Mary wollstonecraft godwin biography of george

Women's History Resource Site

King's College History Department

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, is one of the earliest feminists in Western Civilization. When she was nineteen, she and her sister founded and taught in a school, an experience which led her to write Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, in which she asserted her view that the young girls she taught had been "enslaved" by men through their social training.  Joining the radical thinkers of her day, she published A Vindication of the Rights of Men in 1790.

This was, in essence, a defense of the democratic ideals which had developed in society as a result of the Revolution--both French and American. 

By far Wollstonecraft's most famous work, through which she gained her then unsavory reputation as a feminist, was A Vindication of the Rights of Women. This controversial work argued for the need for more civil rights for women, a