Mary Wollstonecraft: A Pioneer in Feminist Thought

Mary Wollstonecraft is remembered today as the woman who, more than two centuries ago, argued that women were not naturally inferior to men but only appeared so because of the inferior education society gave them. Her short life of just 38 years was filled with hardship, scandal, and remarkable intellectual courage. From a violent home to the radical literary circles of London, her journey shaped the very foundations of feminist thought. This is the story of how a self-taught daughter of a failing farmer became known as the mother of feminism.

A difficult beginning 🔗

Mary Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London, the second of seven children. Her paternal grandfather had been a prosperous master weaver who left behind a sizeable inheritance. Her father, Edward John, mismanaged that money and tried to reinvent himself as a gentleman farmer, but nearly all his ventures failed.

This financial decline forced the family to move repeatedly during Mary’s childhood. The pressures pushed her father toward drinking and abusive behaviour, particularly toward his wife, Elizabeth. As a young girl, Mary often tried to shield and console her mother. These early experiences left a deep mark on her, and they coloured her later writings against what she saw as the oppressive nature of marriage.

Education was another source of early inequality. Of all the children, only her brother Edward received an extended formal schooling and later became a lawyer; he also inherited a substantial share of the family money directly. Mary, by contrast, went to school only briefly in Yorkshire, where she learned to read and write. Everything else she taught herself. She was, in the words of historians, a truly exceptional autodidact with an enormous appetite for literature and languages.

Limited options for a woman of her time 🔗

To survive, Wollstonecraft had to earn her own living, but the options open to women in the eighteenth century were narrow. Respectable work for an unmarried woman was largely confined to a handful of roles. She tried them all.

Companion, teacher, and governess 🔗

Wollstonecraft worked as a companion to a wealthy lady in Bath and as a governess for the children of an Irish landowner, Mr Kingsborough. These were among the few “acceptable” professions available, alongside needlework, teaching, and acting as a lady’s companion. None offered real independence or intellectual freedom.

More ambitiously, in 1784 she helped establish her own school at Newington Green, working alongside her sister Eliza and her close friend Fanny Blood. The school eventually failed, but the experience proved formative. Watching how girls were taught convinced her that they were being deliberately trained to be frivolous and dependent rather than rational and capable.

These years directly fed her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787). At the time, girls received only a basic education because there were no secondary schools for them; they were not expected to prepare for universities, which barred women entirely. Wollstonecraft wanted to change this completely.

Joseph Johnson and the radical circle 🔗

The turning point in Wollstonecraft’s life came when she settled in London to pursue writing as a career. There she became connected with Joseph Johnson, an influential and liberal-minded London publisher who had a gift for discovering and nurturing some of the leading intellectual figures of the late eighteenth century.

Johnson became her long-time publisher, friend, and in many ways her patron. He published her early works and hired her as a translator and reader, giving her steady literary work. When Johnson and Thomas Christie launched the periodical the Analytical Review in 1788, Wollstonecraft became a regular contributor of articles and reviews, sharpening her skills as a critic and thinker.

Just as important, Johnson introduced her to his lively social circle. This radical group of intellectuals gathered at his home and included, at various times, figures such as Thomas Paine, the painter Henry Fuseli, and the philosopher William Godwin. For a self-taught woman from a broken home, entering this world of debate and ideas was transformative.

Two vindications that defined her 🔗

One of the most intensely debated topics in the late 1700s was the French Revolution. This debate would draw out Wollstonecraft’s most famous works.

A Vindication of the Rights of Men 🔗

In 1790, the conservative statesman Edmund Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France, defending tradition, rank, and inherited hierarchy. His argument drew swift rebuttals from English radicals. The first response to fly off the presses was Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), published by Johnson. In it she attacked the defence of rank and aristocracy and argued that traditional structures should be torn down if they did not serve the common good. The pamphlet sold well enough to merit a second edition.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 🔗

Her landmark work followed in 1792. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman argued that women only appear inferior to men because of their inferior education. She insisted that women and men should be educated equally, and that the existing system deliberately trained girls to be incapable and dependent. If girls were given the same opportunities as boys, she argued, women would become not only better wives and mothers but also capable workers across many professions, and society as a whole would benefit.

The book was a bestseller, quickly going into a second edition within the year and soon translated into multiple languages. It extended the radical idea of universal rights, so loudly discussed in the context of the Revolution, to the cause of women. The argument was simple but powerful: the rights of men must necessarily include the rights of women.

An unconventional personal life 🔗

Wollstonecraft lived by some of her more radical convictions, and her personal life was turbulent and unconventional by the standards of her day.

In 1792 she travelled to Paris to observe the French Revolution firsthand. There she formed a relationship with an American adventurer, Gilbert Imlay, and in 1794 gave birth to their daughter, Fanny, to whom she was deeply devoted. The relationship, however, ended in betrayal. Even after Imlay’s interest faded, she undertook a difficult business journey to Scandinavia on his behalf, an experience she turned into one of her enduring literary works, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (1796). Upon returning to London, she discovered he had deserted her entirely, and her distress led her to attempt suicide.

Her happiest relationship came later, with the political philosopher William Godwin, whom she had first met through Joseph Johnson. The two formed a passionate partnership of equals. Although Godwin had long opposed the institution of marriage, the couple married in 1797. In August that year she gave birth to their daughter, also named Mary, but eleven days later, on 10 September 1797, she died of puerperal fever at the age of 38. That daughter would grow up to become Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

A reputation destroyed and then reborn 🔗

At the time of her death, Wollstonecraft was a genuine literary celebrity, admired not only in Britain but also in France, Germany, Scandinavia, and the newly independent United States, where her books had been translated.

Then came an unexpected blow. Grieving, Godwin published Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798). He intended it as a loving and honest tribute, believing that full and frank exposure of a person’s life would bring understanding and sympathy. Instead, his candid revelations about her affairs, her child born outside marriage, and her suicide attempts shocked a conservative public. Her name became linked with scandal and “dangerous” radicalism, and her serious ideas were largely dismissed for much of the following century.

Yet her ideas never fully disappeared. As the women’s rights movement gathered strength in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, her arguments found new and receptive audiences. John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869) carried similar arguments forward into mainstream debate, and feminists increasingly returned to Wollstonecraft as a foundational voice.

The mother of feminism 🔗

Today Wollstonecraft is widely regarded as the founder of feminism and one of the founding figures of feminist philosophy. Her central insight, that the apparent inferiority of women was the product of social conditioning and unequal education rather than nature, became a cornerstone of feminist thought.

Her influence stretches across generations of thinkers and activists who fought for women’s right to vote, to work, and to enter universities. Interestingly, her legacy is partly intertwined with the memoir that once damaged her: by keeping her name and her life in public view, Godwin’s controversial book inadvertently ensured that her literary work remained a subject of discussion and analysis for centuries to come.

From a self-taught girl shielding her mother in a violent home to a celebrated philosopher whose ideas reshaped how we think about gender and equality, Mary Wollstonecraft turned the limitations of her own life into a powerful argument for the rights of all women.

What do you think? Do you believe Wollstonecraft’s central claim, that perceived differences between men and women are mostly the product of unequal education and social conditioning, still holds true today? And should we judge a thinker’s ideas separately from the unconventional choices of their personal life?

References

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wollstonecraft/
2. https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social-sciences-and-law/social-reformers/mary-wollstonecraft
3. https://liberalhistory.org.uk/history/mary-wollstonecraft-1759-1797/
4. https://www.worldhistory.org/Mary_Wollstonecraft/
5. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Wollstonecraft
6. https://becker.wustl.edu/news/mary-wollstonecrafts-a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman/
7. https://exhibitions.library.columbia.edu/exhibits/show/cc/rights
8. https://lithub.com/how-a-husbands-loving-biography-ruined-his-wifes-reputation/