~ The First Mary ~

Lisbon, Portugal, 1785. Two young women huddled together. One friend lay in a bed; the other sat beside her. The comforter had travelled from London in a rush, having heard that her best friend was ready to deliver her child but very ill.

Then there were three. Fanny delivered her child prematurely. The odds were against her, and Mary Wollstonecraft feared the worst.

Then there was one. Mary watched the first-time mother succumb to death in childbirth, along with the newborn. The birthing bed had become a deathbed, and Mary had been changed just as irrevocably.

She returned to her native country, England, and contemplated her identity. A year after Fanny’s death, Mary published her book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. This was the first of her many written works.

This Mary Wollstonecraft would become an accomplished literary figure and an iconic spokeswoman for justice. Her words have inspired and informed social movements past and present. But as much as her words, the pioneering feminist’s life told a story of a fierce lover and loyal matriarch.

~ The Despot and His Subject ~

Her life had begun 26 years earlier, in a London suburb, where another woman gave birth to a child. The mother, Elizabeth Dixon, who was of Irish descent, lived in Spitalfields with her husband Edward Wollstonecraft, who worked as something of a farmer. They had named their first child, a boy, after the father, and Elizabeth would forever show him favoritism. Of all his siblings, Edward Jr. got the best education, and that helped him to pursue a career as a lawyer.

Edward Sr. rarely found his working situation satisfying, and so moved the family to different farms throughout his daughter’s childhood. The continual change took them from Spitalfields to Barking to Hoxton to Wales to Enfield. He was a fickle man, never entirely sure of how he would make his living. Along the meandering road, Elizabeth loyally followed her husband. Biographer William Godwin describes Edward as “a despot” and Elizabeth as “the first, and the most submissive of his subjects.”[1]

The conduct he held towards the members of his family, was of the same kind as that he observed towards animals. He was for the most part extravagantly fond of them; but, when he was displeased, and this frequently happened, and for very trivial reasons, his anger was alarming.[2]

The alarming anger often resulted in Elizabeth receiving a beating at the hands of her husband. Even in her youth, Mary resented the violence, often intervening on behalf of her cringing mother. Perhaps more than the violence itself, Mary despised her mother’s lack of resistance. In her adult life, Mary would voice her criticism of women who accept cruel and abusive treatment.

Is it unfair to infer, that her virtue is built on narrow views and selfishness, who can caress a man, with true feminine softness, the very moment when he treats her tyrannically?[3]

Indeed, from an early age she was disillusioned with “narrow views” of femininity. She had very little time for dolls and the like, preferring the outdoors for recreation. Mary was, from the beginning, a strong woman.

Although most of her female peers were uninteresting, one stood out. While 16 years old and living in Hoxton, Mary met Frances “Fanny” Blood, a slightly older girl who spent most of her time looking after younger siblings. Fanny was a sophisticated woman, competent at the arts and adept in writing. She was somewhat frail, eventually working herself into a case of pulmonary consumption. The weakness of her body was contrasted by the vigor of her caring spirit.

Mary adored her, looking up to the older girl’s expertise. Having awakened Mary’s hunger for knowledge, Fanny began teaching her to write more eloquently.[4] Their disparity in skill would not long remain.

The endeavoring Mr. Wollstonecraft moved the family to Wales in 1776, Mary’s 17th year. She was separated from her dear friend, but they would soon reunite. The Wollstonecrafts, in their usual fashion, returned to the London area just a year later. However, the years between 1776 and 1780 were defined more by Mary’s family than by her friend. An angst-ridden Mary wanted to move out, but she relented from doing so multiple times. It seems that she refrained at the behest of her mother. Perhaps Mary wondered what the “despot” might do without her around. Nevertheless, her spirit of independence won out, and Mary moved into a widow’s home in 1778.

Just two years later, Mary once more made her abode with her parents. This time, it was because her mother was dying. Mary served as a faithful nurse to the fading Elizabeth, dutifully attending to her needs with devotion that modeled Fanny’s. Mary had seen Fanny work herself sick and was now duplicating the action. She remained at her mother’s side until the last day:

The last words her mother ever uttered were, “A little patience, and all will be over!” and these words are repeatedly referred to by Mary in the course of her writings.[5]

Thus, the first woman Mary Wollstonecraft knew and loved passed on. She was a woman defined by her patience and passivity. Her example of suffering would shape her daughter’s worldview and be a harbinger of things to come.

Mary permanently left her father and siblings in 1783, bent on a new project: a school run by herself, Fanny and Fanny’s sisters. She was happy to be productive, and as her writings would later show, education was extremely important for her. However, there was a problem with Fanny:

Fanny’s health had been materially injured by her incessant labours for the maintenance of her family… By the medical men that attended her, she was advised to try the effects of a southern climate; and, about the beginning of the year 1785, sailed for Lisbon.[6]

In Lisbon, Fanny received an offer of marriage from a certain Mr. Hugh Skeys, and after prodding from Mary, she accepted it, marrying almost immediately.

~ Portugal ~

Neither the climate nor the marriage helped the ailing Fanny, who announced to Mary that she was pregnant. Extremely concerned, Mary travelled across the Bay of Biscay. Her presence did not heal Fanny, who died along with her daughter. Mary had lost her best friend.

The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth. Still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. Fate has separated me from another, the fire of whose eyes, tempered by infantine tenderness, still warms my breast; even when gazing on these tremendous cliffs sublime emotions absorb my soul. And, smile not, if I add that the rosy tint of morning reminds me of a suffusion which will never more charm my senses, unless it reappears on the cheeks of my child.[7]

~ Ireland ~

Mary sailed home to England in December of 1785. There, she found the status quo intolerable. She was a capable teacher who cared for her pupils, but she disliked the environment. Her fellow teachers did not share her ambition, and, of course, her beloved Fanny was conspicuously absent. Her time with the school was over with a brevity to match her father’s flightiness.

Having severed her relationship with the school, she accepted an offer to serve as a governess to Lord Kingsborough of Ireland. Eager to begin, Mary left the school and moved to Ireland in 1786. Seeking extra money to finance her writing and pursuing independence, “the object after which she thirsted,”[8] Mary departed from England, the country where Edward Wollstonecraft had raised her.

She won the affections of the lord’s daughters despite their initial opposition:

The governesses the young ladies had hitherto had, were only a species of upper servants, controlled in every thing by the mother; Mary insisted upon the unbounded exercise of her own discretion. When the young ladies heard of their governess coming from England, they heard in imagination of a new enemy, and declared their resolution to guard themselves accordingly.[9]

Mary’s spirit of independence won out against the expectations of her girls. She not only obtained her own freedom to manage, but also she granted more to her wards. Their mother had issued a “variety of prohibitions”[10] for what the girls could read and what activities they could play in their leisure. The revolutionary new governess levied for a relaxation of the restrictions, to avoid secretive rule breaking and a general failure to educate. For Mary, a thorough education was necessary especially for women, because women directly impacted each new generation. This she would later spell out in her writings:

I now only mean to insist, that unless the understanding of woman be enlarged, and her character rendered more firm, by being allowed to govern her own conduct, she will never have sufficient sense or command of temper to manage her children properly.[11]

Her arguments in favor of women’s education continually linked the plight of women with the plight of all humanity. A society’s wellbeing was proportional to the virtue its women possessed and virtue needed education, Mary said. Society’s mothers must act with strength, firmness and independence, just the opposite of Mary’s own.

After the year she spent with the Kingsboroughs, Mary returned to England emboldened by her success. Her sudden return was not too surprising. Being a governess was never meant to be a way of life; the job was merely a cushion for her writing. Still, Mary had both grown close to her pupils and added to her writing portfolio. In 1787 she published Mary: A Fiction, which, though she called it fictional, was parallel to her own life.

The idea that most clearly bled through the story was Mary’s bad experiences with marriage. The main character, Mary, was the daughter of a woman named Eliza, who had submitted to a dreary marriage.

… her father soon after recommending another in a more distinguished rank of life, she readily submitted to his will, and promised to love, honour, and obey, (a vicious fool,) as in duty bound.

The novel continued to exhibit depressing marriages, as the titular character succumbed to an unhealthy wedlock. Evidently, Mary Wollstonecraft’s parents had shattered her idea of marriage and dissuaded her from pursuing one.

~ Independence and Then Love ~

Back in England and writing full-time, she was pursuing her goals. However, a cloud of depression engulfed her. Although she had the free time to write, she had gotten herself into “miscellaneous literary employment”[12] and was unable to focus her talents. With her father puttering out of usefulness, she was financially supporting her siblings. Moreover, she missed Fanny, and her semi-autobiography had caused her to recall her best friend’s death.

An elderly man by the name of Dr. Robert Johnson gave Mary the ability to publish her works. He supported Mary faithfully, not only publishing her books but also offering her lodging. So they remained closely connected throughout Mary’s melancholia. Being a much older fellow, Dr. Johnson saw her in a platonic light. He seemed to treat her as a father might have or should have treated her.

In his company, Mary mingled with a throng of intellectuals. Among them, she met a man whom she loved, a Swiss artist by the name of Fuseli. He was her first love.

Fuseli was an accomplished artist, and Mary adored his artwork. His paintings were a constant occasion for her to spend time with him.

She visited him; her visits were returned. Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius, without loving him.[13]

They spoke about art and philosophy. For an intellectual, the era was ripe for discussion. The 1789 storming of the Bastille and subsequent French revolution was the main theme. Fuseli loved and ardently read the words of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher. Rousseau, though he died in 1778, was immortalized in the ideals of the French Revolution. Essential to Rousseau’s polemic was his insistence on the “noble savage.” Before the advent of society, humanity had been in its purest form. Rather than restraining evil, civilization had promoted vice and corrupted the wholesome human beast. As Rousseau himself put it:

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. Humanity would have been spared infinite crimes, wars, homicides, murders, if only someone had ripped up the fences or filled in the ditches and said, “Do not listen to this pretender![14]

In the France of Rousseau’s day, the monarchy and its excesses were just a symptom of man’s de-humanization. While Mary agreed with Rousseau and Fuseli about the monarchy, she disagreed in other aspects. It is important to note that not all radicals think alike. In this case, Mary did not consider society evil. In fact, her feministic zeal aimed itself toward the society’s improvement. She would later write that, “Rousseau exerts himself to prove, that all WAS right originally: a crowd of authors that all IS now right: and I, that all WILL BE right.”[15]

More of Rousseau’s ideas bothered her. While she admired his zeal for liberty, his sphere of benevolence seemed to extend only to men. Although Rousseau had advocated for expanded education, he denied that women should have it. Fuseli’s obsession with Rousseau must have irked Mary.

As King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette plummeted from power, commentators from across Europe rushed to a literary attack or defense of their own governmental systems. Dr. Richard Price, a minister long beloved by Mary, preached a sermon in support of the revolution, triggering a response from Parliament member Edmund Burke.

Burke, who had, like Price, supported the American Revolution, opposed the French overthrow. In a letter titled Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke blasted the revolution’s fundamental ideals:

… the Revolution Society chooses to assert in direct opposition to one of the wisest and most beautiful parts of our constitution, that “a king is no more than the first servant of the public, created by it, and responsible to it.”[16]

For Burke, the nation was instated for the king, not the king for the nation. Mary responded with An Answer to Burke’s Reflections, which received considerable attention. She had become a public figure. One London night saw her dining with the famous American revolutionary Thomas Paine and the so-called father of anarchism, William Godwin. Paine took a quiet backseat during the meal as Mary and Godwin argued with each other.

Inspired by the air of radicalism, she turned her attention to the turmoil within the French revolution. Although the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen abolished the feudal system and placed the “third estate” on a more level ground, they had neglected “one half of the human species.”[17] In 1791 Olympe de Gouges made a fiery parody of the Declaration, this one titled Declaration of the Rights of Women. She argued that the liberated Frenchmen had kept their women enslaved:

Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the revolution?[18]

Her male counterparts paid attention to her message, and they responded negatively. In 1793, those in power chopped her head off on trumped up charges. Perhaps, of course, her closing statement, which had bravely recommended the “strengthening of the king on his throne,” had doomed her.

From the safety of England, Mary composed a Vindication of the Rights of Women. In the seminal treatise, she attacked the prevailing cultural standards. At the heart of the problem was the belief that it was most important for women to be physically attractive. This expectation, nurtured by empowered men who saw the world only skin-deep, had caught on with the women. The emphasis on the superficial prevented women from receiving education, and, most devastatingly for Mary, hindered them from pursuing virtue.

One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than rational wives; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.[19]

Men were incorrect in their skin-deep perspective, Mary said, “considering females rather as women than human creatures.” The men were denying the humanity of their female counterparts, which may have incurred temporary order, but according to Mary, it had disastrous long-term effects. In the pursuit of marriage, women abandoned the significant for the superficial. They sacrificed physical stamina and knowledge for beauty. They would be successful at obtaining a husband, but the struggle did not end there.

“Can they govern a family, or take care of the poor babes whom they bring into the world?” Mary asked.[20] A mother without mental fortitude could not properly teach her children, could not cope with the physical demands of raising them, or worse, could not even stomach the pregnancy:

Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be, were one of the grand ends of their being taken into the account, that of bearing and nursing children, have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection, that ennobles instinct, either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.[21]

This is Wollstonecraft’s only recorded comment about abortion. For her, abortion was the result of a male-dominated society mentally and physically weakening women.

~ A Venture to France ~

Eager to witness the impact of her book in the epicenter of the revolution, Mary departed for Paris, leaving England and Mr. Fuseli. She had felt strongly for him, but unfortunately, Fuseli was a married man, and the platonic relationship he and Mary had undertaken wearied her. Although she had previously longed for an independent and unconstrained life, to lack intimacy with Fuseli was “a source of perpetual torment to her.”[22]

Mary planned to leave Paris for Switzerland, but an encounter with an American named Gilbert Imlay changed her itinerary. Imlay, a military man turned businessman, had fled to Europe to avoid his debts. While he was in England, the American government commissioned him to be its ambassador to the neighboring revolution in France.

They met in April, 1793, and fell in love. Mary resolved to stay near Paris. She threw herself into Imlay’s life, no longer restrained as she was with Fuseli. Her public relationship with Imlay was, however, a complicated association.

Mary had objected to a marriage with Mr. Imlay, who, at the time their connection was formed, had no property whatever; because she would not involve him in certain family embarrassments to which she conceived herself exposed, or make him answerable for the pecuniary demands that existed against her.[23]

Their refusal to marry was rooted mainly in financial reasons, though it is likely that she feared the institution of marriage itself. Her parents had hardly set a good precedent. Her writings revealed that she believed that marriage had been perverted. The current function, not the original principle, of matrimony incensed her. She advocated for the improvement of marriage in society, not its abolition. In the Vindication, she wrote hopefully about a future where revised public laws and attitudes made marriage holy again.

The father of a family will not then weaken his constitution and debase his sentiments, by visiting the harlot, nor forget, in obeying the call of appetite, the purpose for which it was implanted; and the mother will not neglect her children to practise the arts of coquetry, when sense and modesty secure her the friendship of her husband. But, till men become attentive to the duty of a father, it is vain to expect women to spend that time in their nursery… for, if women are not permitted to enjoy legitimate rights, they will render both men and themselves vicious, to obtain illicit privileges.[24]

It was this hope that caused Mary to remain as close as possible to Imlay without having a legal status. When the French government declared that it would imprison its English residents, she took his last name for the sake of safety. Still, there was a part of her that took a certain satisfaction in calling herself Mrs. Imlay.

She was willing to encourage and foster the luxuriancies of affection. Her confidence was entire; her love was unbounded. Now, for the first time in her life she gave a loose to all the sensibilities of her nature.[25]

Pushing back the past abuses of her father, she dared to love Imlay.

~ Fanny Imlay ~

It was at this point in her artificial marriage when she conceived. It was a further embarrassment for her and Imlay. She had refused to marry him in order to protect him from public ridicule and abuse. It is hard to say which would have brought more public scorn to Imlay, procuring an abortion or raising the child out of wedlock, but Mary was determined to enter maternity.

From January to September, Mr. Imlay and Mary lived together, with great harmony, at Havre [near Paris], where the child, with which she was pregnant, was born, on the fourteenth of May, and named Frances, in remembrance of the dear friend of her youth, whose image could never be erased from her memory.[26]

Saying that he was motivated by baby Frances, Imlay undertook a business endeavor in the September of 1794 and left Mary and Fanny for London. It was a trying time for Mary, whose residence in Paris was less than ideal. Robespierre, another ardent follower of Rousseau, had led the Reign of Terror from 1793 to 1794, once again raising the volatility of Paris. Although Robespierre met the guillotine before Imlay went off to England, Mary was certainly anxious. She loved the father of her child and trusted that their lack of legal status would not deter him from returning.

The plan had been for him to return to Paris after two months, but their detachment was in truth “an eternal separation.”[27]

~ Despair and Resolve ~

At the request of Imlay, she returned to London in 1795, afraid for the worst.

Imlay’s welcome was, at best, preoccupied. Although he had given her lodging, he made minimal encounters with Mary, and gave off an air of distance whenever he saw her. She knew that she was no longer at the forefront of his mind.

Imlay, in fact, had a certain actress on his mind. Mary’s lover was in an affair.

It is hard to say whether or not Imlay disclosed his activities, but Mary understood that she was not wanted. The knowledge broke her spirit. Estranged from Imlay, she tried to kill herself.

The account of her first suicide attempt is clouded, but it is said that Imlay prevented her demise. When he left on another business trip, she wrote frequently to him. He rebuffed her questions, and when they met again, treated her with neglect. Once more provoked to sorrow, Mary jumped off a bridge and into the Thames River, but once more, she survived self-destruction.

Resigned to live, she contemplated the future of her family. Although he was distant, Imlay desired to keep Mary as a friend. Just as in the case of Fuseli, the prospect of being a mere acquaintance was torture for her. Moreover, Imlay’s glaring lack of desire to care for his daughter drove Mary to demand action:

We meet now, or we part for ever. You say, You cannot abruptly break off the connection you have formed. It is unworthy of my courage and character, to wait the uncertain issue of that connexion. I am determined to come to a decision. I consent then, for the present, to live with you, and the woman to whom you have associated yourself. I think it important that you should learn habitually to feel for your child the affection of a father. But, if you reject this proposal, here we end. You are now free. We will correspond no more. We will have no intercourse of any kind. I will be to you as a person that is dead.[28]

By the end of 1796, whatever connection remained between Mary and Imlay was severed. Having experienced something of a liberation, Mary lived in England with Fanny. At about that time, she encountered the third man whom she loved, William Godwin.

~ Marriage ~

This was the second time she had met William Godwin, preceded by Mary’s dinner with him and Thomas Paine. Although they argued with each other the previous time, their mutual respect was now growing. An intellectual man, William adored her writings, treasuring her wit and spark.

Mary rested her head upon the shoulder of her lover, hoping to find a heart with which she might safely treasure her world of affection; fearing to commit a mistake, yet, in spite of her melancholy experience, fraught with that generous confidence, which, in a great soul, is never extinguished. I had never loved till now; or, at least, had never nourished a passion to the same growth, or met with an object so consummately worthy.[29]

It should not come as a surprise to the reader that Mary did not want to marry William. Her disastrous experience with the wayward Imlay had only reinforced her preconceptions. The men in her life had wounded her: Imlay, Fuseli, Edward. They had turned her to contempt for matrimony.

It did not help that William, a radical figure, was an advocate for the abolition of marriage. Nevertheless, circumstances overcame their reluctance and inspired them to legalize their union.

Mary was pregnant again. Once again, a public confrontation was inevitable.

So they married, each foregoing long-held qualms, William his ideology and Mary her childhood.

Wedded, the two threw themselves into parenthood and family. William remained where Imlay had jettisoned, and Mary renewed her fervor. Her zeal for motherhood inspired Godwin:

She was a worshipper of domestic life. She loved to observe the growth of affection between me and her daughter, then three years of age, as well as my anxiety respecting the child not yet born. Pregnancy itself, unequal as the decree of nature seems to be in this respect, is the source of a thousand endearments. No one knew better than Mary how to extract sentiments of exquisite delight, from trifles, which a suspicious and formal wisdom would scarcely deign to remark.[30]

Her case is paradoxical to the modern. She is one who hates things in the way society has made them, but loves them in their pure state. She scorns beauty, but she is strikingly beautiful. She scorns flirtation, but she loves to be wooed. She scorns marriage, but she loves to be a wife. She scorns mothers, but she loves her daughter.

Mary went into labor with a seemingly expedient amount of preparation While the United Kingdom currently has a maternal death rate of 12 per every 100,000 live births (.012%), the figure was much worse in her era. To give birth was danger; to abort was danger. She was determined, nonetheless.

~ August 30 to September 10, 1797 ~

She passed the time of her labor in the sole presence of a midwife, having requested that her husband wait outside the room. After a relatively smooth procedure, she gave birth to a girl. Then her condition deteriorated.

The indecisive midwife failed to remove the placenta, which wasn’t detached until some “three and four hours after the birth of the child.”[31] William and his wife knew she was in grave danger.

First it was blood loss, then infection. The mother lasted through her first night, having experienced a newfound level of suffering. She rebounded and seemed to be healing, but her health again dipped into a 10-day battle against death. She kept in good spirits, although her body was wasting away. She conversed lovingly with William when she was strong enough, but her communications gradually faded. William received terrible news September 10:

At six o’clock on Sunday morning, September the tenth, Mr. Carlisle called me from my bed to which I had retired at one, in conformity to my request, that I might not be left to receive all at once the intelligence that she was no more. She expired at twenty minutes before eight.[32]

So passed Mary Wollstonecraft, gifted writer, wise educator, ardent activist, cherished lover and passionate mother. Her legacy continued on in the name of her newborn, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. A grief-stricken Godwin carried on her memory, publishing A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women a year later. He did not abandon her daughters. Concerned for their welfare, he married again.

~ Her Progeny ~

The lives of the father and his daughters were not without pain. Fanny committed suicide in 1816. William and his youngest daughter developed a precarious relationship. He devoted his time to educating her and helped develop her excellent ability to write. Despite their early connection, they suffered a long period of separation. Mary the second eloped with the eminent poet Percy Shelley at the age of 16. William Godwin did not abandon his daughter, but she ran away from him. They did not reunite until after the establishment of her writing career and the death of Percy.

The brokenness of Mary Wollstonecraft’s family, from Elizabeth and Edward to William and his daughter, bleeds through her biographies. Her theme seems to the theme of the human experience. Birth, death; estrangement, reconciliation.

Among her most prominent works, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley authored the famous novel “Frankenstein.” It told the story of an abandoned monster and a guilt-ridden parent. It is likely that it drew from her familial experiences.

But there was one who had never abandoned her, even to the grave. Their relationship had only lasted 10 days.

Her mother, the first Mary Wollstonecraft.

~ By JD Anderson ~

[1] Memoir of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 1

[2] Memoir of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 1

[3] A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, Chapter 5

[4] Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 2

[5] Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 2

[6] Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 3

[7] Letter from Norway and Sweden, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1796, Letter 6

[8] Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 4

[9] Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 4

[10] Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 4

[11] Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, Chapter 10

[12] Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 5

[13] Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 6

[14] Discourse on Inequality, Jean Jacques Rousseau

[15] A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, Chapter 1

[16] Reflections on the Revolution, Edmund Burke

[17] A Memoir of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, William Godwin, Chapter 6

[18] Declaration of the Rights of Women, Olympe de Gouges

[19] A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft, Introduction

[20] A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft, Introduction

[21] A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft, Chapter 8

[22] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 6

[23] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 7

[24] A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft

[25] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 7

[26] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 7

[27] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 7

[28] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 8

[29] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 9

[30] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 9

[31] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 10

[32] A Memoir of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Women, William Godwin, Chapter 10