International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Mary Wollstonecraft was an author, educator, and journalist whose influential work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) became the foundation of modern rights-based feminism. She championed equal education for women and equality in marriage. In all cases, she strove to disprove any notions of female inferiority. Wollstonecraft was born in London to a middle-class family in April 1759. The second born and eldest girl of seven children, Wollstonecraft's early years were marked by her father's repeated business failures and by an intense rivalry with her older brother, the family heir. Edward John Wollstonecraft, an apparent alcoholic and purveyor of physical and emotional abuse, squandered away the family's wealth through a series of failed ventures, creating a foreboding atmosphere of domestic enmity and financial uncertainty. In response to her husband's tyranny, Elizabeth, Mary's mother, became cold and withdrawn, leaving Wollstonecraft and her siblings with little support. These years of familial discord and the constant upheaval associated with her father's schemes took their toll on an adolescent Wollstonecraft. Her perspective on men and marriage became skewed, as she blamed her mother's descent into cowardly acquiescence upon her father. She repeatedly vowed never to marry, and grew increasingly disillusioned by the limitations imposed by her gender. Wollstonecraft ... log in or subscribe to read full text