Mary Wollstonecraft
Student Information Sheet
Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 in Spitalfields,
London. She was the second of seven children of Edward
Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon. Mary’s family’s
financial situation progressively got worse, forcing them to
repeatedly move. Mary’s father was an abusive, angry
drunken man who would beat Elizabeth’s mother in
drunken rages. As a teenager, Mary would lie outside of
her mother’s room in order to protect her. Mary had the
same protective, responsible role with her sisters; she
convinced her sister, Eliza, who was recovering from
depression, to flee from her husband and infant. Mary had
two friendships which helped shape her early life. The first
one was Jane Arden, who would read books and attend lectures with Mary. The second
was Fanny Blood, who opened up Mary’s mind. Mary eventually moved in with the
Blood’s and Mary realized she idealized Blood. The Bloods were very invested in
traditional feminine values. Mary envisioned living in a female utopia with her friend,
Fanny.
After Blood died, Mary’s friends helped her obtain a position as governess to the
daughters of the Anglo-Irish Kingsborough family in Ireland. Although Mary did not get
along very well with Lady Kingsborough, she admitted that she had “freed her mind from
all superstitions.” After a year of being a governess, Mary decided to become an author.
This was a radical choice, since, at the time, few women could support themselves by
writing. Mary moved to London and was assisted by the liberal publisher, Joseph
Johnson. Mary found a place to live and work and to support herself. Mary learned
German and French and translated many texts. While in London, Mary pursued a
relationship with Henry Fuseli, even though he was already married. After being rejected,
she decided to travel to France to participate in the revolutionary events that she had just
celebrated in her recent Vindication of the Rights of Women. This made Mary famous
overnight, she was compared with such leading lights as the theologian and
controversialist Joseph Preistly and Thomas Paine. Mary pursued the ideas she had
outlined in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, her most famous and influential work
which was written in 1792. In the Rights of Women, Mary argues that women are not
inferior to men, but only appear to be because of a lack of education. She suggests that
both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagined a social order
founded on reason.