Mary Wollstonecraft

1759-1797 · English (London; Paris 1792-95; Scandinavia 1795) · Moral and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Education, Feminism, Rational Theism

I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797) was the daughter of a violent, failing gentleman farmer who spent his inheritance moving the family from Spitalfields to Yorkshire to Wales and back. She kept a school at Newington Green, served as a governess in Ireland, and at twenty-eight decided to live by her pen, which no Englishwoman had done before as a matter of principle. Joseph Johnson, the radical publisher, took her on; she translated Necker and Salzmann, reviewed for the *Analytical Review*, and wrote a book on the education of daughters, a novel and a children's book before the Revolution gave…

Topics Mary Wollstonecraft addresses

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
virtue has no sex
reason, virtue and knowledge
the education of women and the making of weakness
Rousseau's Sophie answered
sensibility, the manie of the day
the divine right of husbands
marriage as legal prostitution
friendship as the true bond of marriage
modesty, chastity and the double standard
co-education and national schools
the tyranny of rank and the Rights of Men against Burke
the origin and progress of the French Revolution
the slavery of the mind
rational theism and the equality of souls
Original Stories and the education of daughters
Mary, A Fiction and the heroine of sensibility
The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria
the madhouse and Jemima
Letters from Sweden, Norway and Denmark
imagination and the sublime in nature
the Imlay letters
Godwin, the marriage and the Memoirs
the Analytical Review and the republic of letters

Questions to put to Mary Wollstonecraft

Rights of Woman and the False System of Education

What do you mean when you say that women's weakness is made, not born?
How does teaching girls to be charming rather than rational actually harm them?
Why do you think Rousseau's ideal woman, Sophie, is such a dangerous model?
What would a national education that included girls actually look like?
You say virtue has no sex — how do you argue that the same moral standard applies to women and men equally?

Marriage, Independence, and Legal Prostitution

What do you mean when you call marriage, as it stands, a form of legal prostitution?
What would a marriage between equals actually look like, in your view?
Why do you think economic dependence on a husband corrupts a woman's character?
How do you see the duties of motherhood fitting with your argument for women's independence?
You kept separate rooms from Godwin after marrying him — what did that arrangement mean to you?

Against Burke: Reason, Rights, and Inherited Power

What is your core objection to Burke's reverence for tradition, rank, and inherited property?
Why does it matter to you that Burke weeps for a queen but not for the women made poor by the system he defends?
How do you ground the rights of men in reason and God rather than in ancestral custom?
How does hereditary wealth corrupt the people who hold it, not just those who serve them?
Why did you sign your own name to the second edition of the Rights of Men?

The French Revolution and the Progress of Societies

How do you defend the Revolution's principles while condemning the violence of the Terror?
Why do you blame centuries of despotism, rather than liberty itself, for the mob's cruelty?
What did witnessing Louis XVI pass to his trial teach you about the gap between revolutionary ideals and revolutionary reality?
How does your thinking about the Revolution connect to your argument about what oppression does to the oppressed?

Sensibility, Imagination, and the Letters from Sweden

You criticise sensibility as a kind of fashionable disease — what exactly is wrong with it?
How can the passions and imagination be sources of moral strength rather than weakness?
What does grief teach the understanding that reason alone cannot?
How do the Letters from Sweden say something about the heart that the Vindication could not yet say?
Is there a tension between the rationalist who wrote the Vindications and the voice that wrote those letters to Imlay, or are they the same person?

God, the Soul, and the Foundation of Equality

How does your belief in God and the immortal soul underpin your argument for women's rights?
Why do you say that educating a woman only to please a husband is a kind of blasphemy?
What's your answer to Milton and Rousseau, who both seemed to think woman was made for man?
Does your case for equality depend on religious belief, or can it stand on its own without a Creator behind it?
How does the idea that every human soul is destined for improvement change the way you think about the poor and about slaves, not just about women?

Converse with Mary Wollstonecraft on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Mary Wollstonecraft's own writing, cited to the page.