Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English social philosopher and pioneering advocate of women's rights; wife of William Godwin, and mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

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• Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.
  • Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, Matrimony (1787)

• You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track — the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.
  • Letter to Everina Wollstonecraft, November 7, 1787.

• No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

• Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)

• I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind — my wayward heart creates its own misery — Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child — long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.
  • Undated letter to Joseph Johnson [?October 1792], published in Janet Todd (ed.) The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (2004) p. 206.

• Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.
  • The French Revolution, Bk. V, ch. 4 (1794)

• The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.
  • The French Revolution, Bk. V, ch. 4 (1794)

• I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment.
  • Letter to Gilbert Imlay, August 19, 1794.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

• Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.
  • Dedication

• Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.
  • Ch. 3

• Should it be proved that woman is naturally weaker than man, from whence does it follow that it is natural for her to labour to become still weaker than nature intended her to be? Arguments of this cast are an insult to common sense, and savour of passion. The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is to be hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger, and though conviction may not silence many boisterous disputants, yet, when any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.
  • Ch. 3

• If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?
  • Ch. 3

• How can a rational being be ennobled by anything that is not obtained by its own exertions?
  • Ch. 3

• Ah! why do women condescend to receive a degree of attention and respect from strangers different from that reciprocation of civility which the dictates of humanity and the politeness of civilization authorize between man and man? And why do they not discover, when, "in the noon of beauty's power", that they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect. Confined, then, in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch.
  • Ch. 4

• Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.
  • Ch. 4

• It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness.
  • Ch. 4

• It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.
  • Ch. 4

• A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.
  • Ch. 7

• Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be...have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection...either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.
  • Ch. 8

• It is a melancholy truth; yet such is the blessed effect of civilization! the most respectable women are the most oppressed; and, unless they have understandings far superiour to the common run of understandings, taking in both sexes, they must, from being treated like contemptible beings, become contemptible.
  • Ch. 9

• It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands they will be cunning, mean, and selfish.
  • Ch. 9

• The preposterous distinction of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, , because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, but to the station, and when the duties are not fulfilled, the affections cannot gain sufficient strength to fortify the virtue of which they are the natural reward. Still there are some loop-holes out of which a man may creep, and dare to think and act for himself; but for a woman it is an herculean task, because she has difficulties peculiar to her sex to overcome, which require almost super-human powers.
  • Ch. 9

• How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre.
  • Ch. 9

• To be a good mother — a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers; wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow.
  • Ch. 10

• Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed, because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavour to settle that power on a Divine right, which will not bear the investigation of reason.
  • Ch. 11

Letters (1796)

Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796)

• It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust — ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.

• The more I see of the world, the more I am convinced that civilisation is a blessing not sufficiently estimated by those who have not traced its progress; for it not only refines our enjoyments, but produces a variety which enables us to retain the primitive delicacy of our sensations. Without the aid of the imagination all the pleasures of the senses must sink into grossness, unless continual novelty serve as a substitute for the imagination, which, being impossible, it was to this weariness, I suppose, that Solomon alluded when he declared that there was nothing new under the sun!
  • Letter 2

• Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing.
  • Letter 12

• Affection requires a firmer foundation than sympathy, and few people have a principle of action sufficiently stable to produce rectitude of feeling; for in spite of all the arguments I have heard to justify deviations from duty, I am persuaded that even the most spontaneous sensations are more under the direction of principle than weak people are willing to allow.
  • Letter 17

• Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.
  • Letter 19

• The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful to society, had that society been well organized.
  • Letter 19

• We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.
  • Letter 19

• It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.
  • Letter 22

• Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.
  • Letter 23

• An ardent affection for the human race makes enthusiastic characters eager to produce alteration in laws and governments prematurely. To render them useful and permanent, they must be the growth of each particular soil, and the gradual fruit of the ripening understanding of the nation, matured by time, not forced by an unnatural fermentation.
  • Appendix

Quotes about Wollstonecraft

• She strove to reconcile integrity and sexual desire, the duties and needs of women, motherhood and intellectual life, domesticity and fame.
  • Janet Todd in Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life (2000)