Mary Wollstonecraft

Background Info.

• Mary was born April 27, 1759, the second of seven children, she was an English writer, philosopher and advocate of women's rights.
• She was viewed as the founder of modern European feminism.
• Rousseau's sharpest critic.

Battle Between the Sexes

• Mary wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
• Mary believed that woman had the same equality that men had and that woman had the same innate capacity for reason and self-government as man.
• Marriage Laws prevented women from owning their own property.
• Woman only responsibility was to mother and educate a child.

Achievements and Books

• Wrote novels
• Treatises
• A travel narrative
• A history of the French Revolution
• A conduct book
• A children's book

Leaving the Nest

• Mary started life out on her own in 1778 when she left home and accepted a job as a lady's companion to Sarah Dawson. Shortly after taking upon the job she then moved back home to care for her dying mother.

Wollstonecraft & Bloods

• Mary was introduced to Fanny (Frances) Blood by the Clares, who became parental figures to her.
• She spent 2 years with the family as she grew to like them more and more each day she credited them for opening her state of mind.
• After the death of her mother she moved back in with the Bloods. They made plans to rent rooms together and to support each other emotionally and financially, that went downhill under economic realities.
• Together, Mary, her sisters, and the Bloods set up a school in Newington Green that later had a downfall.

After the Bloods Death

• Mary obtain a position as governess to the daughters of the Anglo- Irish Kingsborough family in Ireland.
• Although she didn't get along with Lady Kingsborough the children found her to be a very inspiring instructor.

Death of Mary Wollstonecraft

• August 30, 1797 Mary gave birth to her second daughter, Mary. The placenta broke during the birth and became infected. Several days later Mary died of septicaemia.
• Her husband was buried with her on his death in 1836, alone with his second wife Mary Jane Godwin.

Portrayals

• 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" and vicious satires such as The Unsex'd Females were published Godwin's Memoirs 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