Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787)
Conduct book urging a rational education for middle-class girls
Philosophy
Mary Wollstonecraft
1759–1797 · English
Enlightenment; early feminism; radical political thought
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and political philosopher, widely regarded as a founder of liberal feminism. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman she argued that women are rational beings whose apparent inferiority is the product of a deficient education, and she engaged with Burke and Rousseau in the revolutionary debates of the 1790s.
How to spot them
- ▸A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; replies to Edmund Burke and to Rousseau's Emile
- ▸Wife of William Godwin and mother of Mary Shelley
- ▸Newington Green, Rational Dissenters and Richard Price
Key works
Mary: A Fiction (1788)
Her first novel, about a woman's intellectual and emotional independence
A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)
Rapid reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, defending reason, rights and Richard Price
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
Argues women deserve the same rational education and moral standing as men; criticises Rousseau; dedicated to Talleyrand
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)
Travel letters blending landscape, politics and reflection; admired by the Romantics
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798)
Unfinished posthumous novel about a wife confined to an asylum by her husband
Key ideas
- Women are rational creatures; their apparent frivolity is caused by an education that trains them to please men rather than to think
- Virtue must rest on reason and be the same for both sexes — there is no separate "feminine" virtue
- Rousseau's Emile is wrong to educate the ideal woman, Sophie, only to serve and please her husband
- Marriage should be a rational companionship of equals; dependence degrades both women and men
- Hereditary privilege and arbitrary power corrupt society; she defended natural rights and the early French Revolution against Burke
Quick-fire facts
- •Married the radical philosopher William Godwin in 1797
- •Died of puerperal fever in September 1797, days after giving birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein
- •Her elder daughter, Fanny Imlay, was fathered by the American Gilbert Imlay
- •Ran a school at Newington Green, where she was influenced by the Dissenting minister Richard Price
- •Lived in revolutionary France during the Terror
- •Godwin's candid Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798) damaged her reputation for a century
- •Wrote that she did not wish women "to have power over men; but over themselves"
- •Maggi Hambling's "A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft" was unveiled at Newington Green in 2020
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Mary Wollstonecraft