Why Mary Wollstonecraft Is the Coolest Feminist You’ve Never Heard Of

Content Warnings: suicide mention, depression mention, brief alcoholism mention. New video! Mary Wollstonecraft is a fascinating person, arguably the first ’feminist’ as we know the term, and there are a few really choice sources to look into below, in addition to reading her own works. Many of them reflect upon the relationship between herself and Mary Shelley, in terms of creative themes in their literature and the strange mirroring of their lives. *** A note *** Mary Wollstonecraft, as what may be considered the first official “feminist“ of England, took the first step towards what we know today to be a thriving, intersectional feminist discourse about inequality, inequity, and how to overcome and support everyone within society. As such, she is still very much a product of her own time, and often uses the term “slaves“ to describe the condition of women and society in relation to the systems which oversee its functionings. It is important when reading her works to consider that she is using this word in a philosophical sense, with a definition that should be considered largely separate from its use when describing the conditions suffered by African and colonised peoples at the hands of European colonisers. When discussing her, and studying her, we must be acutely aware of the systems, education, and radical nature of her views within their own time period. (Please don’t cancel this 250 year old woman). Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives by D. L. Macdonald; Anne McWhir; Helen M. Buss Mary Wollstonecraft and the Motherhood of Feminism by Thomas H Ford A Rediscovered Feminist Vision: Mary Wollstonecraft and Global Education for Girls and Women by Trish Hawley Mary Wollstonecraft: Challenges of Race and Class in Feminist Discourse by Salma Maoulidi Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon