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Wikipedia Summary for Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (UK: , ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.
During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.
After Wollstonecraft's death, her widower published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important.
After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38 leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. She died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley, who would become an accomplished writer and author of Frankenstein.
I begin to love this creature, and to anticipate her birth as a fresh twist to a knot, which I do not wish to untie.
I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a know which I do not wish to unite.
True happiness must arise from well-regulated affections, and an affection includes a duty.
I do not wish them (women) to have power over men; but over themselves.
I am an unfortunate and deserted creature, I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen me and know little of me. I am full of fears, for if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever.
When poverty is more disgraceful than even vice, is not morality cut to the quick?
Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated.
England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequences: the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank.
The most perfect education ... is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent.
As a sex, women are habitually indolent; and every thing tends to make them so.
I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment.
Nature in everything demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.
Men who are inferior to their fellow men, are always most anxious to establish their superiority over women.
I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions.
It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weaknesses.
Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.
Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.
It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.
The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong.
But the days of true heroism are over, when a citizen fought for his country like a Fabricius or a Washington, and then returned to his farm to let his virtuous fervour run in a more placid, but not less salutary, stream.
The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force.
Solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions.
Few, I believe, have had much affection for mankind, who did not first love their parents, their brothers, sisters, and even the domestic brutes, whom they first played with.
You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.
Let us eat, drink, and love for tomorrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow?
The birthright of man ... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact.
The flexible muscles growing daily more rigid give character to the countenance ; that is, they trace the operations of the mind with the iron pen of fate, and tell us not only what powers are within, but how they have been employed.
Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.
Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose.
Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason.
I shall disdain to cull my phrases or polish my style. I aim at being useful, and sincerity will render me unaffected; ... wishing rather to persuade by the force of my arguments than dazzle by the elegance of my language.
The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge.
The whole tenour of female education tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean.
And this homage to women's attractions has distorted their understanding tosuch an extent that almost all the civilized women of the present century are anxious only to inspire love, when they ought to have the nobler aim of getting respect for their abilities and virtues.
How frequently has melancholy and even misanthropy taken possession of me, when the world has disgusted me, and friends have proven unkind. I have then considered myself as a particle broken off from the grand mass of mankind.
The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my companions extinct before me.
Men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness; and they rarely go as far as as they may in any undertaking, who are determined not to go beyond it on any account.
I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude, to lift a handkerchief, orshut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.
An air of fashion, which is but a badge of slavery ... proves that the soul has not a strong individual character.
The graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous.
Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.
Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.
When a man seduces a woman, it should, I think, be termed a left-handed marriage.
People thinking for themselves have more energy in their voice, than any government, which it is possible for human wisdom to invent; and every government not aware of this sacred truth will, at some period, be suddenly overturned.
The absurd duty, too often inculcated, of obeying a parent only on account of his being a parent, shackles the mind, and prepares it for a slavish submission to any power but reason.
A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.
Men neglect the duties incumbent on man, yet are treated like demi-gods; religion is also separated from morality by a ceremonial veil, yet men wonder that the world is almost, literally speaking, a den of sharpers or oppressors.
I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason-to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking.
In this metropolis a number of lurking leeches infamously gain subsistence by practicing on the credulity of women.
For years I have endeavored to calm an impetuous tide -- laboring to make my feelings take an orderly course -- it was striving against the stream.
Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher's stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship.
There must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, and this virtuous equakity will not rest firmly even when founded on a rock, if one half of mankind be chained to its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining it through ignorance or pride.
Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.
In the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment.
But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!
Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark because, the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing.
In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century.
To improve both sexes they ought, not only in private families, but in public schools, to be educated together. If marriage be the cement of society, mankind should all be educated after the same model, or the intercourse of the sexes will never deserve the name of fellowship.
A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.
When any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.
From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind.
At boarding schools of every description, the relaxation of the junior boys is mischief; and of the senior, vice.
No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man.
I then supped with my companions, with whom I was soon after to part for ever -- always a most melancholly, death-like idea -- a sort of separation of soul; for all the regret which follows those from whom fate separates us, seems to be something torn from ourselves.
Weakness may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify a noble mind that pants for, and deserves to be respected. Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.
I never wanted but your heart -- that gone, you have nothing more to give.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
It is time to effect a revolution in female manners -- time to restore to them their lost dignity -- and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.
My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.