Mary Wollstonecraft

Founder of Modern Feminism · Philosopher & Writer · 1759–1797

The Enlightenment philosopher whose 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' argued that women appear inferior only because they are denied education — a founding text of feminist thought.

Who was Wollstonecraft?

Mary Wollstonecraft made herself a woman of letters against poverty and a hard father. She ran a school, worked as a governess, and joined the radical London circle of the publisher Joseph Johnson. When Edmund Burke attacked the French Revolution, she answered with 'A Vindication of the Rights of Men'; then, in 1792, she wrote her enduring work, 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman', arguing that women appear inferior only because they are denied education, and that reason is not the property of one sex. She witnessed the Revolution in Paris, loved and suffered, and died at thirty-eight of childbed fever, days after giving birth to her daughter, the future Mary Shelley. Her ideas, dismissed and then buried by scandal about her private life, were rediscovered as foundational to modern feminism.

Major achievements

• Wrote 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman', a founding work of feminist philosophy
• Argued for women's education and reason as the path to equality
• Answered Burke with 'A Vindication of the Rights of Men'
• Wrote fiction, travel writing and a history of the French Revolution
• Lived, as well as argued, an independent intellectual life

Life in brief

• 1759 — Born in London: Into a family of declining fortunes.
• 1784 — Opens a school: At Newington Green, among Dissenters.
• 1790 — Rights of Men: Her reply to Burke on the French Revolution.
• 1792 — Rights of Woman: Her landmark argument for women's education.
• 1792 — In revolutionary Paris: Witnesses the Revolution first-hand.
• 1797 — Marries Godwin; dies: Of childbed fever, days after Mary's birth.

Explore the life of Wollstonecraft — five chapters

1. The Daughter Who Was Not Educated — A violent house and an unequal inheritance
2. Becoming a Professional Author — Joseph Johnson's circle and a reply to Edmund Burke
3. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman — The argument, in 1792
4. Paris, Imlay and the Journey North — Living the argument, at great cost
5. A Death in Childbirth and a Ruined Reputation — How Godwin's honesty buried her for a century

Read the five-chapter life of Mary Wollstonecraft →

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Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman — ideas Wollstonecraft is tied to on the Living Knowledge Map. On Incandio you prove you understand one by teaching it to Ember, the AI pupil, in Teach the Room.

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