Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women

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Mary Wollstonecraft The 18th century was an extremely radical time period for Europe. It hosted the French Revolution, The War of Spanish Succession, The War of Austrian Succession, The Enlightenment, the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions. It was a time when positive and negative authority manipulated European society drastically with some extreme outcomes and results. Mary Wollstonecraft positively influenced many people through her activism for women’s rights and role modeling to 18th century women, her fight to better women’s education, and her fight against the social traditions of the 18th century. Mary Wollstonecraft was an activist for women’s rights and a role model to 18th century women. Her…show more content…
In a male-dominated society, this was unheard of. Through these books, she expressed her ideas, which women came to listen to. Mary Wollstonecraft is remembered chiefly for her book “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” (1792), a polemic treatise that deemed marriage “legal prostitution” (“Mary” par 2). Mary’s book, “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”, was a type of guide for women who were thought lowly of by their husbands or were abused. Mary was also a contributing editor and founder of the Analytical Review, a radical London newspaper (“Mary” par 2). Before her, women weren’t known as writers, especially in anything media-related. She stepped out of the norm to pursue the career she wanted. She and others established a radical group called the English Jacobins, in which she had great influence (“Mary” par 1). This group was believed to be modeled after the French Jacobins and just as radical. Mary was radical in the sense that she desired to bridge the gap between mankind’s present circumstances and ultimate perfection. After her death, she served as an example to women of the 19th century, either as an “unsex’d female” or as a model author in the male-dominated world of letters (Miller par 1). After her death she was also dubbed the founder of the British Women’s Rights Movement (Purinton par 5). The…show more content…
When most women relied on male relatives or husbands to survive, her earlier experiences in life led her to a different outlook on how she wanted to live her life (Allen par 1). She supported herself by developing her intellect and living by her beliefs. By a young age, she was determined to change the views of marriage for women (Frazer par 2). As a child, her views of marriage were shaped by her own unhappy family life. Her unsuccessful and violent father moved the family many times, and her older brother was favored by her grandfathers’ will. By growing up in this type of household, she thought that marriage life was dangerous for women. As she grew older, events in the lives of her family and friends only strengthened her views that marriage was often hazardous for women (Miller par 3). This influential time of her life proved to be for the better: this pushed Mary toward self-educating and to write. In her novel, “Mary: A Fiction” (1788), a women dies from fever after she accepts the hopelessness of her life. The novel concludes with its heroine “hastening to that world where there is neither marrying, nor giving into marriage” (Miller par 4). This book shows how most women dealt with their unhappy lives. With that in mind, Mary was driven to change the social traditions of marriage. Mary was a MOM (Mother Outside of Marriage) who chose to have Fanny, her first daughter,
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