Mary
Wollstonecraft
(1759-1797)
Lynnsey Sutphin
Peter Smetanick
Spring 2009
Dr. Wawrzycka

“I do not wish [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”
-Mary Wollstonecraft

18 th Century London
Born on April 27, 1759, in
Spitalfields, London

Edward Wollstonecraft
Elizabeth
Dickson
Edward
Mary
James
Charles
Eliza
Everina

Born the 2 nd child and 1 st daughter into a family of
6 children
Forced to move frequently due to financial instability:
Epping Essex
Wales
Whalebone
Yorkshire
Treated unfairly by abusive father
Moved out on her own at the age of 19.

Mary was forced to seek employment at a young age .
There were not many occupations for respectable young women to choose from.
Governess, teaching, or serving as a ladies companion.

“ Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in.”
-Wollstonecraft
In attempt to allow for the education of women,
Wollstonecraft, with the help of her sister, Eliza, and friend,
Fanny Blood, opened Newington Green School in 1784.
Unfortunately, the school failed, but resulted in the writing of
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters in 1786

Worked as a governess for the
Kingsborough family in Ireland.
Wrote her first novel,
Mary, A Fiction.

The first of Wollstonecraft’s three love affairs occurred with the painter, Henry
Fuseli, who was married.
According to the Norton Anthology,
Mary actually suggested that the three of them live together, but the wife refused to do so.
Mary then moved to Paris alone.

While in Paris in 1793, Wollstonecraft fell in love with Gilbert Imlay, an American.
He registered her as his wife to protect her from being seized during the Reign of Terror.
In 1794, Wollstonecraft gave birth to their daughter, Fanny.
Eventually Mary found reason to believe that
Imlay was unfaithful, and the relationship inevitably came to an end.

After becoming extremely depressed because of Imlay, Mary attempted to commit suicide.
She jumped from Putney Bridge in London into the Thames.
However, her attempt at death ultimately proved unsuccessful.

Wollstonecraft eventually recovered and formed a relationship with American, William Godwin.
When it became apparent that Mary was having a child, they decided to marry, despite oppositions.
On March 29, 1797, at St. Pancras Church in London,
Wollstonecraft and Godwin wed to legitimize her pregnancy.

Gilbert Imlay
Mary Wollstonecraft
William Godwin
Fanny
Mary [Shelley]

Died on September 17, 1797
Eleven days after giving birth to her daughter Mary due to a blood infection caused by unsuccessful attempts to remove her placenta.
She was only 38 years old.

1786:
Thoughts on the
Education of
Daughters
1790: A Vindication of the Rights of Men
1792: A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman
1788: Mary, A Fiction

Mary Wollstonecraft’s first major literary work was written in
1786.
In the work Wollstonecraft offers advice concerning educating women, as well as giving advice for how to care for an infant.

In Mary, A Fiction (1788),
Wollstonecraft declared that all women possess intense sexual desires, and to ignore that fact would be disgraceful and demeaning.
When published in 1798, critics immediately believed her views to be inappropriate and radical.

In 1792, Wollstonecraft
“wrote one of the first treatises of modern
Feminism” (Norton 582).
Her most famous work, which advocated for equal rights for both sexes.

Because of her most famous work, A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman , Mary Wollstonecraft is generally celebrated as the first major feminist.

“In the late eighteenth century, Mary
Wollstonecraft took issue with the assumptions that allow people to make jokes and cause women to hide their creativity” ( TiP
105).
“Having experienced as a child the imbalance of power between her own mother and father and having observed as an adult the indignities suffered by women of all classes, she recognized that they [women] are born into powerless roles” ( TiP 106).

“Many of her issues presage the present: women’s need to unfold their faculties….The problems of communication between the sexes; long-term partnership in place of marriage; economic independence; the freedom to express desires without derision or loss of dignity; and, not least, the problems and triumphs of the single parent in context of
Wollstonecraft’s belief that a child should not be left to the care of strangers.”
Lyndall Gordon, one of Wollstonecraft’s most recent biographers argues…

Though Wollstonecraft’s views initially met resistance and extreme criticism, she is now held in high regard for seeking to empower a previously oppressed sex.
Her work is important to literary criticism because she found in literature “the same sexual inequality and incoherence she [was] arguing against in society at large” (Norton 584).

“Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue;and independence
I will ever secure by contracting my wants’ though I were to live on a barren heath.”
-Mary Wollstonecraft