Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women was published at the end of the 18th century - a century marked by the emergence of the philosophical spirit and the concept of 'enlightenment', by the gradual erosion of monarchical authority (which reached its apex with the French Revolution in 1789), and by the birth of democracy. While the question of the rights of men engendered lively debate at that time, a woman's lot remained unconsidered. Wollstonecraft, however, was determined to change this and to add a dissenting female voice to the chorus debating political emancipation. As she grew intellectually, Mary saw that her problem was not her family history, nor a God-given sense of dissatisfaction, but a response to a general social situation in which some improperly privileged and educated men systematically denied education and autonomy to women. She became more sure of her own intellectual gifts; despite having to suffer the social stigma associated with being a spinster, she felt that unthinking married women were her 'inferiors'. Throughout her life, Mary Wollstonecraft grappled with the complexities of women's lot: their emotional neediness as well as their wish for independence; their anxiety over motherhood as well as their enthusiasm for it; and their desire for romance, which they might theoretically despise. She believed in getting to truth through investigating personal experience - so her mode of writing was in the main intensely personal. And honest, for she would not repudiate her own experience. So in her novels she was candid about female passion, and would not reward it with a man or money. In her letters she constantly referred to her body, nerves and depressions, while in her early published works she demanded response only to her intellect.