Mary Wollstonecraft And Her Role In Defending Women’S Rights

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer who advocated for women's equality. Mary Wollstonecraft is seen as a bold and courageous woman who was ahead of her time, writing about political matter which in the 18th Century was seen as unsuitable for a woman. At the beginning of her time she believed that private and public life are interconnected. She also believed the ‘natural’ qualities including masculinity and femininity, are socially constructed, which in my opinion when comparing it to modern day societies is true. It was only in the 1990’s that her work began to get the recognition as a part f the history of political thought. In her time, her work was overshadowed by the memoir of her life which was written by Godwin (1798).

As being a politically involved woman of the 18th Century would have been difficult, I believe that this contributes to why her work was portrayed in a narrow and misleading way, e. g. only being seen to care about middle class people. Arguably one of her most important arguments was that “mastery and subordination in the private sphere which undermined the political virtue and active citizenship advocated by Rousseau” (Bouchers, David, Kelly, P. J. , 2009). Which not astonishingly was published anomalously. She began to follow the idea that we have no innate ideas and that God gave us all a range of capacities and ways to bring about such capacities.

Mary Wollstonecraft was hugely concerned with the poor and injustices committed against them, however she later parted from her friends as she analysed and criticised male power over women power, both poor and rich. She did anticipate feminist’s criticism from political theorists, but it has been said that she was one of the earliest people to question the category ‘man’. As said earlier, she was a brave and bold woman who made dangerous choices, such as being politically radical and being a supporter of the French Revolution while England and France were at war.

Mary Wollstonecraft not only was ahead of her time, in my opinion, defending women’s rights, but raises valuable theoretical questions that goes beyond a lot of theorists such as Burke. She brings about an insight into both theoretical and practical requirements where both male and females have an equal standing. It can be argued that Mary Wollstonecraft paved the way for women today when referring to doing what isn’t expected of them and questioning things which may contradict their beliefs.