The turbulent life of Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley, ended when she was only thirty-eight. The anger and zeal that fuelled her creative talents were destructive forces in her personal life.
Her writing challenged the accepted conventions of the day, particularly in relation to women, education, and marriage. Wollstonecraft’s most famous publication was written as a response to Rousseau’s Émile (1762) which argues for women’s subjugation and claims that educated women would lose their power over men. She responded by arguing that ‘This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves’. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) she claims that women should contend for equal rights with men and claims that their supposed inadequacies are ‘the natural consequence of their education and station in society’. She was famously dubbed a ‘hyena in petticoats’ by Horace Walpole in 1795 and reviled after her death when her husband published memoirs exposing her unconventional relationship with Gilbert Imlay by whom she had an illegitimate child. This revelation of her sexual freedom overshadowed her demands for rational female education, and her influence only came to the fore again within the context of the ‘Woman Question’ of the mid-Victorian era, and again with the rise of Women’s Rights campaigners in the 1960s.
The following is an extract from the first edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, held in the Chawton House Library archives:
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.” Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
If you would like to know more about Mary Wollstonecraft, tickets are still available for our evening lecture on 13th November at 6:30 pm. Professor Sharon Ruston will show that Wollstonecraft’s interest in natural history helped the author to formulate her feminist theory. Tickets are £11, with canapés and a glass of wine included in the price!
If you would like to come and see works by Mary Wollstonecraft, or any other author in our collection, the Library is freely accessible and open to any reader, Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 12.30 pm and 1.30pm to 4.45pm. Please make an appointment with our librarian, Dr Darren Bevin by emailing him on darren.bevin@chawton.net, or calling 01420 541010.