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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

Romantic-era drama, British feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, women

College

Humanities

Department

English

Abstract

Mary Wollstonecraft is a complicated figure in the history of British feminism. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft published her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. One of the earliest proto-feminist treatises, Wollstonecraft’s work responded powerfully to “the woman question” that was burgeoning in her day and would surface again and again in the literature and politics of the nineteenth century. In the years following her 1797 death, however, Wollstonecraft’s work was not necessarily helpful to the women’s rights movement, as many tried to distance themselves from her ideas because of her allegedly scandalous life. Equally detrimental to the advancement of feminism was the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, which created an atmosphere in which any remotely radical sounding idea (including those of Mary Wollstonecraft) was considered “French” and therefore dangerous to British society. Until Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, the feminist thought that remained was typically veiled and very subtle, as seen in the works of Jane Austen. The question I wished to explore was how did Mary Wollstonecraft become a if not the mother of modern feminism if her works were so neglected in the early nineteenth century. How did her ideas survive and how were they transmitted if feminist thought was so restrained?

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