Wollstonecraft

Abstract

• pioneering feminist and Enlight thinker • born London, 1759 • her lifelong crusade for independence and female equality was deeply rooted in a traumatic childhood: her father a violent alcoholic who abused his wife and frequently relocated the family because of economic troubles • left home at 19, eventually becomes part of a London community called Newington Green, where she est. a school and begins to associate with group of London intellectuals, men & women • gained instant notoriety with the publication of *Vindication of the Rights of Men*, an angry response to a famous male writer who had written a conservative account of the Fr Rev • her controversial attack on this other writer led her to be condemned in public, Horace Walpole later called her “a hyena in petticoats” • her most famous & influential work, though, is the one we read • sustained argument for female emancipation that extended the Enlightenment credo of inalienable human rights to women; widely regarded as landmark of feminist thought • actually travels to Paris in Dec 1792 to witness the French Revolution first hand • there she has an ill-fated love affair with Gilbert Imlay, a dashing Am businessman living in Paris, and produces an illegitimate daughter • when she returns to England she soon becomes involved with William Godwin, a political philosopher, marries 1797. Dies of blood poisoning in 1797, 11 days after giving birth to their child, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley