Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft’s formed her feminist principles at an early age. Her father had ruined their comfortably off family and beat Mary’s mother when he was drunk. The teenage Mary took to lying outside her mother’s door in an attempt to protect her. And so began a life of challenging the social norms. After a brief stint as a ladies companion, teacher and a governess, Wollstonecraft settled upon writing as her career of choice- even though few eighteenth-century women had any success as authors.
Wollstonecraft’s first book, “Original Stories from Real life“ was her one and only children’s book. From then on, she confined herself political philosophy. In 1790, in response to British outrage against the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft wrote “Vindication of the Rights of Man.” She argued that the revolution, no matter how bloody, arose from real economic and social problems rather than baseless violence. She followed up the book with her most famous work “Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ” a book which called for girls to have the same rights to an education as boys.
Wollstonecraft’s first relationship was with a married artist, Henry Fuseli. The second was with Gilbert Imlay, an American she met in revolutionary France. The couple had a daughter, Fanny but they never married. Imlay did, however, pass Wollstoncraft off as his wife to protect her from execution during the Reign of Terror. He later left Wollstonecraft, prompting her to attempt suicide. It was just after her recovery she fell in love with William Godwin who claimed she won his heart through her ‘Letters written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark”. “She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and dissolves us in tenderness,” said Godwin,” at the same time that she displays a genius which commands all our admiration.”
The couple married when Wollstonecraft became pregnant but maintained two adjoining properties so they could enjoy their independence. On August 30, 1797, the future Mary Shelley arrived. It was a standard birth-but the placenta ruptured, and Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever on September 10. She left behind several unfinished manuscripts and a distraught Godwin who wrote“I firmly believe there does not exist her equal in the world. I know from experience we were formed to make each other happy. I have not the least expectation that I can now ever know happiness again.”