Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was a moral and political philosopher whose analysis of the condition of women in modern society retains much of its original radicalism. One of the reasons her pronouncements on the subject remain challenging is that her reflections on the status of the female sex were part of an attempt to come to a comprehensive understanding of human relations within a civilization increasingly governed by acquisitiveness and consumption. Her first publication was on the education of daughters; she went on to write about politics, history and various aspects of philosophy in a number of different genres that included critical reviews, translations, pamphlets, and novels. Best known for her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), her influence went beyond the substantial contribution to feminism she is mostly remembered for and extended to shaping the art of travel writing as a literary genre and, through her account of her journey through Scandinavia, she had an impact on the Romantic movement.
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Image source:
Opie, J. (1797). Mary Wollstonecraft [Oil on canvas]. 30 1/4 in. x 25 1/4 in. (768 mm x 641 mm). Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Wollstonecraft_by_John_Opie_(c._1797).jpg
Biography source:
Tomaselli, S. (2016). Mary Wollstonecraft. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/wollstonecraft/
