Mary Wollstonecraft

"Mary Wollstonecraft was born on April 27, 1759, in Spitalfields, London, England. She was the second of the seven children of Elizabeth Dixon and Edward John Wollstonecraft. Although her family had a comfortable income when she was a child, her father gradually squandered it on speculative projects. Consequently, the family became financially unstable and they were frequently forced to move during Wollstonecraft's youth. The family's financial situation eventually became so dire that Wollstonecraft's father compelled her to turn over money that she would have inherited at her maturity. Moreover, he was apparently a violent man who would beat his wife in drunken rages. As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her mother's bedroom to protect her. Wollstonecraft played a similar maternal role for her sisters, Everina and Eliza, throughout her life. Wollstonecraft received little formal education but was an avid reader and taught herself various subjects. She also worked as a companion, a governess, and a schoolteacher at different times in her life. She was influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and developed a keen interest in social justice and human rights. She began her writing career in 1787 with a pamphlet on the education of daughters, followed by several other works on topics such as history, politics, religion, morality, and feminism. Wollstonecraft is best known for her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. She also advocates for women's rights to education, employment, property, divorce, and political representation. She criticizes the prevailing notions of femininity that emphasize beauty, delicacy, and dependence, and calls for women to develop their intellect, virtue, and independence. She also challenges the sexual double standards that allow men to be promiscuous but condemn women for the same behavior. Wollstonecraft had two ill-fated affairs in her life: one with the painter Henry Fuseli, who was already married; and another with the American adventurer Gilbert Imlay, by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay. Both relationships ended in betrayal and disappointment for Wollstonecraft, who suffered from depression and attempted suicide twice. In 1797, she married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. They had a daughter, Mary Shelley, who became a famous writer and the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died on September 10, 1797, just days after giving birth to Mary Shelley, due to complications from puerperal fever. She was 38 years old. Wollstonecraft's widower published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. She was denounced as immoral, unnatural, and unfeminine by many critics and commentators. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. She is now regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers and a pioneer of women's rights. Her works have inspired and influenced many writers, activists, and thinkers, such as Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, John Stuart Mill, and Emma Goldman."