Mary Wollstonecraft(1759 — 1797)
Mary Wollstonecraft
royaume de Grande-Bretagne
8 min read
Mary Wollstonecraft est une philosophe et écrivaine britannique du XVIIIe siècle, pionnière du féminisme. Son œuvre majeure, Défense des droits de la femme (1792), réclame l'égalité d'éducation et de droits civiques pour les femmes. Elle incarne la pensée des Lumières appliquée à la condition féminine.
Frequently asked questions
Famous Quotes
« Je ne souhaite pas que les femmes aient du pouvoir sur les hommes, mais sur elles-mêmes. »
« L'ignorance est une triste sauvegarde de la vertu. »
Key Facts
- 1759 : Naissance à Spitalfields, Londres, dans une famille modeste
- 1787 : Publication de Réflexions sur l'éducation des filles, premier ouvrage pédagogique
- 1792 : Publication de Défense des droits de la femme, texte fondateur du féminisme
- 1793 : Séjour à Paris pendant la Révolution française, relation avec Gilbert Imlay
- 1797 : Décède à 38 ans des suites de l'accouchement de sa fille, la future Mary Shelley
Works & Achievements
Wollstonecraft's first essay, in which she advocates for a serious education for girls grounded in reason. It lays the foundations of her pedagogical and feminist thought.
A scathing response to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Her first publication signed under her own name, in which she defends natural rights against hereditary privilege.
Her masterwork, considered the first major text of modern feminism. Wollstonecraft demands for women equal access to education, reason, and citizenship on an equal footing with men.
An analysis of the French Revolution in which Mary expresses both her support for its revolutionary ideals and her reservations about the violence of the Terror.
An epistolary account of her solitary journey through Scandinavia, weaving together meditations on nature, love, and politics. It was the most successful work published during her lifetime.
An unfinished novel published by Godwin after her death. Mary denounces marriage as an oppressive institution and the condition of women imprisoned — both literally and figuratively — by society.
Anecdotes
At the age of nineteen, Mary Wollstonecraft left the family home to escape the authority of a violent and despotic father. This courageous break, rare for a woman of her time, forged her conviction that women should be able to live in an autonomous and independent manner.
In 1792, Mary travelled to Paris to observe the French Revolution up close, of which she was an enthusiastic supporter. She lived through the bloodiest hours of the Terror, watching carts carrying the condemned to the guillotine pass beneath her windows, which tempered her revolutionary idealism.
Mary Wollstonecraft fell desperately in love with the American traveller Gilbert Imlay, with whom she had a daughter, Fanny, in 1794, outside of marriage — a scandal for the time. Abandoned by Imlay, she attempted suicide twice, but survived and continued to write and campaign.
She married the anarchist philosopher William Godwin in 1797 after becoming pregnant with their daughter, who would become Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Neither of them believed in marriage, but they resolved to go through with it to protect their child. Mary died eleven days after giving birth at only 38 years old.
When William Godwin published his wife's Memoirs after her death, he honestly revealed her suicide attempts and her extramarital relationships. This book, written out of love, had the opposite effect to the one intended: it ruined Mary's reputation for a century, and her ideas were ignored until the twentieth century.
Primary Sources
I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness.
It is necessary emphatically to repeat, that there are rights which men inherit at their birth, as rational creatures, who were raised above the brute creation by their improvable faculties.
With what ineffable pleasure have I not gazed — and gazed again, losing my breath through my eyes — my very soul diffused itself in the scene.
The mind must be strengthened before it can be truly virtuous; and till women have a more enlarged education, they will not be inspired with that respect for virtue which is the foundation of happiness.
Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves?
Key Places
A working-class neighbourhood in London where Mary was born in 1759. This modest and unstable environment shaped her awareness of social inequalities and her drive for independence.
An intellectual village on the outskirts of London where Mary opened her girls' school in 1784 and frequented the circle of radical minister Richard Price, who introduced her to Enlightenment ideas.
Mary lived in Paris from 1792 to 1795, observing the French Revolution from her apartment. There she met Gilbert Imlay and drafted a history of the Revolution that was never completed.
The first port of call on her solo journey through Scandinavia in 1795. This trip, undertaken on Imlay's business, gave rise to her Letters from Sweden, her most autobiographical work.
The neighbourhood where Mary settled with William Godwin after their marriage in 1797. It was here that she died on 10 September 1797, eleven days after giving birth to Mary Shelley.
The parish church where Mary Wollstonecraft was buried in 1797. Her daughter Mary Shelley and her future husband Percy Shelley regularly met at her graveside.
Liens externes & ressources
Références
Œuvres
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
1787
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
1790
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
1792
An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution
1794
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
1796
The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria (posthume)
1798
