Mary+Wollstonecraft

[|Wollstonecraft.mp3] media type="file" key="Wollstonecraft.mp3" **Mary Wollstonecraft (by: Nathaniel Schreiber)** __  Citation:__ (May 13, 2004). Mary Wollstonecraft. Retrieved October 1, 2008, from History Guide Web site: http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/wollstonecraft.html

The Anglo-Irish feminist, intellectual and writer, Mary Wollstonecraft, was born in London, the second of six children. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, was a family despot who bullied his wife, Elizabeth Dixon, into a state of wearied servitude. He spent a fortune which he had inherited in various unsuccessful ventures at farming which took the family to six different locales throughout Britain by 1780, the year Mary's mother died. At the age of nineteen Mary went out to earn her own livelihood. In 1783, she helped her sister Eliza escape a miserable marriage by hiding her from a brutal husband until a legal separation was arranged. The two sisters established a school at Newington Green, an experience from which Mary drew to write //Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life// (1787). Mary became the governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough, living most of the time in Ireland. Upon her dismissal in 1787, she settled in George Street, London, determined to take up a literary career. In 1788 she became translator and literary advisor to Joseph Johnson, the publisher of radical texts. In this capacity she became acquainted with and accepted among the most advanced circles of London intellectual and radical thought. When Johnson launched the //Analytical Review// in 1788, Mary became a regular contributor of articles and reviews. In 1790 she produced her //Vindication of the Rights of Man//, the first response to Edmund Burke's //Reflections on the Revolution in France//. She was furious that the man who had once defended the American colonies so eloquently should now assault the sacred revolution and libel Richard price, a close friend of her Newington days. In 1788 she became translator and literary advisor to Joseph Johnson, the publisher of radical texts. In this capacity she became acquainted with and accepted among the most advanced circles of London intellectual and radical thought. 

In 1792 she set out for Paris. In Paris she published her [|//Vindication on the Rights of Woman//], [which was published in 1792], an important work which, advocating equality of the sexes, and the main doctrines of the later women's movement, made her both famous and infamous in her own time.

At the home of some English friends in Paris Mary met Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American timber-merchant, the author of //The Western Territory of North America// (1792). She agreed to become his common law wife and at Le Havre in May 1794, she bore him a daughter, Fanny. In November 1795, after a four months' visit to Scandinavia as his "wife," she tried to drown herself from Putney Bridge, Imlay having deserted her. Mary eventually recovered her courage and went to live with [|William Godwin] in Somers-town with whom she had first met at the home of Joseph Johnson in 1791. Although both Godwin and Mary abhorred marriage as a form of tyranny, they eventually married due to Mary's pregnancy (March 1797). In August, a daughter [|Mary] (who later became Shelley's wife), was born and on September 10 the mother died. Mary Wollstonecraft was a radical in the sense that she desired to bridge the gap between mankind's present circumstances and ultimate perfection. She was truly a child of the French Revolution and saw a new age of reason and benevolence close at hand. Mary undertook the task of helping women to achieve a better life, not only for themselves and for their children, but also for their husbands. Of course, it took more than a century before society began to put her views into effect.

__Citation:__ August 9, 2006). Mary Wollstonecraft. Retrieved October 1, 2008, from Philosophy Pages Web site: http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/woll.htm A self-taught native of London, Mary Wollstonecraft worked as a schoolteacher and headmistress at a school she established at Newington Green with her sister Eliza. The sisters soon became convinced that the young women they tried to teach had already been effectively enslaved by their social training in subordination to men. In Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) Wollstonecraft proposed the deliberate extrapolation of [|Enlightenment] ideals to include education for women, whose rational natures are no less capable of intellectual achievement than are those of men.

Upon her return to England, she joined a radical group whose membership included Blake, [|Paine], Fuseli, and Wordsworth. Her first child, Fanny, was born in 1795, the daughter of American Gilbert Imlay. After his desertion, she joined the radical activist [|William Godwin], a long-time friend whom she married in 1797. Wollstonecraft died a few days after the birth of their daughter, Mary (who later married Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote [|Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus] and other novels).

Excessive concern for romantic love and physical desirability, she believed, are not the natural conditions of female existence but rather the socially-imposed means by which [|male domination] enslaves them.

She has long been recognized as one of the most influential feminist theorists in history, largely through her //Vindication of the Rights of Woman// (1792). Late twentieth-century scholarship also began to explore her other texts and their significance.
 * __I found the following information in one of the library encyclopedias, I will be sure to look for the citation information.__**

Wollstonecraft's work is a product of the lat ENLIGHTENMENT, emphasizing the need to achieve virtue and progress through development of reason and sensibility. It also reflects ideas of the Dissenters and political radicals who stood among the relatively few English supporters of the French Revolution. Wollstonecraft's early mentor wer Richard Price and Joseph Priestly. The circle with whom she continued to associate included writers and artists such as William Blake, Thomas Paine, Henry Fuseli, and William Godwin. Like them, she opposed slavery, standing armies, and many elements of political patriarchy such as primogeniture, aristocracy, and probably monarchy. She shared their critique of the corrupting influence of political and social institutions structured around "unnatural distinctions" based on rank, property, religion, or profession. Wollstonecraft's most distinctive and well-known contribution was to extend this analysis to demand an end to unnatural distinctions based on sex and family relations.

(**September 29, 2008). Mary Wollstonecraft. Retrieved October 1, 2008, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft********

Both of Wollstonecraft's [|novels] criticize what she viewed as the [|patriarchal] 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 of marriage with two passionate [|romantic 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,[|[81]] 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 the //Rights of Woman//. At the end of //Mary//, the heroine believes she is going "to that world where there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage,"[|[82]] presumably a positive state of affairs.[|[83]] Both of Wollstonecraft's novels also critique the discourse of [|sensibility], 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. In //The Wrongs of Woman// the heroine's indulgence on romantic fantasies fostered by novels themselves is depicted as particularly detrimental.[|[84]] 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.[|[]

Script Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 in the London area. She was the second of the six children of Edward John Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon. Ms. Wollstonecraft was self-educated. In 1783 her sister Eliza got out of a bad marriage with the help of Mary. After Eliza was free from her marriage she helped to found a school with her sister, Mary. The school's name was Newington Green. While Mary Wollstonecraft was teaching at the school she was able to write //Thoughts on the Education of Daughters// in 1787. Mary Wollstonecraft lived during a period of time called the Age of Enlightenment, which was a period where new ideas were expressed. During this time people began to move away from supernatural beliefs and the idea that God controlled every aspect of life. Instead, the people of the Enlightenment thought of the world in a more logical way. They believed that God was the creator of the world and gave laws to govern the people. However, they believed that God allowed Earth to run on its own. The Age of Enlightenment also brought the idea of human beings having rights and freedoms. Her next vocation (after teaching) was as a governess in Ireland. The job didn't last long, so she moved back to London. In 1788 she received a new job as an assistant to Joseph Johnson. The job allowed her to learn about radical texts and their audiences. The job also gave her a spot in the Joseph Johnson's //Analytical Review,// giving her experience and exposure as an intellectual writer. Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the philosophers who believed in the new ideas of the Enlightenment. However, she wanted to take it further. In her work, //A Vindication of the Rights of Women,// which was published in 1792 in Paris, Wollstonecraft explains her ideas of equality for both genders, especially in education. This piece was also a response to //Reflections on the Revolution in France// written by Edmund Burke. Burke wrote to criticize the Sacred Revolution, even though he had once supported the American colonies. While in Paris, she is introduced to Captain Gilbert Imlay whom she acted as wife to, but they never were married. She gave him a daughter named Fanny. Then, a few years later he deserts her, while she is in Scandanavia with him. It is rumored that she attempted to drown herself because of his desertion. When Mary was working for Joseph Johnson, she had met a man by the name of William Godwin. After Imlay had left, she went to Godwin and lived with him. She bore him a child, who they named Mary. Mary Wollstonecraft died shortly after the birth of her daughter, Mary. The daughter would later marry Percy Bysshe Shelley. Then, her name would become Mary Shelley, the well known author of //Frankenstein.// Mary Wollstonecraft will always be known for her radical attitude towards life, meaning that she wanted for society to come closer to perfection. She always believed that the want for "romantic love and physical desirability" were socially imposed, and not necessary for human existence. Her main goal in life was to change the perspective on women to "equals of men." She may not have succeeded, but this lead to further leaps later in history, when women begin to gain rights in America.