Who made man the exclusive judge, if women partake with him the gift of reason? ―Mary Wollstonecraft
Who is she?
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
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Her Legacy
Wollstonecraft has what scholar Cora Kaplan labelled in 2002 a 'curious' legacy that has evolved 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'. After the devastating effect of Godwin's Memoirs, Wollstonecraft's reputation lay in tatters for nearly a century; she was pilloried by such writers as Maria Edgeworth, who patterned the 'freakish' Harriet Freke in Belinda (1801) after her. Other novelists such as Mary Hays, Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, and Jane West created similar figures, all to teach a 'moral lesson' to their readers.
In contrast, there was one writer of the generation after Wollstonecraft who apparently did not share the judgmental views of her contemporaries. Jane Austen never mentioned the earlier woman by name, but several of her novels contain positive allusions to Wollstonecraft's work. The American literary scholar Anne K. Mellor notes several examples. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr Wickham seems to be based upon the sort of man Wollstonecraft claimed that standing armies produce, while the sarcastic remarks of protagonist Elizabeth Bennet about 'female accomplishments' closely echo Wollstonecraft's condemnation of these activities. The balance a woman must strike between feelings and reason in Sense and Sensibility follows what Wollstonecraft recommended in her novel Mary, while the moral equivalence Austen drew in Mansfield Park between slavery and the treatment of women in society back home tracks one of Wollstonecraft's favourite arguments. In Persuasion, Austen's characterisation of Anne Eliot as better qualified than her father to manage the family estate also echoes a Wollstonecraft thesis.
