Marry Wollstonecraft and Her Role in Activism
Mary Wollstonecraft was a powerful thinker, philosopher, and women’s rights activist born in Spitalfields, London on 27 April 1759. According to Taylor, Mary Wollstonecraft made several accomplishments during her brief career including writing several novels, making treaties, travel narratives; conduct books, history of the French, and the children book (32). Besides her career, Mary Wollstonecraft is well recognized not only for the vindication of women’s rights but significantly advocated for the equal rights and opportunities for both men and women. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft was quoted saying that women were not naturally inferior to men rather appeared to be because they had no education. The 18th century notion of women being less important part of the society deterred the “integration of their rights” into the human rights was unthinkable (Miriam 43). However, Mary Wollstonecraft argued that if a man was born free and entitled to every human dignity so should be the woman. The understanding of human rights and liberties became the core pillar of Mary Wollstonecraft in the vindication of equal education opportunities for men and women. Mary Wollstonecraft has been severally quoted by today’s human rights activists in the fight against gender based violence among other injustices in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, Mary Wollstonecraft’s vindications and vision for the women freedom has not been fully realized nearly two centuries later. This despite several improvements on the affirmative action which have been enacted to address the violation rights of women.
Ideally, Mary Wollstonecraft’s writings, unconventional personal life and relationships remained quite dormant until the late 20th century when people become interested in them than ever. Mary experienced two “ill feted relationships” with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay by who she had a daughter but married William Godwin the philosopher (Craciun 25). Educationally, Mary Wollstonecraft struggled and fought for the inclusion of the girl child of education thereby opening her Newington Green school for the girls the age of 24 in 1784. A few years later, Mary Wollstonecraft was appointed the educator to the children of the aristocratic family in the Ireland. However, Mary held the position for a short period before they finally moved back to London in 1787 thereby settling in George Street, the south of the Blackafriars Bridge. After they relocated, Mary Wollstonecraft was offered a publishing job by a Joseph Jonson thus spent most of her time in Joseph’s shop. This implies that she routinely engaged in “intellectual and progressive” thinking (Craciun 36). Eventually, Mary became part and parcel of her friends who constantly discussed politics. The friendship influenced Mary so much that she could not in one way or another refrain from politics. Consequently, Mary Wollstonecraft involved in writing a short tract about girl child education becoming the beginning of French revolution in 1786. According to Miriam, the book contents and advocacies drew the attention of many people thus bringing Mary Wollstonecraft into limelight (135). Moreover, the French revolution was highly welcomed by many radicals and activists in the Europe. It became the pillar of liberty, equality hence marking the new chapter of the fight against aristocracy and adoption of democracy.
However, Mary Wollstonecraft faced fierce and venomous opposition from the country’s aristocrats including Edmund Burke. Craciun asserts that the dark forces of societal impunity and oppressions viewed Mary Wollstonecraft’s team as dangerous subversives in the society (89). The group attacked revolutionaries using every opportunity at their disposal and even wrote a letter to the team leader, Mary Wollstonecraft. Defensively, Mary strongly responded to the letter quoting her own book; “Vindication Revolution Principles” (Taylor 76). This enhanced Mary’s popularity despite the book had not been well argued out hence prompting Tom Paine, to writing the classic Right of Man. Provocatively, Mary Wollstonecraft published the rights of a woman in 1792 with strong arguments on the rights of women. Today, Mary Wollstonecraft’s book on the rights of women has become feministic point of reference in France, UN, the US, and rest of the world. Unfortunately, Mary Wollstonecraft passed on at the age of 38 years on 10th September 1797 only five years after publishing her book and after she gave birth to the second baby girl. Mary Wollstonecraft had just married William Godwin and her death prompted the husband to “writing memoir” revealing her unorthodox lifestyle that eventually destroyed her reputation for nearly one century (Miriam 87). However, the emergence of feminism, women’s fight for equality brought back Mary Wollstonecraft’s memories despite the William Godwin’s controversial memoir.
Moreover, the justification of the women’s rights is mostly regarded as a political move. This is the main reason Mary was fighting against the “female education strategy” put forward by Rousseau among other countless oppressors (Taylor 64). The program prejudiced women as weak and artificial and not capable of reasoning effectively in the society. Equally, Mary argued that a woman was equally intelligent and she could wait no more that her husband would be intelligent. Mary maintained her position that giving women their rights could not demean the role of women in the society by claiming the foolishness of meek women. Therefore, Mary Wollstonecraft formed strong hypotheses on rationality and reason as the basis of provision of human rights. Mary Wollstonecraft envisioned the “equality in human right” to the most potent way of acquiring truth, knowledge thereby separating human beings from the animal world (Taylor 125). In other words, reasoning has since made people either moral or political agents.
In conclusion, Mary Wollstonecraft extended the basic ideas of enlightenment philosophy to all women and the need for both boys and girls to be educated. Marry further refuted the assumption that women were not rational rather the slaves of their passions. She even proposed merger of both boy and girl child education programs because this would guarantee equal opportunities for both boy and girl child.
Works Cited
Craciun, Adriana. Mary Wollstonecraft’s a Vindication of the Rights of Woman: A Sourcebook Routledge Guides to Literature. New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. Print.
Miriam, Brody. Mary Wollstonecraft: Mother of Women’s Rights. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
Taylor, Barbara. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.
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