In Conversation With  ·  Museum of Minds
MW–1759–2026  ·  Trailblazers

Mary
Wollstonecraft

1759  —  1797
Historical Archive  ·  Portrait Study
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
London, England, 1759  ·  London, England, 1797

The woman who wrote the first major feminist treatise in English — and whose life was used against it for a century.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). She died at thirty-eight from childbirth fever. Her husband published her secrets a year later. Her work was discredited for a century. Her daughter became Mary Shelley.

She argued from consistency: if human rights rest on reason, they must apply to women. It is a simple argument. She held it when no one else would.

Consultation

A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman.

Wollstonecraft speaks from 435 chunks across four works — A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, Mary, A Fiction, and An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution.

Her discourse holds Burke's Reflections — her immediate target — and Mill's Subjection of Women — the feminist argument 77 years later.

Ask her about the damage Godwin's Memoir did. Ask her about her daughter Mary Shelley. Ask her about the French Revolution and the Terror. Ask her whether education for women has changed.

Vindication of RightsWomen's EducationFeminist ArgumentBurke and WollstonecraftThe French RevolutionGodwin's MemoirMary Shelley
I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman  ·  Introduction  ·  1792

Drawn From the Corpus