The dissenter
Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women was published at the end of the 18th century - a century marked by the emergence of the philosophical spirit and the concept of 'enlightenment', by the gradual erosion of monarchical authority (which reached its apex with the French Revolution in 1789), and by the birth of democracy. While the question of the rights of men engendered lively debate at that time, a woman's lot remained unconsidered. Wollstonecraft, however, was determined to change this and to add a dissenting female voice to the chorus debating political emancipation.
''I knew I should be the ... shameful incendiary in this shocking affair of a woman's leaving her bed-fellow.''
Mary was the second child, and eldest girl, in a family of seven. Her childhood was marked by her parents' downward social spiral and by her envy of her eldest brother, who was singled out by their mother's favour and by a wealthy grandfather's will. Her early years were spent, with her family, in following her feckless and violent father across England and Wales - he had given up the weaving for which he had been trained, and was making hopeless attempts to be a gentleman farmer.
In 1787, aged 19, she left home to work as lady's companion to a Mrs Dawson, in Bath. Unhappy with her situation, Mary was sustained by a dream of life alone with her beloved friend Fanny Blood, and by a strenuous piety that allowed her to believe in a blissful afterlife, to compensate for her present misery.
Her work was interrupted by a series of family disasters. Her mother became ill, and Mary returned to London in 1780-81 to nurse her through her fatal illness. Then, in 1784, Mary faced the depression of her newly married sister Eliza. She responded by encouraging Eliza to leave her unhappy marriage and her new baby. When Mary encountered the inevitable criticism for this behaviour, she gave a robust reply: 'I knew I should be the ... shameful incendiary in this shocking affair of a woman's leaving her bed-fellow.'
To help keep Eliza, Fanny Blood, Fanny's sister, and herself - she founded a small school in the progressive Dissenting community of Newington Green. (The Dissenters were people committed to combining reason with piety, and who looked forward to a more just and egalitarian future brought about by individual effort.) The following years saw much intellectual growth for Mary, who learned to broaden her resentment towards her family into an analysis of general social injustice.
Published: 2002-04-19
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