of legislation than the profligates of rank, emasculated by hereditary effeminacy".[31] About the events of 5–6 October 1789, when the royal family was marched from Versailles to Paris by a group of angry housewives, Burke praised QueenMarie Antoinette as a symbol of the refined elegance of theancien régime, who was surrounded by "furies from hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women".[31] Wollstonecraft by contrast wrote of the same event: "Probably you [Burke] mean women who gained a livelihood by selling vegetables or fish, who never had any advantages of education".[31]
Wollstonecraft was compared with such leading lights as the theologian and controversialistJoseph Priestley and Paine, whoseRights of Man (1791) would prove to be the most popular of the responses to Burke. She pursued the ideas she had outlined inRights of Men inA Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), her most famous and influential work.[32] Wollstonecraft's fame extended across the English channel, for when the French statesmanCharles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord visited London in 1792, he visited her, during which she asked that French girls be given the same right to an education that French boys were being offered by the new regime in France.[33]
Wollstonecraft left for Paris in December 1792, and arrived about a month beforeLouis XVI was guillotined. Britain and France were on the brink of war when she left for Paris, and many advised her not to go.[34] France was in turmoil. She sought out other British visitors such asHelen Maria Williams and joined the circle of expatriates then in the city.[35] During her time in Paris, Wollstonecraft associated mostly with the moderateGirondins rather than the more radicalJacobins.[36] It was indicative that whenArchibald Hamilton Rowan, theUnited Irishman, encountered her in the city in 1794 it was at a post-Terror festival in honour of the moderate revolutionary leaderMirabeau, who had been a great hero for Irish and English radicals before his death in April 1791.[37]
On 26 December 1792, Wollstonecraft saw the former king,Louis XVI, being taken to be tried before the National Assembly, and much to her own surprise, found "the tears flow[ing] insensibly from my eyes, when I saw Louis sitting, with more dignity than I expected from his character, in a hackney coach going to meet death, where so many of his race have triumphed".[36]
France declared war on Britain in February 1793.[38] Wollstonecraft tried to leave France for Switzerland but was denied permission.[38] The Jacobin faction increased in power, and in March the formation of theCommittee of Public Safety and theRevolutionary Tribunal were symptomatic of an increasingly totalitarian regime.[38] Life became very difficult for foreigners in France.[38] At first, they were put under police surveillance and, to get a residency permit, had to produce six written statements from Frenchmen testifying to their loyalty to the republic. Then, on 12 April 1793, all foreigners were forbidden to leave France.[39] Despite her sympathy for the revolution, life for Wollstonecraft become very uncomfortable, all the more so as the Girondins had lost out to the Jacobins.[39] Some of Wollstonecraft's French friends lost their heads to the guillotine as the Jacobins set out to annihilate their enemies.[39]
Gilbert Imlay, the Reign of Terror, and her first child
Having just written theRights of Woman, Wollstonecraft was determined to put her ideas to the test, and in the stimulating intellectual atmosphere of theFrench Revolution, she attempted her most experimental romantic attachment yet: she met and fell passionately in love withGilbert Imlay, an American adventurer. Wollstonecraft put her own principles in practice by sleeping with Imlay even though they were not married, which was widely viewed as unacceptable behaviour for a "respectable" woman.[39] Whether or not she was interested in marriage, he was not, and she appears to have fallen in love with an idealization of Imlay. Despite her rejection of the sexual component of relationships in theRights of Woman, Wollstonecraft discovered that Imlay awakened her interest in sex.[40]
Wollstonecraft was to a certain extent disillusioned by what she saw in France, writing that the people under the republic still behaved slavishly to those who held power while the new French government remained "venal" and "brutal".[38] Despite her disenchantment, Wollstonecraft wrote:
I cannot yet give up the hope, that a fairer day is dawning on Europe, though I must hesitatingly observe, that little is to be expected from the narrow principle of commerce, which seems everywhere to be shoving asidethe point of honour of thenoblesse [nobility]. For the same pride of office, the same desire of power are still visible; with this aggravation, that, fearing to return to obscurity, after having but just acquired a relish for distinction, each hero, or philosopher, for all are dubbed with these new titles, endeavors to make hay while the sun shines.[38]
Wollstonecraft was offended by the Jacobins' treatment of women. They refused to grant women equal rights, denounced "Amazons", and made it clear that women were supposed to conform toJean-Jacques Rousseau's ideal of helpers to men.[41] On 16 October 1793,Marie Antoinette was guillotined; among her charges and convictions, she was found guilty of committing incest with her son.[42] Though Wollstonecraft disliked the former queen, she was troubled that the Jacobins would make Marie Antoinette's alleged perverse sexual acts one of the central reasons for the French people to hate her.[41]
As the daily arrests and executions of theReign of Terror began, Wollstonecraft came under suspicion due to being a British subject and friendly with leading Girondins. On 31 October 1793, most Girondin leaders were guillotined; when Imlay broke the news to Wollstonecraft, she fainted.[42] By this time, Imlay was taking advantage of theRoyal Navy's blockade of France, which had caused shortages and worsened inflation levels,[41] by chartering ships to bring food and soap from the United States past the blockade which he could then sell at a premium in French markets. Imlay's blockade-running gained the respect and support of some Jacobins, ensuring, as he had hoped, his freedom during the Terror.[43] To protect Wollstonecraft from arrest, Imlay made a false statement to the U.S. embassy in Paris that he had married her, automatically making her an American citizen.[44] Some of her friends were not so lucky; many were arrested. Her sisters believed she had been imprisoned.[45]
Wollstonecraft called life under the Jacobins "nightmarish". There were gigantic daytime parades requiring everyone to show themselves and lustily cheer lest they be suspected of inadequate commitment to the republic, as well as nighttime police raids to arrest "enemies of the republic".[39] In a March 1794 letter to her sister Everina, Wollstonecraft wrote:
It is impossible for you to have any idea of the impression the sad scenes I have been a witness to have left on my mind ... death and misery, in every shape of terrour, haunts this devoted country—I certainly am glad that I came to France, because I never could have had else a just opinion of the most extraordinary event that has ever been recorded.[39]
Wollstonecraft soon became pregnant by Imlay; on 14 May 1794, she gave birth to her first child,Fanny, naming her after perhaps her closest friend.[46] Wollstonecraft was overjoyed; she wrote to a friend, "My little Girl begins to suck so MANFULLY that her father reckons saucily on her writing the second part of the R[igh]ts of Woman" (emphasis hers).[47] She continued to write avidly, despite not only her pregnancy and the burdens of being a new mother alone in a foreign country, but also the growing tumult of the French Revolution. While atLe Havre in northern France, she wrote a history of the early revolution,An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution, which was published in London in December 1794.[48] Imlay, unhappy with the domestic-minded and maternal Wollstonecraft, eventually left her. He promised that he would return to her and Fanny at Le Havre, 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, which most critics explain as the expressions of a deeply depressed woman, while others say they resulted from her circumstances—a foreign woman alone with an infant in the middle of a revolution that had seen good friends imprisoned or executed.[49]
The fall of the Jacobins andAn Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution
In July 1794, Wollstonecraft welcomed the fall of the Jacobins, predicting it would be followed with a restoration offreedom of the press in France, which led her to return to Paris.[39] In August 1794, Imlay departed for London and promised to return soon.[39] In 1793, thefirst Pitt ministry had begun a crackdown on British radicals, suspending civil liberties, imposing drastic censorship and trying anyone suspected of sympathising with the revolution with treason, which led Wollstonecraft to fear she would be imprisoned if she returned to England.[50]
The winter of 1794–1795 was the coldest winter in Europe for over a century, which reduced Wollstonecraft and her daughter Fanny to desperate circumstances.[51] The river Seine froze that winter, which made it impossible for ships to bring food and coal to Paris, leading to widespread starvation and deaths from the cold in the city.[52] Wollstonecraft continued to write to Imlay, asking him to return to France at once, declaring she still had faith in the revolution and did not wish to return to England.[50] After she left France on 7 April 1795, she continued to refer to herself as "Mrs. Imlay", even to her sisters, in order to bestow legitimacy upon her child.[53]
British historian Tom Furniss calledAn Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution the most neglected of Wollstonecraft's books. It was first published in London in 1794, but a second edition did not appear until 1989.[50] Later generations were more interested in her feminist writings than in her account of the French Revolution, which Furniss has called her "best work".[50] Wollstonecraft was not trained as a historian, but she used all sorts of journals, letters and documents recounting how ordinary people in France reacted to the revolution. She was trying to counteract what Furniss called the "hysterical" anti-revolutionary mood in Britain, which depicted the revolution as due to the entire French nation going mad.[50] Wollstonecraft argued instead that the revolution arose from a set of social, economic and political conditions that left no other way out of the crisis that gripped France in 1789.[50]
An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution was a difficult balancing act for Wollstonecraft. She condemned the Jacobin regime and the Reign of Terror, but at same time she argued that the revolution was a great achievement, which led her to stop her history in late 1789 rather than write about the Terror of 1793–94.[54] Edmund Burke had ended hisReflections on the Revolution in France with reference to the events of 5–6 October 1789, when a group of women from Paris forced the French royal family from the Palace of Versailles to Paris.[55] Burke called the women "furies from hell", while Wollstonecraft defended them as ordinary housewives angry about the lack of bread to feed their families.[50] Against Burke's idealized portrait of Marie Antoinette as a noble victim of a mob, Wollstonecraft portrayed the queen as a femme fatale, a seductive, scheming and dangerous woman.[56] Wollstonecraft argued that the values of the French aristocracy corrupted women in a monarchy because women's main purpose in such a society was to bear sons to continue a dynasty, which essentially reduced a woman's value to only her womb.[56] Moreover, Wollstonecraft pointed out that unless a queen was aqueen regnant, most queens werequeen consorts, which meant a woman had to exercise influence via her husband or son, encouraging her to become more and more manipulative. Wollstonecraft argued that aristocratic values, by emphasizing a woman's body and her ability to be charming over her mind and character, had encouraged women like Marie Antoinette to be manipulative and ruthless, making the queen into a corrupted and corrupting product of theancien régime.[56]
InBiographical Memoirs of the French Revolution (1799), historianJohn Adolphus condemned Wollstonecraft's work as a "rhapsody of libellous declamations" and took particular offence at her depiction of Louis XVI.[57]
England and William Godwin
Seeking Imlay, Wollstonecraft returned to London in April 1795, but he rejected her. In May 1795, she attempted to commit suicide, probably withlaudanum. Imlay saved her life, but it is unclear how.[58] In a last attempt to win back Imlay, she embarked upon some business negotiations for him in Scandinavia, trying to locate a Norwegian captain who had absconded with silver that Imlay was trying to get past the British blockade of France. Wollstonecraft undertook this hazardous trip with only her young daughter and Marguerite, her maid. She recounted her travels and thoughts in letters to Imlay, many of which were eventually published asLetters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in 1796.[59] When she returned to England and came to the full realisation that her relationship with Imlay was over, she attempted suicide for the second time, leaving a note for Imlay:
Let my wrongs sleep with me! Soon, very soon, shall I be at peace. When you receive this, my burning head will be cold ... I shall plunge into the Thames where there is the least chance of my being snatched from the death I seek. God bless you! May you never know by experience what you have made me endure. Should your sensibility ever awake, remorse will find its way to your heart; and, in the midst of business and sensual pleasure, I shall appear before you, the victim of your deviation from rectitude.[60]
Portrait of William Godwin byJames Northcote, oil on canvas, 1802
She then went out on a rainy night and "to make her clothes heavy with water, she walked up and down about half an hour" before jumping into theRiver Thames, but a stranger saw her jump and rescued her.[61] Wollstonecraft considered her suicide attempt deeply rational, writing after her rescue,
I have only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and misery. But a fixed determination is not to be baffled by disappointment; nor will I allow that to be a frantic attempt, which was one of the calmest acts of reason. In this respect, I am only accountable to myself. Did I care for what is termed reputation, it is by other circumstances that I should be dishonoured.[62]
Gradually, Wollstonecraft returned to her literary life, becoming involved withJoseph Johnson's circle again, in particular withMary Hays,Elizabeth Inchbald, andSarah Siddons throughWilliam Godwin. Godwin and Wollstonecraft's unique courtship began slowly, but it eventually became a passionate love affair.[63] Godwin had read herLetters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and later wrote that "If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book. She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius which commands all our admiration."[64] 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. Godwin was further criticized because he had advocated the abolition of marriage in his philosophical treatisePolitical Justice.[65] After their marriage on 29 March 1797, Godwin and Wollstonecraft moved to 29 The Polygon,Somers Town. Godwin rented an apartment 20 doors away at 17 Evesham Buildings inChalton Street as a study, so that they could both still retain their independence; they often communicated by letter.[66][67] By all accounts, theirs was a happy and stable, though brief, relationship.[68]
On 30 August 1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second daughter,Mary. Although the delivery seemed to go well initially, theplacenta broke apart during the birth and became infected;childbed fever (post-partum infection) was a common and often fatal occurrence in the 18th century.[69] After several days of agony, Wollstonecraft died ofsepticaemia on 10 September.[70] Godwin was devastated: he wrote to his friendThomas Holcroft, "I firmly believe there does not exist her equal in the world. I know from experience we were formed to make each other happy. I have not the least expectation that I can now ever know happiness again."[71] She was buried in the churchyard ofSt Pancras Old Church, where her tombstone reads "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author ofA Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Born 27 April 1759: Died 10 September 1797."[72]
Posthumous, Godwin'sMemoirs
In January 1798 Godwin published hisMemoirs 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.[73] TheRomantic poetRobert Southey accused him of "the want of all feeling in stripping his dead wife naked" and vicious satires such asThe Unsex'd Females were published.[74] Godwin'sMemoirs portrays Wollstonecraft as a woman deeply invested in feeling who was balanced by his reason and as more of a religious sceptic than her own writings suggest.[75] Godwin's views of Wollstonecraft were perpetuated throughout the nineteenth century and resulted in poems such as"Wollstonecraft and Fuseli" by British poetRobert Browning and that byWilliam Roscoe which includes the lines:[76]
Hard was thy fate in all the scenes of life As daughter, sister, mother, friend, and wife; But harder still, thy fate in death we own, Thus mourn'd by Godwin with a heart of stone.
Green plaque onNewington Green Primary School, near the site of a school that Wollstonecraft, her sisters (Everina and Eliza), andFanny Blood set up; the plaque was unveiled in 2011.Plaque on Oakshott Court, near the site of her final home, The Polygon,Somers Town, London
Cora Kaplan describes Wollstonecraft's legacy as "curious", and furthernotes its evolution over time: "for an author-activist adept in many genres ... up until the last quarter-century Wollstonecraft's life has been read much more closely than her writing".[78] After the devastating effect of Godwin'sMemoirs, Wollstonecraft's reputation lay in tatters for nearly a century; she was pilloried by such writers asMaria Edgeworth, who patterned the "freakish" Harriet Freke inBelinda (1801) after her. Other novelists such asMary Hays,Charlotte Smith,Fanny Burney, andJane West created similar figures, all to teach a "moral lesson" to their readers.[79] (Hays had been a close friend, and helped nurse her in her dying days.)[80]
However, the authorMary Robinson, who was associated with both Godwin and Wollstonecraft, is noted for her support and admiration for Wollstonecraft, even amidst the controversy of Godwin's biography.[81] In her 1799 pamphlet,Thoughts on the Condition of Women, Robinson describes Wollstonecraft as “an illustrious British female, (whose death has not been sufficiently lamented, but to whose genius posterity will render justice)”.[82] The poetAnna Seward admired Wollstonecraft and was largely positive towards Godwin'sMemoirs, writing in 1798: “Bearing strong marks of impartial authenticity as to the character, sentiments, conduct, and destiny of a very extraordinary woman, they appear to be highly valuable.”[83]
Jane Austen never mentioned her by name, but several of her novels contain positive allusions to Wollstonecraft's work.[84] The American literary scholarAnne K. Mellor notes several examples. InPride and Prejudice, Mr Wickham seems to be based upon the sort of man Wollstonecraft claimed thatstanding armies produce, while the sarcastic remarks of protagonistElizabeth Bennet about "female accomplishments" closely echo Wollstonecraft's condemnation of these activities. The balance a woman must strike between feelings and reason inSense and Sensibility follows what Wollstonecraft recommended in her novelMary, while the moral equivalence Austen drew inMansfield Park between slavery and the treatment of women in society back home tracks one of Wollstonecraft's favourite arguments. InPersuasion, Austen's characterization of Anne Eliot (as well as her late mother before her) as better qualified than her father to manage the family estate also echoes a Wollstonecraft thesis.[84]
ScholarVirginia Sapiro states that few read Wollstonecraft's works during the nineteenth century as "her attackers implied or stated that no self-respecting woman would read her work".[85] (Still, as Craciun points out, new editions ofRights of Woman appeared in the UK in the 1840s and in the US in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s.[86]) If readers were few, thenmany were inspired; one such reader wasElizabeth Barrett Browning, who readRights of Woman at age 12 and whose poemAurora Leigh reflected Wollstonecraft's unwavering focus on education.[87]Lucretia Mott,[88] a Quaker minister, andElizabeth Cady Stanton, Americans who met in 1840 at theWorld Anti-Slavery Convention in London, discovered they both had read Wollstonecraft, and they agreed upon the need for (what became) theSeneca Falls Convention,[89] an influential women's rights meeting held in 1848. Another woman who read Wollstonecraft wasGeorge 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 andMargaret Fuller. Fuller was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights activist who, like Wollstonecraft, had travelled to the Continent and had been involved in the struggle for reform (in this case the1849 Roman Republic)—and she had a child by a man without marrying him.[90] Wollstonecraft's children's tales were adapted byCharlotte Mary Yonge in 1870.[91]
Wollstonecraft's work was exhumed with the rise of thewomen's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. First was an attempt at rehabilitation in 1879 with the publication of Wollstonecraft'sLetters to Imlay, with prefatory memoir byCharles Kegan Paul.[92] Then followed the first full-length biography,[86] which was byElizabeth Robins Pennell; it appeared in 1884 as part of a series bythe Roberts Brothers on famous women.[80]Millicent Garrett Fawcett, asuffragist and later president of theNational Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, wrote the introduction to the centenary edition (i.e. 1892) of theRights of Woman; it cleansed the memory of Wollstonecraft and claimed her as the foremother of the struggle for the vote.[93] By 1898, Wollstonecraft was the subject of a first doctoral thesis and its resulting book.[94]
Suffrage societies honour Wollstonecraft on the 113th anniversary of her death[95]
With the advent of the modernfeminist movement, women as politically dissimilar from each other asVirginia Woolf andEmma Goldman embraced Wollstonecraft's life story.[96] By 1929 Woolf described Wollstonecraft—her writing, arguments, and "experiments in living"—as immortal: "she is alive and active, she argues and experiments, we hear her voice and trace her influence even now among the living".[97] Others, however, continued to decry Wollstonecraft's lifestyle.[98] A biography published in 1932 refers to recent reprints of her works, incorporating new research, and to a "study" in 1911, a play in 1922, and another biography in 1924.[99] Interest in her never completely died, with full-length biographies in 1937[100] and 1951.[101]
With the emergence offeminist criticism in academia in the 1960s and 1970s, Wollstonecraft's works returned to prominence. Their fortunes reflected that of thesecond wave of the North American feminist movement itself; for example, in the early 1970s, six major biographies of Wollstonecraft were published that presented her "passionate life inapposition to [her] radical and rationalist agenda".[102]
Wollstonecraft's work has also had an effect on feminism outside academia. The feminist artworkThe Dinner Party, first exhibited in 1979, features a place setting for Wollstonecraft.[103][104]Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a political writer and former Muslim who iscritical of Islam in general andits dictates regarding women in particular, cited theRights of Woman in her autobiographyInfidel 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".[105] British writerCaitlin Moran, author of the best-sellingHow to Be a Woman, described herself as "half Wollstonecraft" to theNew Yorker.[106] She has also inspired more widely.Nobel LaureateAmartya Sen, the Indian economist and philosopher who first identified themissing women of Asia, draws repeatedly on Wollstonecraft as a political philosopher inThe Idea of Justice.[107]
In 2009, Wollstonecraft was selected by theRoyal Mail for their"Eminent Britons" commemorative postage stamp issue.[108] Several plaques have been erected to honour Wollstonecraft.[109][110] A commemorative sculpture,A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft byMaggi Hambling,[111][112] was unveiled on 10 November 2020;[113] it was criticized for its symbolic depiction rather than a lifelike representation of Wollstonecraft,[114][115] which commentators felt represented stereotypical notions of beauty and the diminishing of women.[116] In November 2020, it was announced thatTrinity College Dublin, whose library had previously held forty busts, all of them of men, was commissioning four new busts of women, one of whom would be Wollstonecraft.[117]
The majority of Wollstonecraft's early productions are about education; she assembled an anthology of literary extracts "for the improvement of young women" entitledThe Female Reader and she translated two children's works, Maria Geertruida van de Werken de Cambon'sYoung Grandison andChristian Gotthilf Salzmann'sElements of Morality. Her own writings also addressed the topic. In both herconduct bookThoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) and her children's bookOriginal Stories from Real Life (1788), Wollstonecraft advocates educating children into the emerging middle-class ethos: self-discipline, honesty, frugality, and social contentment.[118] Both books also emphasise the importance of teaching children to reason, revealing Wollstonecraft's intellectual debt to the educational views of seventeenth-century philosopherJohn Locke.[119] However, the prominence she affords religious faith and innate feeling distinguishes her work from his and links it to the discourse ofsensibility popular at the end of the eighteenth century.[120] Both texts also advocate the education of women, a controversial topic at the time and one which she would return to throughout her career, most notably inA Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft argues that well-educated women will be good wives and mothers and ultimately contribute positively to the nation.[121]
Wollstonecraft attacked not only monarchy and hereditary privilege but also the language that Burke used to defend and elevate it. In a famous passage in theReflections, Burke had lamented: "I had thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her [Marie Antoinette] with insult.—But the age of chivalry is gone."[123] Most of Burke's detractors deplored what they viewed as theatrical pity for the French queen—a pity they felt was at the expense of the people. Wollstonecraft was unique in her attack on Burke's gendered language. By redefining thesublime and the beautiful, terms first established by Burke himself inA Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), she undermined his rhetoric as well as his argument. Burke had associated the beautiful with weakness and femininity and the sublime with strength and masculinity; Wollstonecraft turns these definitions against him, arguing that his theatricaltableaux turn Burke's readers—the citizens—into weak women who are swayed by show.[124] In her first unabashedly feminist critique, which Wollstonecraft scholarClaudia L. Johnson argues remains unsurpassed in its argumentative force,[125] Wollstonecraft indicts Burke's defence of an unequal society founded on the passivity of women.[need quotation to verify][126]
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.[127] Influenced byEnlightenment 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 ofslavery, simply because it had been an ancestral tradition.[128] She describes an idyllic country life in which each family can have a farm that will just suit its needs. Wollstonecraft contrasts herutopian picture of society, drawn with what she says is genuine feeling, to Burke's false feeling.[129]
TheRights of Men was Wollstonecraft's first overtly political work, as well as her first feminist work; as Johnson contends, "it seems that in the act of writing the later portions ofRights of Men she discovered the subject that would preoccupy her for the rest of her career."[130] It was this text that made her a well-known writer.[126]
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft argues that women ought to have an educationcommensurate 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 mere wives.[131] 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 theRights of Woman respond vitriolically toconduct book writers such asJames Fordyce andJohn Gregory and educational philosophers such asJean-Jacques Rousseau, who wanted to deny women an education. (Rousseau famously argues inÉmile (1762) that women should be educated for the pleasure of men.)[132]
Wollstonecraft states that currently many women are silly and superficial (she refers to them, for example, as "spaniels" and "toys"[133]), but argues that this is not because of an innate deficiency of mind but rather because men have denied them access to education. Wollstonecraft is intent on illustrating the limitations that women's deficient educations have placed on them; she writes: "Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."[134] She implies that, without the encouragement young women receive from an early age to focus their attention on beauty and outward accomplishments, women could achieve much more.[135]
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.[136] What she does claim is that men and women are equal in the eyes of God. However, such claims of equality stand in contrast to her statements respecting the superiority of masculine strength and valour.[137] Wollstonecraft famously and ambiguously writes: "Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the order of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue. I speak collectively of the whole sex; but I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequently, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple direction, as that there is a God."[138] 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 did not come into existence until the 1890s.[139]
One of Wollstonecraft's most scathing critiques in theRights of Woman is of false and excessivesensibility, particularly in women. She argues that women who succumb to sensibility are "blown about by every momentary gust of feeling" and because they are "the prey of their senses" they cannot think rationally.[140] In fact, she claims, they do harm not only to themselves but to the entire civilization: these are not women who can help refine a civilization—a popular eighteenth-century idea—but women who will destroy it. Wollstonecraft does not argue that reason and feeling should act independently of each other; rather, she believes that they should inform each other.[141]
In addition to her larger philosophical arguments, Wollstonecraft also lays out a specific educational plan. In the twelfth chapter of theRights of Woman, "On National Education", she argues that all children should be sent to a "country day school" as well as given some education at home "to inspire a love of home and domestic pleasures." She also maintains that schooling should beco-educational, arguing that men and women, whose marriages are "the cement of society", should be "educated after the same model."[142]
Wollstonecraft addresses her text to the middle-class, which she describes as the "most natural state", and in many ways theRights of Woman is inflected by abourgeois view of the world.[143] It encouragesmodesty 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.[144]
Otto Scholderer'sYoung Girl Reading (1883); in bothMary andThe Wrongs of Woman, Wollstonecraft criticizes women who imagine themselves as sentimental heroines.
Both of Wollstonecraft's novels criticize what she viewed as thepatriarchal institution of marriage and its deleterious effects on women. In her first novel,Mary: A Fiction (1788), the eponymous heroine is forced into a loveless marriage for economic reasons; she fulfils her desire for love and affection outside marriage with two passionateromantic friendships, one with a woman and one with a man.Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798), an unfinished novel published posthumously and often considered Wollstonecraft's most radical feminist work,[145] revolves around the story of a woman imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband; like Mary, Maria also finds fulfilment outside of marriage, in an affair with a fellow inmate and a friendship with one of her keepers. Neither of Wollstonecraft's novels depict successful marriages, although she posits such relationships in theRights of Woman. At the end ofMary, the heroine believes she is going "to that world where there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage",[146] presumably a positive state of affairs.[147]
Both of Wollstonecraft's novels also critique the discourse ofsensibility, a moral philosophy and aesthetic that had become popular at the end of the eighteenth century.Mary is itself a novel of sensibility and Wollstonecraft attempts to use the tropes of that genre to undermine sentimentalism itself, a philosophy she believed was damaging to women because it encouraged them to rely overmuch on their emotions. InThe Wrongs of Woman the heroine's indulgence on romantic fantasies fostered by novels themselves is depicted as particularly detrimental.[148]
Female friendships are central to both of Wollstonecraft's novels, but it is the friendship between Maria and Jemima, the servant charged with watching over her in the insane asylum, that is the most historically significant. This friendship, based on a sympathetic bond of motherhood, between an upper-class woman and a lower-class woman is one of the first moments in the history of feminist literature that hints at a cross-class argument, that is, that women of different economic positions have the same interests because they are women.[149]
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)
Wollstonecraft'sLetters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a deeply personaltravel narrative. The 25 letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to philosophical questions regarding identity to musings on her relationship withImlay (although he is not referred to by name in the text). Using the rhetoric of thesublime, Wollstonecraft explores the relationship between the self and society. Reflecting the strong influence ofRousseau,Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark shares the themes of the French philosopher'sReveries of a Solitary Walker (1782): "the search for the source of human happiness, the stoic rejection of material goods, the ecstatic embrace of nature, and the essential role of sentiment in understanding".[150] While Rousseau ultimately rejects society, however, Wollstonecraft celebrates domestic scenes and industrial progress in her text.[151]
Wollstonecraft promotes subjective experience, particularly in relation to nature, exploring the connections between the sublime andsensibility. Many of the letters describe the breathtaking scenery of Scandinavia and Wollstonecraft's desire to create an emotional connection to that natural world. In so doing, she gives greater value to the imagination than she had in previous works.[152] As in her previous writings, she champions the liberation and education of women.[153] In a change from her earlier works, however, she illustrates the detrimental effects of commerce on society, contrasting the imaginative connection to the world with a commercial and mercenary one, an attitude she associates with Imlay.[154]
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark was Wollstonecraft's most popular book in the 1790s. It sold well and was reviewed positively by most critics.Godwin wrote "if ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book."[64] It influencedRomantic poets such asWilliam Wordsworth andSamuel Taylor Coleridge, who drew on its themes and its aesthetic.[155]
List of works
This is a complete list of Mary Wollstonecraft's works; all works are the first edition unless otherwise noted.[156]
The Female Reader: Or, Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Verse; selected from the best writers, and disposed under proper heads; for the improvement of young women. By Mr. Cresswick, teacher of elocution [Mary Wollstonecraft]. To which is prefixed a preface, containing some hints on female education. London: Joseph Johnson, 1789.[157][158]
"On the Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character in Women, with Strictures on Dr. Gregory's Legacy to His Daughters".New Annual Register (1792): 457–466. [FromRights of Woman]
An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution; and the Effect It Has produced in Europe. Volume the first. London: Joseph Johnson, 1794.
"On Poetry, and Our Relish for the Beauties of Nature".Monthly Magazine (April 1797).
The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria.Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; unfinished]
"The Cave of Fancy".Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; fragment written in 1787]
"Letter on the Present Character of the French Nation".Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; written in 1793]
"Fragment of Letters on the Management of Infants".Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; unfinished]
"Lessons".Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; unfinished]
"Hints".Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Ed. William Godwin. London: Joseph Johnson, 1798. [Published posthumously; notes on the second volume ofRights of Woman, never written]
Contributions to theAnalytical Review (1788–1797) [published anonymously]
^"The Bluestockings: Their empowering efforts, promotion of female friendship and inspiring publications". Philip Mould. Retrieved4 June 2023.By the 1790s, the term [Blue Stockings] was imbued with a more radical meaning with the emergence of the rise of women's education and self-advancement. Anna Barbauld's pioneering Lessons for Children, published in 1778 and Hannah More's The Sunday School, were both revolutionary in improving literacy amongst young women, while Mary Wollstonecraft's seminal A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) revolted against traditional perceptions of women as weak and emotional, and the notion that women exist purely for male pleasure. This more militant feminism that was birthed with the writings of Barbauld and Wollstonecraft undeniably had its roots in the empowering efforts of the Bluestockings, as well as the society's promotion of female friendship, and the fantastic and inspiring publications of its members.
^Whelan, Fergus (2014).God-Provoking Democrat: The Remarkable Life of Archibald Hamilton Rowan. Stillorgan, Dublin: New Island. p. 151.ISBN978-1-84840-460-1.
^Robert Southey toWilliam Taylor, 1 July 1804.A Memoir of the Life and Writings of William Taylor of Norwich. Ed. J. W. Robberds. 2 vols. London: John Murray (1824) 1:504.
^James, H. R.Mary Wollstonecraft: A Sketch. Oxford University Press, 1932. Appendix B: Books about Mary Wollstonecraft. Miss Emma Rauschenbusch-Clough, "thesis for doctorate at Berne University", then Longmans.
^Kaplan, Cora (2002). "Mary Wollstonecraft's reception and legacies". In Johnson, Claudia L. (ed.).The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Cambridge University Press. pp. 246–270.doi:10.1017/ccol0521783437.014.ISBN978-0-521-78952-3.
^The wordsfeminist andfeminism were coined in the 1890s.Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 17 September 2007; see Taylor, 12, 55–57, 105–106, 118–120; Sapiro, 257–259.
Wollstonecraft, Mary.The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.ISBN978-0-231-13142-1.
Wollstonecraft, Mary.The Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler. 7 vols. London: William Pickering, 1989.ISBN978-0-8147-9225-4.
Wollstonecraft, Mary.The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman. Eds. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. Toronto: Broadview, 1997.ISBN978-1-55111-088-2.
Wollstonecraft, Mary (2005). "On the pernicious effects which arise from the unnatural distinctions established in society". InCudd, Ann E.; Andreasen, Robin O. (eds.).Feminist theory: a philosophical anthology. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 11–16.ISBN978-1-4051-1661-9.
Biographies
Franklin, Caroline.Mary Wollstonecraft: A Literary Life. Springer, 2004.ISBN978-0-230-51005-0
Godwin, William.Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1798. Eds. Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker. Peterborough: Broadview, 2001.ISBN978-1-55111-259-6.
Hays, Mary. "Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft".Annual Necrology (1797–98): 411–460.
Jacobs, Diane.Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Simon & Schuster, 2001.ISBN978-0-349-11461-3.
Paul, Charles Kegan.Letters to Imlay, with prefatory memoir by C. Kegan Paul. London: C. Kegan Paul, 1879.
Marshall, Julian, Mrs.The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2 volumes; London: R. Bentley & Son, 1889), contrib. by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
Wardle, Ralph M.Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1951.
Other secondary works
Callender, Michelle "The grand theatre of political changes ": Marie Antoinette, the republic, and the politics of spectacle in Mary Wollstonecraft'sAn historical and moral view of the French revolution", pp. 375–392 fromEuropean Romantic Review, Volume 11, Issue 4, Fall 2000.
Conger, Syndy McMillen.Mary Wollstonecraft and the Language of Sensibility. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994.ISBN978-0-8386-3553-7.
Detre, Jean.A most extraordinary pair: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, Garden City: Doubleday, 1975
Falco, Maria J., ed.Feminist Interpretations of Mary Wollstonecraft. University Park: Penn State Press, 1996.ISBN978-0-271-01493-7.
Favret, Mary.Romantic Correspondence: Women, politics and the fiction of letters. Cambridge University Press, 1993.ISBN978-0-521-41096-0.
Furniss, Tom. "Mary Wollstonecraft's French Revolution".The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge University Press, 2002. pp. 59–81.ISBN978-0-521-78952-3
Halldenius, Lena.Mary Wollstonecraft and Feminist Republicanism: Independence, Rights and the Experience of Unfreedom, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2015.ISBN978-1-84893-536-5.
Jones, Chris. "Mary Wollstonecraft'sVindications and Their Political Tradition".The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge University Press, 2002.ISBN978-0-521-78952-3.
Jones, Vivien. "Mary Wollstonecraft and the literature of advice and instruction".The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia Johnson. Cambridge University Press, 2002.ISBN978-0-521-78952-3.
Kaplan, Cora. "Mary Wollstonecraft's reception and legacies".The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft Ed. Claudia L. Johnson. Cambridge University Press, 2002.ISBN978-0-521-78952-3.
—. "Pandora's Box: Subjectivity, Class and Sexuality in Socialist Feminist Criticism".Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986.ISBN978-0-86091-151-7.
—. "Wild Nights: Pleasure/Sexuality/Feminism".Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986.ISBN978-0-86091-151-7.
Kelly, Gary.Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: St. Martin's, 1992.ISBN978-0-312-12904-0.
Mellor, Anne K. "Mary Wollstonecraft'sA Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Women Writers of Her Day." InThe Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Claudia L. Johnson, 141–159. Cambridge University Press, 2002.doi:10.1017/CCOL0521783437.009.
Myers, Mitzi. "Impeccable Governess, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children's Books".Children's Literature 14 (1986):31–59.
—. "Sensibility and the 'Walk of Reason': Mary Wollstonecraft's Literary Reviews as Cultural Critique".Sensibility in Transformation: Creative Resistance to Sentiment from the Augustans to the Romantics. Ed. Syndy McMillen Conger. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990.ISBN978-0-8386-3352-6.
—. "Wollstonecraft'sLetters Written ... in Sweden: Towards Romantic Autobiography".Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 8 (1979): 165–185.
Orr, Clarissa Campbell, ed.Wollstonecraft's daughters: womanhood in England and France, 1780–1920. Manchester University Press, 1996.
Poovey, Mary.The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen. University of Chicago Press, 1984.ISBN978-0-226-67528-2.
Richardson, Alan. "Mary Wollstonecraft on education".The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia Johnson. Cambridge University Press, 2002.ISBN978-0-521-78952-3.
Rossi, Alice.The Feminist papers: from Adams to de Beauvoir. Northeastern, 1988.
Sapiro, Virginia.A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft. University of Chicago Press, 1992.ISBN978-0-226-73491-0.
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