Western Political Thought

MARY
WOLLSTONECRAFT
 WOLLSTONECRAFT’S LIFE
• Born on April 27, 1759, in Spitalfields, London.

• Her father was abusive

• in 1780, Wollstonecraft set out to earn her own livelihood

• In 1784, Mary, her sister Eliza and her best friend, Fanny, established a

school in Newington Green.

• Wollstonecraft wrote the pamphlet Thoughts on the Education of

Daughters (1787).
• In 1792, while visiting friends in France, Wollstonecraft met Captain

Gilbert Imlay

• After their travels to Scandinavia, Imlay left her.

• Mary recovered, finding new hope in a relationship with William

Godwin, the founder of philosophical anarchism.

• In 1797, their daughter Mary (who later famously

wrote Frankenstein), was born. Ten days later, due to complications

of childbirth, Wollstonecraft died.

 EARLY WORKS

• From her experiences teaching, Wollstonecraft wrote the

pamphlet Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787).

• She became a translator and an adviser to Joseph Johnson,

a noted publisher of radical texts

• When Johnson launched the Analytical Review in 1788,

Mary became a regular contributor.

 ON EDUCATION

• On National Education, she argues that all children should

be sent to a country day school

• Importance of teaching children to reason

• Many women are silly and superficial, but argues that this

is not because of an innate deficiency of mind but rather

because men have denied them access to education

 ON FRENCH REVOLUTION
• The French Revolution occupies a special place in shaping modern political

thought

• Wollstonecraft took sides near the arguments of such thinkers as Jean

Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine when she opposed a conservative

thinker like Edmund Burke

• whereas she differed from Jean Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine in

―woman‖ topic and developed an original thought.

• Mary Wollstonecraft‘s arguments are generally placed in ‘liberal

feminism’ of these thought traditions.

• first book of Wollstonecraft titled as Rights of Men that was written

as an answer to the book of Edmund Burke titled as ―Reflections

on the Revolution in France (1790)‖ that criticized the French

Revolution

• Wollstonecraft‘s ideas about the French Revolution differed from

monolithic and one sided Revolution criticisms by being based on

both supportive and critical perspectives.

 FUNDAMENTAL THOUGHT
• Wollstonecraft was affected by the principles of reason‖, Science‖ and

development‖ of the age of Enlightenment and established her ideas on

these principles.

• An equalitarian and liberal regime will be possible only if reason is

dominant in social and political issues.

• Wollstonecraft who adopted the concept of classical natural rights

• natural rights cannot be eliminated by tradition, customs or prejudices

• In order to change the current structure, it is necessary for reason to

dominate sentiments and to govern them.

• Otherwise, ―natural sentiments‖ will cause the present social and

political structure to be perceived as ―natural‖; i.e. ―unchangeable‖.

• For Wollstonecraft, it is possible to change deficient structure of the

course of civilization that produced fake sentiments and ideas only when

human beings are seen as creatures that have equal rights.

• equality based on justice and humane respect should be established in all

areas -including gender relations-.

 A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF
WOMEN
• It was a ground-breaking work of literature which still resonates in

feminism and human rights movements of today.

• A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), a rebuttal of Burke that argued

in favor of parliamentary reform, and stating that religious and civil

liberties were part of a man’s birth right, with corruption caused in the

main by ignorance

• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was written in 1791 and published

in 1792
• The book argued for the reform of female education, often for moral reasons or to

better befit women for their role as companions for men.

• Women, like men, were ‘rational subjects who could be ennobled by the pursuit of

virtue.

• Wollstonecraft problematized the traditional opposition of rationality to

femininity, and exposed the patriarchal motivations behind the portraits of women

drawn from ‘nature’

• Wollstonecraft's refusal to remain within the gender borders separating the public

and private spheres or to respect the discursive boundaries between philosophy

and fiction
 EVALUATION
• She suggests that rights must play an important part in improving

women’s situation

• Wollstonecraft blends two traditions, a republican conception of rights

as powers to act, and a distinct conception of natural rights

• Her position belongs to a historical trend in which republicanism gives

way to a liberal outlook grounded on individual natural rights.