Product Description

With Mary Wollstonecraft and her "A Vindication of the Rights of Women", published in 1792, a modern female consciousness came clearly into being, one that tied the mind to the body. This beautifully written biography, the first new study of Mary Wollstonecraft in thirty years, argues that it is her life and letters that are her most lasting legacy. Her story reads like a novel - extraordinarily scandalous in conventional terms (a close involvement with a woman, two male lovers, an illegitimate child, and a habit of initiating amorous relationships), yet in her own terms always principled and highly moral. She strove to reconcile integrity and sexual desire, the duties and needs of a woman, motherhood and intellectual life, domesticity and fame.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1320459 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

From Amazon.com
The founding mother of feminism comes across as vividly as the heroine of a romantic novel in this fascinating biography, which quotes extensively from Wollstonecraft's correspondence to evoke her high-strung personality. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) gained an early horror of traditional marriage from observing the relationship of her despotic father and submissive mother. There were no accepted outlets for her energy and ambition in 18th-century England; not until she moved to London in 1788 and became "the first of a new genus," a professional woman writer, did Wollstonecraft come into her own as a member of a circle of radical intellectuals. A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792, made her famous, but she remained needy, self-absorbed, and self-dramatizing. "She could not bring herself to use the rational language of The Rights of Women on herself," writes British scholar Janet Todd. "Her own life was always delivered in the language of sensibility." Todd capably summarizes Wollstonecraft's writings and gives detailed accounts of her most important relationships: her stormy bond with her sisters; an intense teenage friendship with Fanny Blood, who later died in her arms after childbirth; the unhappy love affair with American Gilbert Imlay, father of her first child, whose infidelity prompted her suicide attempt; and an emotionally tumultuous but happy marriage to philosopher William Godwin. Modern feminists reading this unvarnished account may wish Wollstonecraft weren't quite so neurotic, but Todd must be admired for refusing to tidy up her subject's messy personality. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
Mary Wollstonecraft may be called "the mother of feminism," but motherhood in all its various aspects represented little but trouble to her. All her life, according to Todd (Aphra Behn), she resented her own mother because she had breast-fed only her brother, leaving Mary to the wet nurse, and because she detested the model of long-suffering patience in the face of paternal tyranny that was her mother's accommodation to marriage. Later, Mary would intervene energetically following the birth of her sister's child, encouraging Eliza to run away from husband and baby to pursue an independent female existence, although Eliza proved to be woefully inadequate at it. Mary's own first-born was the result of a passionate and illicit affair with an American, Gilbert Imlay, who dumped her when the baby was less than a year old. Finally, and tragically, Mary herself died at 38, after giving birth to a second daughter, another Mary, who would grow up to write that classic of grotesque creation, Frankenstein. Despite, or perhaps because of, the burden of her gender, and despite her poverty, frequent depressions and occasional suicidal moments, Wollstonecraft's achievement was astounding: several novels; many essays, reviews and books of advice; and, notably, The Vindication of the Rights of Women, a fundamental feminist document. By Todd's account, Wollstonecraft could be prickly, sometimes needy, often arrogant and wrong-headed. Todd brings her back to life in all her splendid contradictions, without condescension, idealization or, happily, without recourse to intrusive psychologizing.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this first full-length biography of Wollstonecraft in more than 20 years, Todd (The Secret Life of Aphra Behn) has drawn on past studies but focuses on her life as revealed in her letters and on their relationship to her work. Wollstonecraft, whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman later established her reputation as the mother of feminism, was nearly always troubled by financial and family worries, had a volatile temperament, and craved an enduring emotional and sexual relationship, which led her to two suicide attempts. Nevertheless, Todd sees her as self-confident and outspoken, often prickly, and determined to make her own way as a writer and advocate of women's rights. Ironically, she died a few days after childbirth and less than a year after her marriage to William Godwin, in whom she seemed to have found a satisfactory emotional and intellectual match. One can assume she would have been pleased that their daughter became the writer Mary Shelley. This incisive, scholarly biography is appropriate for academic and large public libraries and all women's studies collections.DPatricia A. Beaber, Coll. of New Jersey, Ewing
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A fine telling of this incredible woman's story
I had the pleasure of reading this book while doing research for my biography, "Theodosia Burr Alston: Portrait of a Prodigy" (Corinthian Books, September 2002). Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects" (London: J. Johnson, 1792) had a profound influence on U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr, who became one of her earliest and most influential supporters in the United States. He immediately embraced Wollstonecraft's concepts of equal education and incorporated them into creating, through his teenage daughter, Theodosia, his model for the ultimate woman of the future: an exotic new intellectual hybrid embodying the education of a man with the natural qualities of a woman who possesses both the ability to reason -- and a soul (!!). Janet Todd's insightful telling of Wollstonecraft's life and her careful explanation of how Wollstonecraft's credo developed was both enlightening and enormously instructive. Todd's clear writing style makes her subject come alive. As a scholar writing a biography of Aaron Burr's daughter, I bought this book and read it because I had to. But I was so delighted with it that I then went back and re-read it because I WANTED to!

revolution? what revolution?
This is a very good book. It is based on comprehensive research, extremely detailed, well written and sensitive. It is the best biography of Mary Wollstoencraft ever written and will remain so for a long time.

The really curious thing that comes through is that Wollstonecraft was less of a feminist than one might think. In fact she was an intelligent, sensitive, somewhat high-handed and dominant, woman. Her dearest wish in life was to find a man worthy of her; her dearest fear, to be abandoned by him.

At the time she wrote her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she was thirty years old and a virgin. The volume drips with contempt for women less talented, and less chaste, than herself. This is what makes her interesting; she is a textbook-case. Is it possible that with her, as with so many others, feminism at bottom is simply an attempt by women who do not have a man to avenge themselves on those who do?

Very detalied and intelligent, but reads slowly
I truly enjoyed this book, as I had to read it for a paper. It tells of Mary Wollstonecraft and her travels, focusing mostly of life after A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman becuase it is heavily documented.

This is not a simple book. I found myself going to the dictionary a lot but those words help in the showing of this book as an intelligent piece of work.

Janet Todd has gone into a lot of detail when describing Wollstonecraft's life. If it described more, we'd be reading about how she held her fork and what exactly the bread looked like. Thoses details paint a more brilliant picture of MW than expected but can make the book move slowly. So much information is packed into the pages making the book a bit hard to swallow all at once.

I sincerely recommend reading the book in more than one sitting.