When feminism was not yet a dominant current, when women were relegated home, Frankenstein’s grandmother began leading the way. We’re talking about Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley, a truly atypical woman for the time she lived. Philosopher and writer, she lived a life between letters.
The figure of Mary, unfortunately, was e wrapped in controversy, was severely criticized and questioned by her contemporaries. She died shortly after giving birth to her daughter Mary Shelley from a birth infection.
- After her death.
- Her husband William Godwin.
- Also a writer and philosopher.
- Tried to honor her by publishing his memoirs.
- However.
- Despite Godwin’s goodwill.
- Wollstonecraft will be remembered only for his controversies and.
- Therefore.
- Will be a figure rejected by the intellectuals of the moment.
Their history and work have been silenced, kept secret so that no one, like Mary, dares to think, to claim the rights of women. It was until a time later that the new wave of feminism of the early twentieth century was responsible for dusting off his texts and bringing them to light.
Virginia Woolf and other feminists of the time were responsible for the resurrection of Mary Wollstonecraft, a woman misunderstood and undoubtedly ahead of her time.
“The good use of reason is the only thing that makes us independent of everything except reason itself, at the service of which is perfect freedom. “Mary Wollstonecraft.
On 27 April 1759 Wollstonecraft was born in Spitalfields, London, United Kingdom, into a family with a stable financial situation, but his father ended up wasting all the family’s savings, and his father drank too much and beat Wollstonecraft and joined his sisters deeply and became an important pillar for them.
Wollstonecraft has always defended women’s independence and tried to challenge conventions, so he advised his sister Eliza to leave her family, but the world was un prepared for such a thing and Eliza’s fate was very precarious.
Mary had two important friendships in her youth that greatly influenced her professional future: Jane Arden and Fanny Blood. Arden took her, under the influence of her father, into the world of philosophy. The blood died after giving birth and this fact marked Mary’s life.
After her friend’s death, Wollstonecraft made a fundamental decision: becoming a writer, her early texts being a small reflection on women’s problems in the education and professional system, when she wanted to find a job she realized that her chances were reduced to two: being a housekeeper or caregiver. In addition, the education that women receive is very different from that of men and therefore extremely limited.
Later, she began working as a housekeeper, being quite atypical with the education she gave children. After this experience, he wrote Reflections on the Education of His Daughters (1787) and Original Real-Life Stories (1778), his only book. children’s literature. Her first work followed a very common style at the time, but it is true that she advanced some of the reflections on single women, especially her economic constraints.
She subsequently got a job at the joseph Johnson-led publishing house, worked as a translator, and published the Claim for men’s rights (1790). This text, in fact, was a response to the publication of Secret Reflections on the French Revolution (1790). Wollstonecraft greatly attacked hereditary rights and the aristocracy, defending the republic, but was this controversial text just the cornerstone of what would come next?
“Since they learned from a young age that beauty is the woman’s scepter, the mind adapts to the body and, wandering in its golden cage, seeks only to worship their prison. ” – Mary Wollstonecraft-
Mary Wollstonecraft landed, in 1792, in a Paris mired in the chaos in which Louis XVI was guillotined. At this point, Wollstonecraft began to destabilize: on the one hand, he wrote The Defense of Women’s Rights (1972); on the other hand, he fell madly in love with Gilbert Imlay, with whom he had a daughter. The relationship with Imlay was a failure and Wollstonecraft wrote him desperate letters as a result of the depression in which he was plunged.
It was the 18th century, a time of revolution, and Wollstonecraft was alone with a girl, after her return to the UK she tried to kill herself, paradoxically, this woman who defended her rights and independence was in a deep depression due to a sentimental failure. Talking about feminism in Wollstonecraft is somewhat contradictory, as the term was later consolidated.
However, when we read the vindication of women’s rights, we realize that the first steps in this struggle were present What exactly did Mary criticize?Mary saw a problem with the pink romance associated with women, because she somehow justified her dependence on men and prevented them from thinking. He advocated rational education to educate girls from an early age and give them the same opportunities as men.
Women’s abilities were not a cause of her nature, but resided in the system itself and, more specifically, in the education received, Mary thus attacked almost every thinker of her time, but Wollstonecraft went beyond the text, breaking almost with conventions. at the end.
He even proposed to the artist and writer Henry Fuseli to open his relationship with his wife and thus live the three of them together. Of course, at a time when polyamor was a great taboo, the consequences of this proposal were very harsh.
Wollstonecraft struggled to overcome his love disappointment, for which he wrote countless letters and attempted suicide a second time.
In 1796 he published a book in which he recalled one of his travels: Letters written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. She made this trip with the intention of recovering Imlay, but found that everything was lost. In this work, he reflected on various social issues and even on his own identity and the relationship between “I” and “I” with the world. She again claimed women’s freedom and education and eventually accepted that her affair with Imlay was over.
In London, he met William Godwin, philosopher and pioneer of anarchist thought. Both married and set a standard for respecting their independence: living in separate but adjoining houses.
From that moment on, Wollstonecraft immersed he himself in his work as a writer, unfortunately happiness quickly disappeared and Mary died shortly after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, at the age of 38, her daughters were in charge of Godwin, who then remarried.
In 1798 Godwin published the Memoirs of the author of the defence of women’s rights, although her reception, as we had predicted, was not very good. In this book, Godwin relied on people who knew Wollstonecraft, grouped all his letters and works together.
Today, what Wollstonecraft asked for makes more sense, but at that time it caused a lot of controversy. Maybe the world wasn’t ready to welcome a woman like her.
Wollstonecraft is sometimes considered the first feminist and, in a way, it was; although she is not the only woman in history who has dared to claim her rights, feminism is not yet born, but she begins to develop it in her work, which will be recovered in the twentieth century. With Wollstonecraft, feminism was a little closer.
“Let us make women rational creatures and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives and mothers, that is, if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers. -Mary Wollstonecraft-