Mary Wollstonecraft: Mother of Feminism Mary Wollstonecraft raised the question in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, “If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?” (Chap. III. Para. 34). She notes that women were taught to rely solely upon men for their livelihood, and to submit to their ideas, but she question is where it stops. In the 1700s, the education and social equality for women was not to par with what there is today, and women like Wollstonecraft were considered controversial, and not taken seriously. In her many writings, she fights these social constructs and questions the way of thinking; refusing to stand idly
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In her early years, she lived as the daughter of a farmer, but the economic times fell upon them, leading her father to alcoholism. The young woman’s childhood was spent consoling her mother, which formed her thoughts on the bondage of marriage as seen in her later writings where she is philosophically opposed to marriage. Wollstonecraft then lived at Walkington Farm where she befriended Fanny Blood, and learned ‘womanly’ work as well as became well read by reading from religious, historical, and philosophical books. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, she states, “It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments; meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves—the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage.” (Chap. I. Para. 12). The two women, along with two of Wollstonecraft’s sisters, founded a boarding school for women, which later closed due to financial mishap while she was visiting a dying Fanny Blood. These events led her to become a governess, a job she found degrading as talked about in her writing. All of these events led to her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daugthers, published by Joseph Johnson who had hired her as an editorial …show more content…
She understood that feminism was not about being above men, but standing with them in all aspects of knowledge and ability. It was her goal to prove she could do what they could do, and accomplished that through her gift of writing. Wollstonecraft believed in a new day, and though some days came with suffering, a new beginning was always around the corner. As Mary Wollstonecraft is accredited to saying, “The beginning is always today” (Wollstonecraft
In her early years, she lived as the daughter of a farmer, but the economic times fell upon them, leading her father to alcoholism. The young woman’s childhood was spent consoling her mother, which formed her thoughts on the bondage of marriage as seen in her later writings where she is philosophically opposed to marriage. Wollstonecraft then lived at Walkington Farm where she befriended Fanny Blood, and learned ‘womanly’ work as well as became well read by reading from religious, historical, and philosophical books. In A Vindication of the Rights of Women, she states, “It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments; meanwhile strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves—the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage.” (Chap. I. Para. 12). The two women, along with two of Wollstonecraft’s sisters, founded a boarding school for women, which later closed due to financial mishap while she was visiting a dying Fanny Blood. These events led her to become a governess, a job she found degrading as talked about in her writing. All of these events led to her first book, Thoughts on the Education of Daugthers, published by Joseph Johnson who had hired her as an editorial …show more content…
She understood that feminism was not about being above men, but standing with them in all aspects of knowledge and ability. It was her goal to prove she could do what they could do, and accomplished that through her gift of writing. Wollstonecraft believed in a new day, and though some days came with suffering, a new beginning was always around the corner. As Mary Wollstonecraft is accredited to saying, “The beginning is always today” (Wollstonecraft