The Age of Enlightenment, an European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries, casted crucial impact on philosophical and political beliefs within the continent. Emphasizing the significance of reason and fathoming the nature of humanity, the Enlightenment fostered numerous novel ideas, the most influential ones including feminism and abolitionism. Born during the period of Enlightenment, Mary Wollstonecraft, an English writer and radical advocate of female educational rights, often known as “the first feminist”, inspired hundreds of thousands of feminists with her pioneering works.
A Summary of Mary’s Life Born on April 27th 1759 in London, Mary Wollstonecraft grew up in abject poverty. Mary, like any other girl born to a family of low social position, with a violent father and a pathologically depressed mother, attained no education besides reading books and attending lectures with her friend Jane Arden.
Surprisingly, with minimal accessible education, Mary worked as a school teacher and a governess.
Following the publication of her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, in 1787, Mary began working with publisher Joseph Johnson as a translator, who in turn published some of her works, such as Mary: A Fiction (1788). As a passionate champion for human liberty, Mary arrived Paris in 1792—the same year her most ground-breaking work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, was published—to observe the French Revolution. Later, Mary returned to London and joined a radical group, working alongside William Godwin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Holcroft, William Blake, and William Wordsworth. After marrying William Godwin, Mary had a daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who grew up to become a novelist famous for her gothic horror novel Frankenstein. Unfortunately, Mary Wollstonecraft died on September 10th 1797, 11 days after the birth of her daughter due to postpartum infections. Her short life of 38 years, however, casted profound impact on gender equality movements even centuries after her death.
A Vindication of the Rights of Women Not only is A Vindication of the Rights of Women the most renowned work of Mary Wollstonecraft, the book is rudimentary for the first wave of feminist movement. In the book, Mary asserts that the educational system during the era has caused women to become less capable of their male counterparts. For the first time ever, Mary demanded reforming of the national educational systems, proposing that women and girls should be allowed the same amount of education as men and boys did at the time.
At the time when women were forced to become housewives and bereaved of the right to work or study, Mary’s jacobinical ideas raised major dispute in the society. As expected, the book did not cause any immediate reforms. Even so, the innovative and radical ideas presented in the book sparked a myriad of young women and girls to become feminists to promulgate beliefs and pleas of gender equality. Mary Wollstonecraft is probably not the first feminist ever, and her ideas were definitely entwined with the limitations of her era.
However, there is no doubt of the momentous influence Mary bequeathed to future liberalists, which made her one of the most important feminist advocates throughout history. She will always be remembered and celebrated for her contributions to gender equality.