Jessica Stavig
February 20, 2009
 Her Parents:
 William Godwin
 Mary Wollstonecraft
 Both were enlightenment thinkers
 Her Husband:
 Percy Shelley
 A free enlightenment/romantic
thinker
 A very radical philosopher
 Founded “philosophical anarchism” (Philp)
 Important Philosophical Works:
 Political Justice (1793)
 The Enquirer (1798)
 Thoughts on Man (1831)
 His novel Caleb Williams (1794)
 Defined mainly in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
 Argument:
“government is a corrupting force in society, perpetuating
dependence and ignorance, but that it will be rendered increasingly
unnecessary and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge.
Politics will be displaced by an enlarged personal morality as truth
conquers error and mind subordinates matter.” (Philp) Due to this
argument, he rejected forms of “mental enslavements, such as law,
private property, marriage and concerts.” (Philp)
 The idea of the corrupting force in society is directly taken from
Rousseau.
 He expands on Rousseau to explain more specifically that
criminals are a result of corruption in society and stresses the
importance of education.
 Defined as “utilitarian” (Philp)
 Equality: Godwin’s An Account of a Seminary - “the state of
society is incontestably artificial; the power of one man over
another must always derive from convention of from conquest;
by nature we are equal” (Smith) = Locke
 Education: Godwin’s An Account of a Seminary -“but our moral
dispositions and character depend very much, perhaps entirely,
upon education.” (Smith) = Locke and experience
 ‘Famous Fire Case’: This requires that an individual choose one of
two people to save from a fire. One is the Archbishop of Fenelon,
“a benefactor to the whole human race,” and the other is that
individual’s mother or father (depending on the edition read).
(Philps)
 Godwin’s conclusion: Save Fenelon in order to act justly. Actions
should benefit the common good.
 Note: Professor Drake - I Robot movie
 A very radical writer, intellect, and feminist (Kreis)
 Applies Locke: the equality of all people
 Writes as a response to Rousseau’s Emile from “Marriage” and his
proposition that females are inferior and should have different
forms of education.
 Rousseau: “Once it has been shown that men and women are
essentially different in character and temperament, it follows that
they ought not to have the same education….their education must
be wholly directed to their relations with men.” (Rousseau, 256-257)
 Wollstonecraft: “meanwhile, strength of body and mind are
sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing
themselves, - the only way women can rise in the world, - by
marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they
marry they act as such children may be expected to act: - they dress;
they paint, and nickname God’s creatures.” (Wollstonecraft)
 Proposes a strong view on Education:
“a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow
creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and that
women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a
variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty
conclusion. … One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a
false sense of education, gathered from the books written on this
subject by men who considering females rather as women than
human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring
mistresses than wives” (Wollstonecraft)
 Addresses masculinity:
She says: “obtain a character as a human being,
regardless of the distinction of sex.” (Wollstonecraft)
 Desires to persuade:
“I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength,
both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft
phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and
refinement of taste are almost synonymous with the
epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only
the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been
termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.”
(Wollstonecraft)
Basically, women shouldn’t live to appeal to men.
 Enforces strongly the enlightenment ideal of reason:
“some women govern their husbands without degrading
themselves, because intellect will always govern.” (Wollstonecraft)
 When he was sixteen he joined up with William
Godwin and adopted his philosophy.
 He too was a very radical philosopher and poet.
 He was very outspoken,
challenging “oppression, religion,
and convention” as well as calling
for “revolution and change.”
(Merriman)
 He used his poems to convey
these ideas.
 1797, August 30: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin is born and 10 days
later her mother dies of puerperal fever, due to child birth
complications.
 1798: After the death of his wife, Godwin publishes her
biography, Memoirs of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights
of Women, and in so doing airs all her dirty laundry:
 the affair with Gilbert Imlay which resulted in their illegitimate
child Fanny
 two attempts of suicide,
 the premarital relations that she and Godwin shared. (Mellor, 2)
 Godwin remarries to Mary Jane Clairmont, which gives Fanny
and Mary a stepsister Claire.
 Growing up was difficult
 Mary is tutored at home in enlightement writings
 1812: Percy Bysshe Shelley comes into contact with Godwin
 1814: Mary, age 16, and Shelley, still a married man, elope in
France and tour around with Claire.
 In their travels of France, they witness the burned villages
and wreckage that the Napoleonic Wars have caused.
 1815: Percy and Mary have a daughter named Clara who dies
after a few weeks
 1816: Mary is 19 - Both Fanny and Percy Shelley’s ex-wife,
who is pregnant, commit suicide, Percy Shelley and Mary
get married, their son William is born, time is spent with
the famous poet Byron in Geneva.
 June 1816 - May 1817: Mary writes Frankenstein or; The
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Modern Prometheus, of which the introduction is written
by Percy.
1817: They have another daughter who they name Clara, but
she dies after a year.
Mary and Percy move back to Italy, now on better terms
with Mary’s father because they were married.
1819: Their son William, age 3, dies, and Percy Florence is
born
1822: Mary almost looses her life due to a miscarriage.
While sailing in the Don Juan, Percy, age 30 drowns and
Mary compiles The Complete Poetical Works of Percy
Bysshe (1824)
 1823: Mary and her son Percy return to England, she
continues writing, and fights illness
 1824: At age 26 Byron dies of illness while fighting for
the independence of Greece from Turkey
 1851, February 1: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley dies at
age 54 in London
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Information from: Mellor, Merriman, and Drake
 Locke:
 Equality
 Experience
 Rousseau:
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Man is innately good but becomes corrupted by society
 Father:
 Society corrupts people and that is what results in criminals
 Science is the answer and will end death
 In general, he did not side with compassion, but believed in making only
rational choices (for the benefit of society, the common good)
 Mother
 Criticism of “masculinity”: man has a right to his “child.” (Drake)
 When this idea takes form in Frankenstein, Shelley basically uses this also as a
criticism of her father who raised her after her mother died.
 Some feminists think that Frankenstein is more of an attack on what happens
when a man (Victor Frankenstein) raises a child. (Drake)
 Importance of education and experience
 Mary Shelley:
 She fuses all these ideas together into a broad theme:
“we are what we are trained to become”, behavior is
learned, and therefore it is Nurture over Nature. (Drake)
1) According to Wollstonecraft, “a degree of physical
superiority [of men over women] cannot, therefore, be
denied…”, but if women are intellectually or
emotionally inferior to men, it is due specifically to
what? What, in general, does Wollstonecraft blame for
the seeming inferiority of women? Pick One:
a) Domestic abuse
b) Raising children.
c) Biased Language
d) False Education
e) Sexual intercourse
2) According to Wollstonecraft, “the minds of women
are enfeebled by…”
Pick One:
a) False Refinement
b) Childbirth
c) Sexual Intercourse
d) Nursing Children
e) Industrialism
3) According to Wollstonecraft, what separates man
from "brute creation" (beasts)?
a) Beauty
b) Sexual propriety
c) Divine blessing
d) Industrialism
e) Reason
4) "My own sex, I hope, will forgive me if I treat them
like…"
a) "rational creatures instead of flattering their
fascinating graces"
b) "the slaves of brutish man"
c) "mere prostitutes in the house of Satan's capitalist
desire"
5) If women act like children, it is because
a) of Adam's actual corruption of Eve, which priests
inverted
b) they are educated to be so
c) they spend all their time raising children, "who
influence their feminine minds"
d) of society’s corrupting influence of natural goodness
So after reading the Vindication - what do you think
about the idea of nature vs. nurture and gender?
What is Wollstonecraft saying and do you agree or
disagree?
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Kreis, Steven. "Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797." Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History. 13
May 2004. The History Guide. 22 Feb 2009
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/wollstonecraft.html.
Mellor, Anne K.. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. USA: Routledge, Chapman and
Hall, Inc., 1989.
Merriman, CD. "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley." The Literature Network. 2006. Jalic Inc. 22 Feb 2009
http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_mary/.
Merriman, CD. "Percy Bysshe Shelley." The Literature Network. 2006. Jalic Inc. 22 Feb 2009
http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/.
Philp, Mark. "William Godwin." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006. Metaphysics Research
Lab, CSLI, Stanford University. 26 Feb 2009
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/.
Professor Tom Drake’s Notes: http://www.class.uidaho.edu/engl_258/258HHome.htm
Smith, Mark K. "William Godwin and Informal Education." 1998. Infed Search. 26 Feb 2009
www.infed.org/thinkers/et-good.htm.
* Taken from this is the quoted portion of Godwin’s An Account of a Seminary, 1783
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. "Emile: from Marriage." The Norton Anthology: Western Literature (Volume
2). "8th ed.". 2006.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. "Introduction." Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman. 1792. 2009. Bartleby.com. 22 Feb 2009 http://www.bartleby.com/144/103.html.
"1792 A Vindication of the Rights o Women by Mary Wollstonecraft: Table of Contents." 22 Feb 2009
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/wollstonecraft/woman-contents.html.