Wollstonecraft and the Origins of Feminism: From the Rights of Woman to Modern Feminism

Mary Wollstonecraft is widely regarded as the founder of modern feminism. Her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was the first systematic feminist treatise, and her subsequent writings — including her novels, her travel writing, and her letters — developed a comprehensive account of the conditions of women and the possibilities for their improvement. This article examines Wollstonecraft’s role in the origins of modern feminism, her intellectual contributions, her personal life, and her lasting influence on feminist thought.

The Intellectual Context

Wollstonecraft wrote in the context of the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The Enlightenment had produced a comprehensive critique of the existing order, and it had proposed a program of reform based on the principles of reason, liberty, and human rights. The French Revolution had attempted to implement many of these principles, and it had produced a series of declarations of rights and constitutional projects that have shaped the political life of the modern world.

But the Enlightenment and the French Revolution had, excluded women from their visions of human equality. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, in spite of their commitment to the principles of reason and liberty, had generally assumed that women were naturally inferior to men, and they had not extended to women the rights of citizenship that they had claimed for men. The French revolutionaries, in spite of their commitment to the principles of equality, had refused to grant women the right to vote or to hold office, and they had largely ignored the specific forms of oppression that women experienced.

Wollstonecraft’s contribution was to extend the principles of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution to women, and to develop a systematic account of the conditions of women and the possibilities for their improvement. Her argument was that the principles of reason, liberty, and human rights were universal, and that they applied to women as well as to men. The exclusion of women from these principles was, in her view, a violation of the very principles that the Enlightenment had proclaimed.

The Contributions to Modern Feminism

Wollstonecraft made several important contributions to the development of modern feminism.

The first contribution was the development of a systematic critique of the conditions of women. Wollstonecraft showed that the apparent inferiority of women was not the result of natural differences but of the inadequate education, the false ideas, and the legal and economic dependence that prevented women from developing their full rational and moral capacities. The critique was comprehensive, addressing the various dimensions of women’s subordination — the domestic, the educational, the legal, the economic, and the cultural.

The second contribution was the development of a comprehensive program of reform. Wollstonecraft did not simply diagnose the problems; she also proposed solutions. The program of reform included the establishment of a system of national education, the reform of the laws governing marriage and property, the reform of the family as an institution, and the recognition of the rights of women to participate in the professions and in public life.

The third contribution was the development of a feminist methodology. Wollstonecraft showed how the methods of Enlightenment philosophy — the appeal to reason, the appeal to experience, the appeal to the evidence of history and the observation of contemporary society — could be applied to the situation of women. The methodology has been an important model for subsequent feminist thought, and it has been an important source of the contemporary feminist tradition.

The Personal Life

Wollstonecraft’s personal life has been a subject of intense interest, both in her own time and since. She had a number of intimate relationships, including a long relationship with Gilbert Imlay, with whom she had a daughter, Fanny. The relationship with Imlay ended unhappily, and Wollstonecraft attempted suicide in 1795. She subsequently began a relationship with William Godwin, the radical political philosopher, and they married in 1797. She died on September 10, 1797, from complications of the birth of her second daughter, Mary, who would later become Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

The personal life has been used by critics of Wollstonecraft to attack her ideas, and the early reception of her work was often dominated by attention to her personal life rather than to her philosophical contributions. The contemporary recovery of Wollstonecraft as a major philosopher has been an important part of the modern feminist movement, and the contemporary engagement with her work has been shaped by a recognition of both her philosophical contributions and the personal circumstances in which they were developed.

The Lasting Influence

Wollstonecraft’s influence on the development of modern feminism has been profound. The basic insights of her work — the importance of education for the proper development of the human faculties, the proper relationship between the individual and the community, the proper foundation of the family and the marriage — have been an important source of the contemporary feminist tradition.

The early women’s rights leaders of the nineteenth century, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the Pankhursts, cited Wollstonecraft as a foremother, and they drew on her arguments in their own campaigns for the rights of women. The contemporary feminist movement of the twentieth century recognized her as one of its founding figures, and the academic feminism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has produced a rich literature on her work and her legacy.

Further Reading

• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu), relevant entry
• The Cambridge Companion to [Thinker] (Cambridge University Press)
• Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (1969)