Is Wollstonecraft a gender essentialist?

Mary Wollstonecraft is often credited as the “aesthetic foremother of feminist expository prose” (Gubar 454), but her status as a feminist icon is problematized by her essentialist ideology regarding gender and motherhood.

What does Mary Wollstonecraft say about gender?

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a trailblazing feminist work which argues that the educational system deliberately trained women to be frivolous and incapable and that if girls were allowed the same advantages as boys, women would be not only exceptional wives and mothers but also ...

What type of feminist was Mary Wollstonecraft?

Mary Wollstonecraft was a renowned women's rights activist who authored A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792, a classic of rationalist feminism that is considered the earliest and most important treatise advocating equality for women.

What did Mary Wollstonecraft believe in?

Mary Wollstonecraft believed that society was wasting its assets because it kept women in the role of 'convenient domestic slaves', and denied them economic independence. She demanded that women should be trained for professions and careers – in medicine (not just nursing), midwifery, business, farming, shop-keeping.

Was Mary Wollstonecraft a liberal or conservative?

Although usually interpreted as a classical liberal or republican thinker, Wollstonecraft is better understood as a feminist care theorist. She aimed at a revolutionary transformation of liberal society by emphasizing the importance of care-giving duties.

Mary Wollstonecraft - Her life and 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman' / World's First Feminist

What did Mary Wollstonecraft think about feminism?

The basis for Wollstonecraft's argument for equality between men and women is intellectual, but also political and financial, as she argues that women should be included in the political sphere and should be able to financially support themselves.

What was Mary Wollstonecraft political view?

In A Vindication of the Rights of Men, Wollstonecraft aggressively argued against monarchy and hereditary privileges as upheld by the Ancien Regime. She believed that France should adopt a republican form of government.

Was Mary Wollstonecraft a radical?

It takes a brave person to stand up and back a revolution. Sometimes it takes an even braver one to call out its weaknesses. Mary Wollstonecraft - who died today in 1797 - was a radical who, just because she supported a revolutionary movement, didn't abdicate her right to criticise where it went wrong.

Is Wollstonecraft a radical feminist?

Recent scholarship on Mary Wollstonecraft portrays her as either a liberal who disrupts the boundaries between public and private spheres or as a proto-socialist paving the road for a class-based feminism. Neither of these characterizations adequately captures the radical quality of her work.

Was Mary Wollstonecraft a proto feminist?

Sometimes known as a “proto-feminist”, her significant contributions to feminist thought were written a century before the word “feminism” was coined. Wollstonecraft was ahead of her time, both intellectually and in the way she lived.

Was Wollstonecraft a first wave feminist?

Wollstonecraft published one of the first feminist treatises, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she advocated the social and moral equality of the sexes, extending the work of her 1790 pamphlet, A Vindication of the Rights of Men.

Who is the mother of feminism?

'Mother of feminism' Mary Wollstonecraft finally immortalised with statue.

Is Mary Wollstonecraft the mother of feminism?

Mary Wollstonecraft has had something of a revival in recent years. Though considered the mother of first-wave feminism, the 18th-century philosopher long endured her share of trolls refusing to take her seriously.

What did Mary Wollstonecraft advocate for?

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and a passionate advocate of educational and social equality for women. She called for the betterment of women's status through such political change as the radical reform of national educational systems. Such change, she concluded, would benefit all society.

What is Mary Wollstonecraft's most famous quote?

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.

What are the problems with Mary Wollstonecraft?

What makes Wollstonecraft so controversial among feminist thinkers is, above all, her critique of women's weaknesses and their acceptance of their own slavery, seemingly begging for food instead of for freedom. Women, she wrote, subject themselves to domination, "creeping in the dust" and relinquishing their dignity.

Is Wollstonecraft a liberal?

Although usually interpreted as a classical liberal or republican thinker, Wollstonecraft is better understood as a feminist care theorist. She aimed at a revolutionary transformation of liberal society by emphasizing the importance of care-giving duties.

Who criticized Mary Wollstonecraft?

The most evident aspect of Wollstonecraft's disagreement with Rousseau concerns his views on women in general and his description of the education of Sophie in particular.

Was Mary Wollstonecraft against marriage?

Wollstonecraft extends her argument that women should exercise equal rights with men in the public sphere into a critique of the structural inequalities of marriage. Although a stern critic of “actually existing” marriages, she [End Page 78] does not reject marriage as an institution altogether.

Who is the biggest feminist?

Gloria Steinem is one of the most prominent faces of American second-wave feminism, and her activism continues to this day.

Can a male be feminist?

“Does a feminist have to be female?” Being a feminist means believing that women and men are equal and deserve equal rights. If you agree with that, then you're a feminist. With that being said, all genders can be a feminist!

Who is the father of feminism?

Charles Fourier, a utopian socialist and French philosopher, is credited with having coined the word "féminisme" in 1837. The words "féminisme" ("feminism") and "féministe" ("feminist") first appeared in France and the Netherlands in 1872, Great Britain in the 1890s, and the United States in 1910.

What did Mary Wollstonecraft believe about motherhood?

Wollstonecraft argued that a woman's mind and her education were important in furthering her societal importance, and that being a mother, physically and socially, allowed her to think more clearly.

What are Wollstonecraft's views on motherhood?

For example, Wollstonecraft asserts, “[t]o be a good mother—a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands” (243).

Who was Mary Wollstonecraft influenced by?

An accomplished essayist and novelist, Wollstonecraft was influenced by such Enlightenment figures as Thomas Paine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but unlike most thinkers of the period, she extended the radical doctrine of the rights of man to include the rights of women.