Mary Wollstonecraft

Life and legacy

Mary Wollstonecraft was born into a family of declining fortunes. Her father squandered an inheritance and was abusive, experiences that gave her a lifelong sensitivity to the powerlessness of women in a patriarchal society. Largely self-educated, she worked as a governess, teacher, and companion before establishing herself as a professional writer in London's radical intellectual circles, centered around the publisher Joseph Johnson.

In 1790, Wollstonecraft published "A Vindication of the Rights of Men" in response to Edmund Burke's attack on the French Revolution, making her one of the first to challenge Burke in print. Two years later came her masterwork, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792), a groundbreaking argument that women's apparent inferiority was not natural but the result of their limited education. She demanded that women receive the same rational education as men, arguing that this would make them better wives, mothers, and citizens, not rivals to men.

Wollstonecraft traveled to revolutionary Paris in 1792, where she witnessed the Reign of Terror and began a relationship with the American businessman Gilbert Imlay, with whom she had a daughter, Fanny. When Imlay abandoned her, she twice attempted suicide. She later formed a relationship with the philosopher William Godwin, and the two married in 1797 when Wollstonecraft became pregnant.

On August 30, 1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second daughter, Mary, who would grow up to write "Frankenstein." Wollstonecraft died eleven days later of puerperal fever, a common and devastating consequence of childbirth in the era before antiseptic practice. She was just thirty-eight years old.

After her death, Godwin published a memoir revealing her love affairs and suicide attempts, which scandalized the public and damaged her reputation for decades. It was not until the twentieth century that Wollstonecraft was reclaimed as a foundational figure in feminist thought. Today she is recognized as one of the most important political philosophers of the Enlightenment era.

Key accomplishments

• Published "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792), a founding text of feminist philosophy
• Published "A Vindication of the Rights of Men" (1790), an early response to Edmund Burke
• Advocated for women's education as the key to equality
• Witnessed the French Revolution firsthand and wrote about it in "An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution" (1794)
• Mother of Mary Shelley, author of "Frankenstein"

Timeline

The dated lines from the record above, in order, with Mary Wollstonecraft's age worked out from the birth year (1759).

1. 1759Born April 27, 1759, Spitalfields, London, England
2. 1790Published "A Vindication of the Rights of Men" (1790), an early response to Edmund Burke (around age 31)
3. 1792Published "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792), a founding text of feminist philosophy (around age 33)
4. 1794Witnessed the French Revolution firsthand and wrote about it in "An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution" (1794) (around age 35)
5. 1797Died September 10, 1797, London, England

Quotes

I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Related figures

Where Mary Wollstonecraft sits in the atlas

• Era: Age of Revolution (~1750-1850), one of 14 figures filed there
• Born 1759, the 84th of 125 figures in the full list by birth year.
• Cities: London, Paris
• Collections: Women Who Shaped the West, Revolutionary Thinkers

Contemporaries

21 other figures in the atlas were alive at some point during Mary Wollstonecraft's lifetime (1759-1797). These are the longest overlaps.

• Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804): both alive for 38 years, 1759 to 1797
• George Washington (1732-1799): both alive for 38 years, 1759 to 1797
• Horatio Nelson (1758-1805): both alive for 38 years, 1759 to 1797
• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): both alive for 38 years, 1759 to 1797
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): both alive for 38 years, 1759 to 1797
• Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834): both alive for 38 years, 1759 to 1797
• Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826): both alive for 38 years, 1759 to 1797
• Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803): both alive for 38 years, 1759 to 1797

Others connected with the same cities

Figures not already listed on this page, nearest in time first.

More from Age of Revolution

Figures from the same era born closest in time to Mary Wollstonecraft.

• Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), The Titan of Music