Wollstonecraft wrote to her: "I have formed romantic notions of friendship . Wollstonecraft revelled in the intellectual atmosphere of the Arden household and valued her friendship with Arden greatly, sometimes to the point of being emotionally possessive. The two frequently read books together and attended lectures presented by Arden's father, a self-styled philosopher and scientist. The first was with Jane Arden in Beverley. Two friendships shaped Wollstonecraft's early life. The human costs, however, were severe: her sister suffered social condemnation and, because she could not remarry, was doomed to a life of poverty and hard work.
In a defining moment in 1784, she persuaded Eliza, who was suffering from what was probably postpartum depression, to leave her husband and infant Wollstonecraft made all of the arrangements for Eliza to flee, demonstrating her willingness to challenge social norms. Wollstonecraft played a similar maternal role for her sisters, Everina and Eliza, throughout her life. As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her mother's bedroom to protect her. Moreover, he was apparently a violent man who would beat his wife in drunken rages. 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. Consequently, the family became financially unstable and they were frequently forced to move during Wollstonecraft's youth. Although her family had a comfortable income when she was a child, her father gradually squandered it on speculative projects. She was the second of the seven children of Elizabeth Dixon and Edward John Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London. She died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, who would become an accomplished writer and the author of Frankenstein.įor a chronological guide, see Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38 leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. 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.Īfter two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.Īfter Wollstonecraft's death, her widower published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. Wollstonecraft is best known for 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. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.ĭuring her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Mary Wollstonecraft ( / ˈ w ʊ l s t ən k r æ f t/, also UK: /- k r ɑː f t/ 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights.
0 kommentar(er)
