Wollstonecraft, Mary

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) was an 18th-century British feminist and one of the best-known feminist writers of her day, despite dying at the young age of 38. She is best remembered for her Vindication of the Rights of Women, her unconventional personal life, and the influence her legacy had on her daughter, the future Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. Shelley was 10 days old when her mother died.

Born in London, Wollstonecraft was forced to grow up quickly, helping to raise her younger sisters and attempting to protect her mother from the drunken beatings of Mr. Wollstonecraft, who lost much of the family's money (including the young girl's inheritance from relatives) on unwise investments. At the age of 19 she was able to temporarily escape her home by accepting the position of “lady's companion” (a nonroyal equivalent to the lady-in-waiting) to Sarah Dawson, but after two years she returned home to care for her dying mother.

Her ideas on life were already unusual, influenced in part by her exposure to the intellectual world through her reading and the parents of friends. After her mother died, Wollstonecraft and her younger sisters, along with her best friend Fanny Blood, set up a school in Newington Green, a Dissenting community in greater London. (Dissenters were separatists from the Church of England.) Though Wollstonecraft envisioned a life of sisters both literal and figurative relying solely upon one another, Blood soon married. When her health took a bad turn, Wollstonecraft took leave from the school to nurse her as well; in their absence, the school went out of business, and upon Fanny's death, Mary took a job as a governess. She loved the children, but not their parents, and soon decided to embark on a career as an author, seeing few other career options available to women (and even this one did not pay well).