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In defense of their rights, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

For a long time, almost a century, the image of Mary Wollstonecraft was overshadowed by the publication that her husband had done to his memoirs. They made public a scandalous relationship and an illegitimate daughter. His personal life overshadowed his ideas on equality of men and women until the new feminist movements of the twentieth century writers like Virginia Woolf was rescued from oblivion.

A difficult childhood

Mary

Wollstonecraft was born into a middle class family in London in 1759. His father was a silk weaver who had inherited a large sum of money. His business and his legacy would have allowed him and his family have a peaceful and prosperous life if not for his bad head. Squandered the money and took her own business to ruin.

The precarious economic situation of the family took Mary to start work first thing was: seamstress, insitutriz or companion high society ladies. His intelligence and love of reading led her to pursue a teacher when I was little more than 20 years.

Mary's childhood was difficult not only for economic reasons. She remembered how she had to defend her mother from the violence that his father was constantly on it.

writer by profession

For years Mary worked to move forward and protect his family from poverty. Tired of the few job opportunities offered to him a woman, Mary decided to devote himself to writing and try to get money for their words. It was a risky and so he told his sister Everina: I'll be the first of a new species. I shudder to think of the attempt .

But despite their fears, achieve your dream. Not only was accepted into the London literary circle, but got his publisher paid him for his writings.

precursor of feminism and equality

Mary Wollstonecraft dared to stand up for equality between men and women. Not only rejected the traditional assumption that defined differently male and female natures, but said with great conviction that women are more intellectually developed because they were vetoed access to knowledge.

Although his early writings defending the Christian virtures, with the start of the French Revolution, his ideas were more radical and drifting toward a defense of reason over faith.

Towards the revolution and the scandal

Excited by the revolutionary ideas that had lifted the French people, Mary went to Paris in 1792 ready to implement their ideas. It was then when she met an American adventurer who live in a tumultuous love story. Gilbert Mary Imlay aroused the passion of love that she had rejected his work Vindication of the Rights of Women . Not only that, but she became pregnant without being married, which Imlay had no intention of doing.

After completion of the last French King Louis XVI, the political situation in France became increasingly unstable. The declaration of war by England forced its citizens to flee if they did not end at the guillotine. Back in London, with her daughter, Fanny Imlay Mary was rejected. Then began a dark period in his life that led even attempt suicide. Shortly after his mistress turned to him and asked him to undertake a business trip to Scandinavia was not used to regain the love of Imlay.

Death and birth of another writer

When Mary returned to London he resumed his literary career and found a new love, William Godwin. Their passionate relationship also ended with the arrival of a new child. This time, however, William has agreed to marry his lover even took up residence in separate apartments.

Summer 1797, at 38, Mary Wollstonecraft died after giving birth to another child. Mary Shelley was born , who would go down in history as a great writer.

scandal memories

Missing his wife, William Godwin decided to publish his work unfinished Mary or the injustice that women suffer and memories of Mary. Not only brought to light the scandalous affair with Gilbert Imlay but published the desperate letters she had written to him. Thereafter, for more than a century remained the image of a woman who had broken with the established rules, maintaining relationships outside marriage and giving birth to illegitimate children. It was the example not be followed.

rescued Ideas

the late nineteenth and through other writers like Virginia Woolf, ideas and beliefs in equality of men and women who had long defended Mary Wollstonecraft were rescued from oblivion. Feminist movements of the twentieth century endorsed his words in defense of women's rights.

Some of his works