Philosophy Course: Mary Wollstonecraft

Philosophy. Study the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence.

COVID-19 update: arrangement of our courses

We are now delivering courses online and in-person. Please check the delivery format of each class before enrolling.

Please note that course materials (excluding prescribed texts) are shared electronically within 48 hours of course commencement. Printing is not available.

In this course we look at the life and philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), one of the most important philosophers of her time.

She critiqued the ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity as being flawed in their proclaimed universality and highlighted the gaping inconsistencies in the liberal ideas of John Locke and others. In doing so, Wollstonecraft set the agenda for liberation movements to come.

Wollstonecraft’s life is extraordinary in its courage and determination. Her writings on sexuality are also mirrored in a life lived outside the social norms of her time.

In this course we will study her philosophical concepts from her most famous work Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), her novels, and many essays written for her publisher and friend Joseph Johnson.

We will also make the rather unusual connection between Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen. Austen, though not an enlightenment novelist, shares many of the ideals of the enlightenment. We will consider their differences and similarities.

Aims

We aim to have you leave this course with a thorough understanding of the life and philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft and the relevance of her ideas to both historical and current contexts.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• identify the origins and complexities of the theories developed by Wollstonecraft
• make the connection between her personal history and the development of her ideas on ethics, politics and gender
• demonstrate the important role played by Wollstonecraft in our understanding of human nature, the human mind and education
• demonstrate the substantial contribution Wollstonecraft made to later philosophy
• describe the Enlightenment period of philosophy and the significance of the French Revolution.

Content

Introduction to Wollstonecraft: A courageous life

Her life reads like a novel. Her youthful determination to make her own way in the world extended to being economically independent; pursuing her literary ambitions; and having sexual relations of her own choosing: it is an extraordinary adventure.

Wollstonecraft and the philosophical world

Wollstonecraft engaged with philosophers in the tradition such as Plato, but was also involved with the contemporary debates around her. Some of her most important debates were with Edmund Burke and Rousseau.

Wollstonecraft’s politics: The dissenters and anarchists

In politics, Wollstonecraft should be accounted as a republican, but she went further than many and her position is perhaps closest to the ‘Democratists’. She supported Thomas Paine’s position to extend franchise to working men and women.

The public world and the private domain

We will look at the legal and social ways in which these two domains where understood in the enlightenment period, and then track the changes which followed Wollstonecraft to the present.

Gender issues

Wollstonecraft set different definitions of gender against each other in an attempt to destabilise the rigidity of the ideas of the time. In the Vindication of the Rights of Women, she adapts gender definitions from the political discourse of civic humanism to counter the stereotypes of female conduct manuals.

Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

The Vindication of the Rights of Women has many complex ideas in it. We will analyse and critique its historical and contemporary relevance.

Novels: Mary A Fiction (1788) and The Wrongs of Women (1798)

In Mary A Fiction, Wollstonecraft undertakes to show how an unusual and gifted woman learns to think and act for herself and not to be an 'echo of others'. The work is also a meditation on 'genius'. The concept of the genius was a hot topic at the time and her novel is seen as the first attempt by anyone to represent a female ‘genius’. Part of the prevailing idea of ‘genius’ was freedom from the conventional bourgeois ideas of sexuality and marriage.

Wollstonecraft's French Revolution

Unlike many others, Wollstonecraft did not only write about the French Revolution but went to join in this monumental historical event. Her observations are invaluable.

Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen

The facilitator will make a rather unusual connection between Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen. Austen, though not an Enlightenment figure shares many of the enlightenment ideals. We will consider their differences and similarities not only on the role of women, but on epistemology and ethics.

Later influence

Wollstonecraft was a heroine for such disparate radicals as Virginia Woolf and the anarchist philosopher Emma Goldman. In the 1970s she was taken up by a new generation of feminists, and by the 1990s her work received the philosophical attention needed to understand its complexities.

Intended audience

Anyone with a general interest in philosophy and the course themes. 

Delivery style

Lecture/seminar

Materials

Course notes are provided electronically.

Recommended reading

Ayres, Brenda, 2017, The Betwixt and Between: The Biographies of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: Anthem Press.

Sapiro, Virginia, 1992, A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, London: Joseph Johnson; second edition 1792; reprinted 1796. Second imprint dedicated to M. Talleyrand-Périgord. Edited by Miriam Brody Kramnick, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1796, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, London: Joseph Johnson. Edited by Carol H. Poston, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976.