The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft 
by Claire Tomalin.
Why does a woman have to be conventionally virtuous to have her unconventional ideas accepted? It helps to be pretty also. No one ever says of a man, “Don’t listen to him — he’s really ugly and, anyway, he sleeps around.” For women it’s a special trap. The conventional woman, the one to be take seriously, rarely has anything unconventional to say. Why should she?
And then we have Mary Wollstonecraft. I was inspired to read Claire Tomalin’s biography by the discussion of A Vindication of the Rights of Women — and other feminist books — at Feminist Classics. One of the participants said that, despite reading this biography, she found it impossible to like Wollstonecraft. I’m not sure I like her either, but I don’t think that is important. If we liked her she would probably be a different person. I certainly don’t like Rousseau, who persuaded his mistress to give their infants to the foundling hospital, but everyone pays attention to him.
Wollstonecraft was a woman of her time. Because she was of the time she could write of the position and limitations of women from the inside. She had strong emotions and wrote of the power of reason in a tone of great indignation.
But Mary’s temperament was geared to drama, violent emotion and struggle: when she was angry with Mrs. Cockburn it was (temporarily) a boiling hatred; when she defended George from attack it was without reservation. She had no capacity for nuance or irony….
She struggled, both in her personal life and in her writings. She had an illegitimate child so of course people said: see what happens when you press for equal opportunities. And why was the illegitimacy so bad? When I was a girl I could imagine no greater disgrace than an illegitimate baby. Today we have a different view, and some of my best friends have illegitimate grandchildren. With that out of the way, we can go back to A Vindication with respect for Wollstonecraft’s ideas and her expression of them — and pity for her life.
Posted by SilverSeason 
