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McKenzie Yarbrough
Bauman
ENGL2323
Monday 2nd
11, April 2017
Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft: A Stand for Women
Any form of literature has some sort of purpose to be written whether it be from romance
or to proving a point. To say that Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft had no reason or passion
for writing is very far from the truth. Although Austen and Wollstonecraft were born around the
same period, they both came from very different places with different views. However, they still
wrote and stood for the same morals.
Feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft was born on April 27th, 1759 in London. Mary was
raised by an abusive father who spent more money than he made on unsuccessful framings. This
abuse and her mother’s death in 1780 made Mary decide to leave home early to dedicate herself
to writing. Mary’s most famous writing is “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” which she
wrote while working as a translator for Joseph Johnson who was a publisher of radical text and
started “Analytical review” in 1788, which is still being debated today. “A Vindication of the
Rights of Women” is known for being one of the very first feminist works which makes sense
why Mary is called the Grandmother of modern feminism. In “A Vindication of the Rights of
Women” Mary is arguing for the dictionary definition of a feminist. While many people today
believe that feminism is like a cult that wants women to be above men, this statement is not true.
Reading deep into Mary’s “A Vindication of the Rights for Women” it clearly shows that Mary
was after equality.
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Mary was striving for men and women to be equal on every level. The entire writing is to
explain and show how women and men are completely equal beings. While she was off on her
own Mary, her sister, Eliza, and one of her friends Fanny started a school in Newington Green
and from this experience with teaching she wrote “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters” in
1787. This writing basically laid out today’s public school system. In this writing, she explained
how young girls were being taught differently than the boys. These young girls were being
taught so that they would always have to depend on a man. During the time that these works
were written, they caused a lot of controversies especially when Mary wrote “Maria or the
Wrongs of Women” which pointed out that women had strong sexual desires and it was
degrading and inhuman to think otherwise.
While Mary was known for writing about feminism she also wrote many other works
