Mary WollstonecraftReviews

Wollstonecraft wrote this opposition to the education of women in 1792. She argues that true knowledge, virtue and reason exists when mankind is able to learn from experience, using their passion for questioning what exists around them. She admits to male superiority in matters of bodily strength, but says God created all and therefore evil as well as good. Thus man and woman must equally use reason, knowledge and virtue to overcome evil. However man has used his superior strength of body to justify a superior strength of mind and the position of woman to support his pleasure. She then elaborates on the current system that discourage all form of learning other than to enhance beauty and serve the male, thus making her a weak vessel and a mindless creature. Besides the result of making her frail she has no resources should she not marry or be be widowed but dependence on another male. She also says males have the capacity to maintain love for their mate for 6 to 18 months and after that the woman is neglected. She loses every way. This woman then turns to cunning to keep her male, turns to lovers, falls prey to spiritualists, reads novels, neglects her family or becomes a fashion plate; all detestable to Wollstonecraft. She feels an broad education involving exercise will make the wife a true friend and companion when love dies and make her able to be independent if the need arises. She also feels this education should be a public local school where boys and girls learn together from all social classes, dress code to be uniforms. An interesting but difficult read since some terms have broader or different meanings than their use today; sometimes confusing.

Not exactly light reading, this first 'feminist' writing in history. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) wrote this long essay in 1792 in a style and terminology that is not always easily accessible to us, and that is logical, due to the more than 2 centuries that separate her from us. The line of argument is at times very forceful, it often deviates from the proposed route, and it involves quite a bit of repetition.
But of course Wollstonecraft's fiery combativeness is very recognizable. There is particular indignation at the inferior fate of women in her time, at the derogatory attitude of men towards women, and at the wrong attitude of women themselves who cultivate their own weakness. The writing testifies to an independent, critical mind with a sharp pen.
Her plea is primarily one for an at least equal education of women, so that they can judge and act for themselves through the use of reason. Reason and education are typical themes of the Enlightenment, of which Wollstonecraft is definitely an epigone. The reason for this writing was the developments in the French Revolution, which was then just in its first phase and which aroused enormous expectations worldwide; Wollstonecraft was certainly among the supporters of the radical changes in France, but she was particularly disappointed by a proposed educational reform in which it was not considered necessary to include women; and that was the direct occasion for her essay.
It has been written several times: Wollstonecraft does not argue for the absolute equality of men and women. She repeatedly emphasizes the differences between the sexes and in some passages she even suggests that male dominance may be willed by God and therefore inevitable. Does that detract from her feminism? I don't think so, because the common thread in this essay is clearly the plea for equality (in virtue), although it also contains arguments for political, social and economic independence.
Two things that really struck me besides the feminist theme. The constant (and justified) attacks against Jean-Jacques Rousseau who believed that women should not receive a proper education at all (I still don't understand the pedagogues' infatuation with Rousseau). And especially the very fierce attacks against monarchy and despotism. This Vindication and other writings by Wollstonecraft are known as striking expressions of republicanism.

Everyman's Library No. 825

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was originally published in 1792. Nearly 180 years later when Source Book Press republished it, women were still clamoring for those rights. Title IX of the Education Amendments wasn't even a thing until 1972. Think about that for just one second. In 1792 Wollstonecraft was demanding justice for her half of the human race as loudly as she could. Hers was a plea for all womenkind and not a singular selfish act of only thinking of herself. She argued that reason, virtue, and knowledge were the keys to a successful life regardless of your sex. However, the notion that physical strength promotes power indicates a man's authority over a weaker woman exists even today. To put it crudely, inequality among the sexes is still a thing. To be sentimental is to be silly.
Wollstonecraft was not afraid to challenge her readers, asking us what does it mean to be respectable? To have virtue? To be a woman of quality? Are these traits euphemisms for weakness? She addresses the assumption that women are designed to feel before applying reason. Maybe that is why men are trained to never argue with a woman in public (she might become irrational) or allow a woman to exert physical strength (unseemly). Most of Wollstonecraft's arguments are disguised as philosophical and moral conversations with Rousseau.

A moderately diverting combination of travelogue, philosophical reflections, and rhapsodic bits of lyrical prose.

One of those books I was mildly embarrassed not to have read, so here I am finally getting around to it. Reading A Vindication of the Rights of Woman at a remove of more than two centuries from when it was first published, it was striking to me how much Mary Wollstonecraft's ideas seemed both very relevant (nepo babies! abolish the British monarchy! educate kids equally and let women have careers!) and very dated (classism, racism, and xenophobia, oh my! the Enlightenment Cult of Reason everywhere!) all at once.

For all that she has blinkers on when it comes to issues of class and race, Wollstonecraft is surprisingly acute at making the connection between broader issues of hierarchy and oppression and discrimination against women. Her flaying of Rousseau was also super satisfying ("'Educate women like men,' says Rousseau, 'and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.' This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves."), and I appreciated throughout Wollstonecraft's willingness to call bullshit, even if I didn't always agree with the points she was making.

Wollstonecraft probably has made all of her main points by halfway through A Vindication, and the internal structure of the book could have used some refining to make it less repetitive, but it still retains enough of its power that you can see why it was such a landmark manifesto.

Wollstonecraft's main thesis, which was quite radical for the time, was that women should be educated towards ends other than catching a husband. Quite a good idea, I think. She argued that for women to be good wives and mothers they needed to have their reason trained and their body healthy; apparently simpering delicate women are not terribly useful, as much as the men may have liked them. This book was very difficult to read; sometimes Wollstonecraft seems to wander away from her point, and I am not sure that she always makes it back. However, it is an interesting book if you are interested in the history of feminism. It is also interesting if you are interested in Victorian literature since the period about which Wollstonecraft is writing is round about then.

يُعتبر من أوائل النصوص النسوية وملهم الحركات النسوية الحديثة. فرغم أنه كُتب قبل أكثر من 200 عام، إلا أن الجدالات المطروحة مازالت تُثار اليوم. كما أنه قراءة أساسية للمهتمين بفهم تاريخ وتطور الأفكار النسوية.
تناقش ولستونكرافت مثلاً كيف أنّ هوس النساء وصب جلّ اهتمامهن على جمالهن يحرمهنّ من الاحترام الذي يلقاه الرجال، وأنّ تثبيط الفتيات وثنيهم عن ممارسة الرياضات الجسدية التي يقوم بها الصبيان يزيد الهوة بين الجنسين من ناحية القوة البدنية مما يسهّل استعباد المرأة واضطهادها. بالإضافة إلى التركيز على أن عدم المساواة في فرص التعليم والعمل هو السبب الأساسي في فشل معظم الزيجات إن لم يكن كلها. ولضمان إقامة زواج ناجح لا بدّ أن تنال المرأة الاحترام الذي تستحقه، وهذا لا يتحقق إلا بإعطائها فرصاً لإثبات ذاتها مساوية للتي تُعطى للرجل.

لا يسعني هنا إلا تذكر قول الأستاذ علي الوردي
“المرأة هي المدرسة الأولى التي تتكون فيها شخصية الإنسان، والمجتمع الذي يترك أطفاله في أحضان امرأة جاهلة لا يمكنه أن ينتظر من أفراده خدمة صحيحة أو نظراً سديداً”

Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a collection of letters written by Mary Wollstonecraft during a voyage to Skandinavia. There are beautiful descriptions of landscapes, nature and the places she visits.½

This edition of Penguin Classics bring together two short works, namely Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft and Memoirs of the author of A vindication of the rights of woman by William Godwin, her husband.

The Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a collection of letters written by Mary Wollstonecraft during a voyage to Skandinavia. There are beautiful descriptions of landscapes, nature and the places she visits. According to the introduction by Richard Holmes this voyage to Skandinavia was no trip for mere pleasure. Holmes convincingly makes the case that Mary Wollstonecraft undertook the trip to search for a cargo of plate silver, valued at a fortune, on behalf of her lover, Gilbert Imlay. The silver originated from confiscated goods during the French Revolution. Dealing with and shipping such cargo was illegal, and the captain made away with the cargo and disappeared. The introduction suggests that she searched for the cargo and successfully negotiated a deal for its return.

In the letters themselves there is never any mention of business dealings. Holmes underlines the point to emphasize how remarkable a woman Mary Wollstonecraft was in her time. Undertaking such a journey with such a mission was certainly not free from danger.

After the death of Mary Wollstonecraft her husband, the writer William Godwin wrote a short memoir describing her life. Mary Wollstonecraft was a feminist, in favor of free love. She had a passionate love affair and a child with the American Gilbert Imlay during the French Revolution in Paris. She is most well known for her A vindication of the rights of woman.

She later married Wlliam Godwin and had a second daughter with him, the later Mary Shelley.

Godwin's honest and truthful memoir caused a scandal upon publication.

Richard Holmes is an expert on writers and history of the late 18th and early 19th century. It is obvious that his 55 page introduction to the Penguin Classics edition far exceeds the normal needs of an introduction. The introductory essay should be considered a third work in this edition. It is a speculative essay on the biography and the purpose of Wollstonecraft's trip to Skandinavia.

Although the letters are not so spectacular, the edition with Holmes essay and Godwin's memoir makes this a very interesting book. Highly recommended.

3.5 stars
I read this for a class but I did enjoy it. I found some of the ideas within this book really interesting. The reason I didn't rate this higher is that I personally found some of the writing to be a bit repetitive and clearly some of the ideas in this book are outdated. There is still some expectation that women and men are inherently different while I think the modern idea is more that there may be some physical differences between men and women but most differences we see is more the result of societal influence rather than inherent differences.

Wollstonecraft proposes education and education of boys and girls together as being the solution to a lot of problems with inequality. While I don't disagree with education being very helpful with promoting equality and probably at the time, fighting for girls to have access to education was very important and novel, I do think that now that we, at least in the U.S., have an education system that does educate girls and boys together, it is clear that it takes more than integration to promote equality between men and women.

I did really enjoy reading some early theory on this topic but I definitely can get a little frustrated when I'm reading theory that is so clearly outdated, especially when I am not super familiar with the theory expanding on a topic that came later. I would recommend this book. It has a lot of influential and interesting ideas. Just know that feminist political theory has advanced after this book was written.½

This volume contains two works by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary and Maria, the latter unfinished; and a work by her daughter Mary Shelley, Matilda. I found Mary a bit shallow and overemotional, but Maria was pretty compelling—pity there wasn't more of it. Matilda had its moments but the father-daughter incestual feelings theme left me cold—it felt sensationalist for the sake of being sensationalist and obviously could only end in lots and lots of tears and misery.

This book changed everything, and opened my eyes to a whole world

EW

When their mother dies, fourteen-year-old Mary and twelve-year-old Caroline are placed in the home of Mrs. Mason, a near relation who finds them spoiled and prone to bad habits, due to having been raised mostly by servants. This new guardian attempts to reform their manners and morality through example, through story, and through conversation. The lessons imparted range from showing humane kindness to animals - the girls are given a copy of Mrs. Trimmer's Fabulous Histories - to learning to control one's anger and one's appetites. The importance of truthfulness and honor, of compassion for the unfortunate and afflicted, and of respectful conduct, even toward servants, are all covered. The dangers of procrastination and of idleness, the importance of proper dress and deportment, and most of all, the centrality of prayer and devotion - all these are also discussed, with examples from Mrs. Mason's wealth of stories and personal acquaintances. When finally the girls are ready to leave Mrs. Mason, they have markedly improved...

Originally published in 1788, Original Stories From Real Life; with Conversations, Calculated To Regulate the Affections and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness was reprinted in 1791 with artwork done by William Blake. It is this edition that I read, when Wollstonecraft's book was assigned in the class I took on early children's literature, during the course of my masters. It is a lovely edition, with beautiful artwork from Blake, and it is also a fascinating book, both because it builds upon existing trends in the world of 18th-century British children's literature, and because its author is so well-known for her adult work. I was tickled that the girls are given Trimmer's Fabulous Histories, in the section on the humane treatment of animals, as this demonstrates how influential that earlier work, published only two years before in 1786, already was. The format here, in which girls are educated through dialogue and story, is one common to many books of the period, from Sarah Fielding's 1749 The Governess; or, The Little Female Academy through Mrs. Harriet Ventum's 1801 The Amiable Tutoress, or, The History of Mary and Jane Hornsby: A Tale for Young Persons, and beyond.

Wollstonecraft herself is best known as the author of such works as the 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Women, as well as for being the mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, but she was also deeply involved in the world of education and children's literature. She briefly ran a school with her sister Eliza, published Thoughts on the Education of Daughters in 1787, and worked for a year as the governess to the two young daughters of Lady Kingsborough, in Ireland. Although the post was of short duration - Wollstonecraft did not get on with her employer - it is believed that this experience provided much of the material for Original Stories, the author's only work specifically intended for children. Eventually Wollstonecraft would go on to marry William Godwin, the author, philosopher and book publisher who, after Wollstonecraft's death, set up the publishing house called the 'Juvenile Library,' which would have a significant impact on the history of Anglophone children's literature. It's interesting to note that the year Wollstonecraft spent in Ireland had a great impact on Margaret King Moore, one of the daughters of Lady Kingsborough, who would go on to become Lady Mount Cashell, and eventually, after leaving her husband for another man, "Mrs. Mason," a name she chose in honor of Wollstonecraft's book. She disguised herself as a man, in order to study medicine at the German university of Jena, wrote some of the earliest children's fiction attributed to an Irish author - her Stories of Old Daniel; or, Tales of Wonder and Delight, was published by Godwin in 1808 - and, later in life, played host to Percy and Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont, when they visited her in Italy in 1820. Although an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, she was republican in her sympathies, and credited Wollstonecraft's teaching and example as having "freed her mind from all superstitions".

So it is that this book, interesting in its own right, is also fascinating as a work that binds together the stories of many fascinating real-life figures. I very much think, as did my instructor in the class I took, that the intertwining stories of these literary luminaries would make a fabulously dramatic miniseries! Recommended to anyone interested in Wollstonecraft's work, or in 18th-century children's literature.

I'm torn on this one. One the one had, this is the founding document of feminism, of which I am a modern day beneficiary. On the other hand, I found a lot that I could not relate to.
It's a single volume of what was intended to be a 3 volume treatise, this isn't a fully finished article. It also has the feel of having been written swiftly, it doesn't follow an entirely logical sequence, and it repeats itself more than once. On the other hand, this gives it an impression of being written with feeling (which is ironic, when reading the view on emotions expressed in this).
What I didn't relate to:
The reasons for wanting to educate women is so that they can use reason to supplant emotions.
Passion is a sign of weakness.
Women should be equal so that they can gain merit in heaven for their souls
An educated women makes for a better mother to her children
That marriage & motherhood should be a woman's ideal.

There's a lot in there that I found impossible to relate to. It seems to me that she wants to make women into female men. The trouble with that being that she then wants to assign women to a set role in life, that of wife and mother. I can't see that suppressing emotion to reason is ever a good idea, it strikes me as a recipe for mental health issues. Life is a balance between head and heart, not the suppression of one to the other. And to argue that passion is not worth the same as reason is to ignore the impact that emotion can have on a life. It also strikes me that her life is not an example of practicing what she preaches. Her attempt to commit suicide after Imlay deserted her and her marriage to Godwin suggest, to me, that she would, herself, be unable to meet her own expectations. It strikes me as an argument that only works in the abstract.
The call on religion is, clearly, of its time and is something that makes a lot of this hard to take seriously. I also note that she fails to take issue with the attribution of God as male, which is something I find unpalatable.
The limitation of the women's role to the sphere of wife and mother is somewhat inexplicable. Mary Wollstencraft would seem to be an example of a woman who wanted a life outside that sphere, as she didn't fit that role herself. It seems an odd contrast again.

On the other hand, there is a lot of ambition in this. She wants equal opportunities for education of both sexes, in fact going as far as to propose primary schools on a national basis. There is the call for women to be represented in parliament (along with the point that the franchise is still very small at this time, and that the majority of the poor are also disenfranchised). There's the wish to change the law to allow women to have civil rights, to be able to hold their own property and have control of their own income.

The other oddity in this was that this is directed purely to middle class women. It's not intended as a broad rallying cry for women. I'm not sure I can understand the logic of this.

It's difficult to rate books from a different era, their starting point is so different from where we are now. I wanted to love this, to find it as a rallying cry that I could take up. It didn't work out like that, there was a lot of good, but there was too much that I found hard to get behind.

I had been wanting to read this for a long time, so when I saw it narrated by Fiona Shaw last year, I snapped it up. The narration is brilliantly done - perfectly delivered, and I loved that they used a male narrator (Jonathan Keeble) to narrate the parts where Wollstonecraft quotes from Fordyce's Sermons and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This is basically one long essay that is divided into chapters, each addressing or responding to a different theme. While it is dated, as one would expect anything from 1792 to be, it is also still relevant. Definitely recommended - not sure I would have made it through the print version, but the audio is fabulous.

Sometimes it's difficult to know how to rate such a classic. This work blazed trails for women, so one doesn't want to be too harsh on it, but it is difficult to read and turgid by today's standards of writing. The author focuses way too much on keeping women moral as the reason for educating them, though one suspects that is more to sell the idea to the men of the time, since she herself had a life that did not fit with what she described as a proper role for a woman in this book. The book appeared about the time of the French Revolution, and the idea of equality was being shouted both in France and across the pond in the former colonies; this author references both countries frequently in her desire to spread the idea of equality a bit further, and include women in the boundaries. Overall, worthwhile more for the history than the ideas, since most of us have moved on much beyond her modest (by today's standards) proposals. One real downside is that the book focused relentlessly on the idle classes; one who has read any history at all can hardly imagine her descriptions of the follies of poorly educated women applying to the rank-and-file of the hard-working women who didn't have time for the frivolous pursuits she decried. Such things may seem petty or picky as critiques, but these are the critiques that are always being leveled at feminists, whether they are true or not, and it would be nice to be able to point to a founding document and say, "see? we were always concerned about all women, not just rich women", so it's quite disappointing when such an important author gives fodder to the naysayers.

Might seem like an odd combination, but there’s method. Mary Wollstonecraft is the author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman (although she may be more famous for being the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who eventually became Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly). At any rate, Ms. Wollstonecraft may have been the first radical feminist; she was nicknamed “The Hyena in Petticoats” by contemporaries. It’s true that the lot of women was pretty miserable for 18th century Englishwomen; women could not own property, and the only grounds for divorce for women was desertion. (A man could get a divorce for adultery, but a woman couldn’t; as long as her husband kept supporting her he was free to consort with all and sundry, and many did). Alas, despite its importance, this book is pretty tedious. Ms. Wollstonecraft is not a talented writer, and it took a lot of patience to get through this. To her credit, her main point is that woman should get the same education as men; but she gets sidetracked so often on questions of feminine beauty, details of educational methods (she sometimes sounds annoyingly like a NEA representative) and various other diversions that her main point gets lost. (I was once a member of NOW, until I read an editorial in the NOW newsletter stating NOWs position on land claims of the Hopi. I was a little puzzled as to what NOW was doing getting involved in Native American rights; a friend explained that “Native American Rights are a women’s issue”. Well, perhaps, but I decided that self defense was a women’s issue too, noted that there are more women in the NRA than the NOW, and transferred all my donations there). This is the same problem Wollstonecraft has, if you make everything “a women’s issue”, then nothing is a women’s issue.


Wollstonecraft’s personal life was interesting given her political views. Her first husband (they never actually married) was Gilbert Imlay, an American. Mr. Imlay lost interest after the birth of their child, and took up with an actress, whereupon Wollstonecraft jumped off a bridge into the Thames. She was dragged out by a passer-by. She then took up with an old friend, William Godwin, who was of the opinion that marriage was an artificial institution unnecessary to virtuous individuals while Wollstonecraft had argued that cohabitation was evil. They did marry after Wollstonecraft’s second pregnancy, but never lived together; Wollstonecraft died in childbirth.


So what does this have to do with Georgette Heyer, who is more or less the inventor of the Regency romance novel? Ms. Heyer was prolific with I think around 50 works to her credit; they all have more or less the same plot (unlikely girl attracts the attention of rich but accomplished English gentleman who falls in love with her virtues rather than her beauty). There are a number of fairly pedestrian mystery novels, and she sometimes leaves her time period for the medieval, Elizabethan, Restoration or Georgian settings. All that said, she’s pretty enjoyable. Her historical research is meticulous to the extent that it’s sometimes difficult to figure out character’s dialect without recourse to the dictionary. The plotting, despite its basic predictability, has enough surprises to be entertaining, and her characters manage to be individuals despite being all essentially the same. Oddly, she seems to spend more time on her male’s character development than her females, and she has a disturbing tendency to let her heroes get shot in the arm so the heroine can prove her worth by nursing them back to health, possibly showing that while her history is otherwise immaculate she had a poor idea of what happens when you get hit by a 0.79” lead ball (to be fair, Charlotte Bronte gets away with this in Shirley, so I suppose it’s alright).


Now then, I mentioned above that Vindication is slow reading, and I often pick a lighter book as sort of a “palate cleaner” to take a break better the heavy chapters. Thus, I was reading Heyer’s The Quiet Gentleman at the same time as Vindication, and lo and behold heroine Drusilla Morville is acquainted with Mary Wollstonecraft and even recounts her suicide attempt with a mix of amusement and disapproval. Must be something to coincidences after all.

I've been wanting to read these two texts for ages, and I have no idea what took me so long to finally sit down with them. Wollstonecraft's Short Residence is fascinating, and the excellent introduction by Richard Holmes provides important contextualization to the work. Godwin's Memoirs are a poignant testament to a life unconventionally lived. Much deserving of a wider audience.½

"Do all suffer like me; or am I framed so as to be particularly susceptible of misery?"
By sally tarbox on 30 December 2016
Format: Kindle Edition
The introduction to this work notes that 'Mary' "explores the position of an alienated intellectual woman and, in portraying her struggle against the constraints of a claustrophobic feminine world, began a line that would include the more substantial heroines of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Villette'."

I would only give 'Mary' a tentative *2.5, but the reader can certainly see it as a precursor to Bronte's later works of genius. This is a short (60p) story, partly autobiographical, where the independent heroine - after being married off against her will - accompanies her consumptive friend to Portugal. A principled, Christian woman, who delights in helping others, Mary observes life and the people around her. And falls in love for the first time... And as she wretchedly sails for England ""the tempest in her soul rendered every other trifling - it was not the contending elements but herself she feared".
I got into this more as I determinedly kept on with it, but I wouldn't call it reading for pleasure.

'Maria' (or 'The Wrongs of Woman'), written ten years later is a much more accomplished work. Very Gothic/ Romantic, the story opens with our eponymous heroine finding herself incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. The reader soon becomes aware that she is quite sane, and as she converses with her wardress, (and later a male inmate - also wrongfully detained - we come to know the stories of all three. Very much a vehicle for the author to continue the theme of her earlier 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman', we read of corrupt husbands having jurisdiction over their wives' money and automatic custody of their children, while the working-class wardress Jemima, tells of abuse by her employers, the plight of unmarried mothers and the way many are forced into prostitution. The opportunities of women as against those of their male counterparts are vastly worse. Although this story stops at a reasonable point, the appendix explains that the author had plans for further chapters, and gives an outline of the intended plot. A fairly interesting read

(Matilda)

"I was a creature cursed and set apart by nature", 18 December 2016

This review is from: Mary Shelley - Mathilda (Paperback)
Although the dark and turbid mindset of the heroine of this tale gives us an impression of the author's own feelings at this time (her son had recently died), as a work of literature I found this terribly over-the-top and melodramatic.
Matilda's mother dies shortly after her birth, and her distraught father goes abroad. For the next sixteen years the girl grows up in the care of a cold-natured aunt until finally, to her joy, her father returns.
(spoiler alert) After a few deliriously happy months in his company, he suddenly and inexplicably changes, becoming harsh and abrupt. When Matilda demands he tell her why, he at last reveals that he is in love with her. And here the whole thing just became ridiculous to me. Both parties decide they must never again meet; her father goes on to commit suicide. Matilda goes off to live in a cottage on a moor, where she adopts a nun's dress and talks interminably about her longing for death, unable to go back into society as "like another Cain, I had a mark set on my forehead to show mankind that there was a barrier between me and them." (Why? She did nothing wrong.)
As a description of profound, illogical depression, it has some merit, but I have to say that I found Matilda an unpleasantly self-obsessed tragedy queen.½

"Do all suffer like me; or am I framed so as to be particularly susceptible of misery?"
By sally tarbox on 30 December 2016
Format: Kindle Edition
The introduction to this work notes that 'Mary' "explores the position of an alienated intellectual woman and, in portraying her struggle against the constraints of a claustrophobic feminine world, began a line that would include the more substantial heroines of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Villette'."

I would only give 'Mary' a tentative *2.5, but the reader can certainly see it as a precursor to Bronte's later works of genius. This is a short (60p) story, partly autobiographical, where the independent heroine - after being married off against her will - accompanies her consumptive friend to Portugal. A principled, Christian woman, who delights in helping others, Mary observes life and the people around her. And falls in love for the first time... And as she wretchedly sails for England ""the tempest in her soul rendered every other trifling - it was not the contending elements but herself she feared".
I got into this more as I determinedly kept on with it, but I wouldn't call it reading for pleasure.

'Maria' (or 'The Wrongs of Woman'), written ten years later is a much more accomplished work. Very Gothic/ Romantic, the story opens with our eponymous heroine finding herself incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. The reader soon becomes aware that she is quite sane, and as she converses with her wardress, (and later a male inmate - also wrongfully detained - we come to know the stories of all three. Very much a vehicle for the author to continue the theme of her earlier 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman', we read of corrupt husbands having jurisdiction over their wives' money and automatic custody of their children, while the working-class wardress Jemima, tells of abuse by her employers, the plight of unmarried mothers and the way many are forced into prostitution. The opportunities of women as against those of their male counterparts are vastly worse. Although this story stops at a reasonable point, the appendix explains that the author had plans for further chapters, and gives an outline of the intended plot. A fairly interesting read.

Published as part of the "Revolution Controversy" in England in the late 1700's through the early 1800's, A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN is a revolutionary text itself. As France was in the upheaval of the French Revolution, England was deep in questioning the role and function of its monarchy and aristocracy. As a way to influence public opinion, many prominent intellectuals published pamphlets - often as a response to other pamphlets that came before. This, coupled with a 1791 French educational report that recommended educating females only so as to be docile and dependent wives and mothers, inspired Mary Wollstonecraft to write this work.

While often considered to be a feminist masterpiece, it really is a long-form essay in favor of educating females. She argues that, because women are the ones who become mothers, they should be well-educated so that they can promote and model healthy behaviors, relationships, and ideals in their children. In fact, she recommends a national system of education for all children up to a certain age, where boys and girls of all social classes are educated together. Once they get a bit more mature, lower-class children should be educated separately, to prepare them for whatever employment they will be expected to fulfill. While this is quite revolutionary for the 1790's, a modern audience may not be in full accord with categorizing this work as feminist. It is largely a book of its time, but in some important ways ahead of its time.

Published as part of the "Revolution Controversy" in England in the late 1700's through the early 1800's, A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN is a revolutionary text itself. As France was in the upheaval of the French Revolution, England was deep in questioning the role and function of its monarchy and aristocracy. As a way to influence public opinion, many prominent intellectuals published pamphlets - often as a response to other pamphlets that came before. This, coupled with a 1791 French educational report that recommended educating females only so as to be docile and dependent wives and mothers, inspired Mary Wollstonecraft to write this work.

While often considered to be a feminist masterpiece, it really is a long-form essay in favor of educating females. She argues that, because women are the ones who become mothers, they should be well-educated so that they can promote and model healthy behaviors, relationships, and ideals in their children. In fact, she recommends a national system of education for all children up to a certain age, where boys and girls of all social classes are educated together. Once they get a bit more mature, lower-class children should be educated separately, to prepare them for whatever employment they will be expected to fulfill. While this is quite revolutionary for the 1790's, a modern audience may not be in full accord with categorizing this work as feminist. It is largely a book of its time, but in some important ways ahead of its time.