Browsing by Subject "Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797 -- Political and social views"

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    “A Female Band Despising Nature’s Law”: Contesting the Subversive Early Legacy of Mary Wollstonecraft
    (2013) Bailinson, Emily; Saler, Bethel; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
    This thesis aims to recreate the sphere of public discourse surrounding the life of Mary Wollstonecraft and her legacy in order to understand the limitations faced by women in constructing their gendered subjectivity in Britain in the 1790s and how this individual agency could have subversive repercussions. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft counterpoised the dominant construction of womanhood as sentimental domesticity with an unsexed (and simultaneously masculine) form of subjectivity grounded in reasoned virtue. Through both her style and the disembodied nature of writing, Wollstonecraft unsexed herself while admitting the challenges women face in overcoming the dominant sexed model of subjectivity. Upon Wollstonecraft’s early death in 1798, her husband, William Godwin, wrote a memoir of her exemplary life. This memoir defended Wollstonecraft’s legacy against perceived calumny, casting Wollstonecraft in strictly gendered terms. While he admitted she had masculine attributes, he also attempted to silence her critics by depicting her as a properly feminine sentimental mother. Subsequent reviews of Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman constructed their own mini-biographies of Wollstonecraft’s life. Conservative journals attacked Wollstonecraft for her fanciful and licentious Jacobin philosophy and sexual impropriety. They saw Wollstonecraft’s life as a didactic example; critics used the tragedy of Wollstonecraft’s torturous affair with Gilbert Imlay and early death to demonstrate the dangers inherent in overthrowing convention—especially the conventions of sexual propriety. While critics suggested ways of constraining the “wanton philosopher,” supporters attempted to redeem Wollstonecraft as a woman too advanced for her time. By holding Wollstonecraft’s legacy up to the standards of female propriety, her critics sought to contain the subversive implications of her example for other women. Ultimately, Godwin and his reviewers limited Wollstonecraft’s ability to write herself out of her gender. Though Wollstonecraft lost her ability to construct an ungendered image of herself, her prominence gave Wollstonecraft’s legacy the power to deconstruct conventional standards of femininity and foment revolution through her counterexample. Thus, Wollstonecraft’s life became a site for debate about the conventional model of femininity in the 1790s, embodying the threat of revolution.