As my books are set in the Georgian era at present, I’m learning more about this fascinating era and the complex and world-changing French Revolution.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT 1759-1797
Mary Wollstonecraft was the granddaughter of a respectable manufacturer in the Spitalfields weaving trade. Her father, she labeled a domestic tyrant. When he lost his inheritance through a series of unwise investments Mary sought to make her way in the world. She attempted unsuccessfully to run a school and work as a governess.
After publisher Joseph Johnson paid her 10 guineas for her first manuscript, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, she became a respected member of London’s rationalist intelligentsia.
The Great National Debate on the French Revolution was opened by Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Mary Wollstonecraft replied to this attack on the French National Assembly and on the English radicals for rejoicing at the events across the Channel by writing A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) expressing the passionate conviction that the power of reason is the common possession of men and women. Mind, she argued has no gender, but women’s reason had been stolen from them. Her contemporaries regarded her defense as one of the most forceful and persuasive contributions to this famous public argument. She later wrote History and Moral View of the Origins and Progress of the French Revolution (1793).
Upon her return to England, Mary joined a radical group whose membership included Blake, Paine, Fuseli, and Wordsworth. Her first child, Fanny, was born in 1795, the daughter of American Gilbert Imlay. After his desertion, she married the radical activist William Godwin, a long-time friend in 1797. Wollstonecraft died a few days after the birth of their daughter, Mary (who later married Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and other novels).
Madame Roland took it upon herself to spread Revolutionary ideology. Roland attributed women’s lack of education to the public view that women were too weak or vain to be involved in the serious business of politics. She believed that it was this inferior education that turned them into foolish people, but women ‘could easily be concentrated and solidified upon objects of great significance’ if given the chance. As she was led to the scaffold, Madame Roland shouted "O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!" Her writings were finished by others and published posthumously.
Although women did not gain the right to vote as a result of the Revolution, they still greatly expanded their political participation and involvement in governing. They set precedents for generations of feminists to come.
Women and European Politics: Contemporary Feminism and Public Policy by Joni Lovenduski
Mary Wollstonecraft, Political Writings: A Vindication of the Rights of Men; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; and An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, ed. by Janet Todd (Toronto, 1993
Images from Wikipedia
Thank you Maggi Andersen, author of the 18th Century Georgian romance novel Hostage to Fortune, for presenting us with this great overview of Feminist Writers During The French Revolution:Madame Roland, Mary Wollstonecraft,Olympe DeGouges.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. I've always found Mary Wollstonecraft a fascinating woman and knew she'd written "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", but I didn't know about her other books. Thank you for bringing them to my attention.
ReplyDeleteThank you Maggi for this interesting post. I've always thought it was deeply ironic that Mary Woollenstencroft was an early feminist and yet died from the complications of childbirth.
ReplyDeleteGrace x
This is a good reminder that woman's rights of today were hard-won years ago.
ReplyDeleteGreat post!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Maggi! You've provided a handy little list of women who would be wonderful subjects for historical novels that adhere to truth, are full of drama and would constructively build on women's history.
ReplyDeleteI have read about Mary Woolenstencraft a little, but was unaware she wrote about the French Revolution. I was entirely unfamiliar with the other two. They had to know it was dangerous to have such radical opinions and yet they stood up for what they believed any way. Thank you for the informative post.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone. Yes Debra, these amazing women did fight to make life better for women, losing their own in the process, in some cases. Sadly ironic isn't it Grace that Mary died in childbirth, as so many did in those times. They would great subjects for novels, Katherine. So brave and determined.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post. I appreciated your observation about Madame Roland. "...she was a feminist by virtue of the fact that she was a woman working to influence the world." By that definition I would be a feminist, an intriguing idea. :)
ReplyDelete"Vindication" was a standard of my English classroom.
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