Mary Wollstonecraft, born in London, was an English writer and philosopher widely regarded as the first feminist writer. Heavily influenced by Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Voltaire, and Thomas Paine, she earned the moniker “Child of the French Revolution”. Her writings vehemently advocated for women’s rights while also advancing concepts of atheism, anarchism, and personal freedom. The cornerstone of her philosophy was the transformative belief that all humans share God-given abilities and rights, and she envisioned a new social order founded on reason where women were fully recognized as human beings.
Core Philosophy on Women’s Rights
In her seminal work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Wollstonecraft argued that men and women possess the exact same type of virtue. She asserted that society intentionally forced women to be weak in both constitution and mind through biased socialization and education.
Emphasizing personal autonomy over dominance, she famously declared, “I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves”. She believed that reforming social institutions required this foundational equality, noting that it is essential “to strengthen the body from the heart”.
Thoughts on Education
Education was a paramount focus in Wollstonecraft’s writing, which she viewed as the primary vehicle for women’s emancipation.
- Early Ideals: Her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, championed instilling a middle-class ethos of self-discipline, honesty, frugality, and social contentment in children.
- A Call for Systemic Reform: A Vindication of the Rights of Women opens with a plea for equal education and includes an ambitious proposal to establish a national school system.
- Rational Education: She argued that a “rational education” was crucial for a woman’s independence and ultimate success. This required strengthening intellectual faculties through logical reasoning, abstract thinking, and the mastery of academic subjects like mathematics, science, history, literature, and language.
- Societal Benefit: The ultimate end goal of educating women was not merely to benefit women individually, but to cultivate a more virtuous society as a whole. She further explored these themes of pedagogical self-education in her novels Mary and Maria.
Liberalism, Egalitarianism, and Social Justice
Wollstonecraft is classified as an egalitarian-liberal feminist who believed deeply in procedural accounts of personal autonomy. She believed that robust actions should be taken to support the political autonomy of women and to achieve parity in the democratic self-governance of liberal societies.
- Transforming the Liberal Paradigm: She sought a revolutionary transformation of liberal society by highlighting the critical importance of caregiving duties. She argued that political justice must first be extended to personal caring relationships before it can truly transform the broader political sphere.
- Critique of Masculine Constructs: Wollstonecraft astutely recognized that the abstract universal values underpinning the liberal paradigm were, in reality, masculine constructs.
- Formal Equality: She championed formal equality, arguing that women are entitled to the exact same civil liberties as men. This civil equality would allow women to experience a life of genuine liberty, completely free from patriarchal constraints.
- State Protection: As a forward-thinking egalitarian, she asserted that the state has a vital obligation to protect women from violence, regardless of where that violence takes place.
- Intersectionality: She utilized intersectionality as a conceptual framework to diagnose the causes, symptoms, and cures of harmful societal inequalities, ultimately developing a highly egalitarian account of social justice.
- Later Critiques: Despite her foundational work, many feminists during the 1970s and 1980s distanced themselves from Wollstonecraft. This separation was largely due to her prioritization of the individual over the community, rights over duties, and the private sphere over the public sphere.
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Mary Wollstonecraft penned A Vindication of the Rights of Women as a direct response to a pamphlet regarding national education written by French politician Talleyrand Perigord. Widely considered the first book of feminist literature—arriving before the term “feminism” even existed—the work fundamentally argues that women appear inferior to men solely because they lack education, not due to any innate deficiency.
Key Themes and Arguments:
- Critique of Rousseau: The book explicitly countered Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, which argued that women did not need a rational education and should instead be educated primarily for the pleasure of men.
- Foundational Influences: Her ideas were heavily inspired by the Enlightenment Age, the French Revolution, and their associated beliefs.
- Societal Vision: The central themes revolve around women’s oppression, reform, societal viewpoints, the ideal family and marriage, and virtue in society. Wollstonecraft argued that the sexes should be viewed as companions who work together.
- Economic and Political Parity: She insisted that women could not become truly virtuous, even in the capacity of mothers, without winning the right to participate in economic and political life equally with men.
- Educational Reform: Wollstonecraft concluded the work by proposing the establishment of free national schools for all children. These schools were designed to be coeducational at every stage and were marked by republican ideals focused on creating good citizens.
Major Works and Central Ideas
| Book Title | Year | Central Idea |
| Thoughts on Education of Daughters | 1787 | Offers advice on educating children to fit into the emerging middle class. |
| Mary: A Fiction | 1788 | A novel criticizing the patriarchal institution of marriage and its deleterious effects on women. |
| A Vindication of the Rights of Men | 1790 | Written as a direct response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolutions in France (1790). |
| A Vindication of the Rights of Women; with Strictures on Moral and Political Subjects | 1792 | Argues against Rousseau’s Emile and advocates for rational education for women to make their societal position equal to men. |
| Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark | 1796 | A personal travel narrative relating subjective experiences to nature, exploring the connections between the sublime and sensibility. |
| Maria or The Wrongs of Women | 1798 | An unfinished novel considered her most radical feminist work; it critiques the discourse of sensibility, aesthetics, and moral philosophy. |