Wollstonecraft is often cited as the mother of what we today call feminism. Her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a foundational text in early feminist philosophy.
In addition to being one of the mothers of modern feminism, Wollstonecraft was also the mother of the renowned writer Mary Shelley. Sadly, Wollstonecraft would die just ten days after giving birth to young Mary, “leaving behind the foundation for the next two centuries of humanity’s model of gender equality.” Mary Shelley would come to know her mother through her writings, even learning to read partly by tracing the letters on Wollstonecraft’s gravestone.
Wollstonecraft would leave behind an unfinished manuscript where she wrote these words: “Always appear what you are, and you will not pass through existence without enjoying its genuine blessings, love and respect.”
Celebrating International Women’s Day (March 8), we’ve got a handful of 19th century (and one 20th century) literary quotations by, for, and about the position and power of women:
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” –George Eliot (Marian Evans, 1819-1880), Middlemarch(1872)
“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.” –Charlotte Bronte(1816-1855), Jane Eyre(1847)
“‘I am sure I am,’ said Margaret, in a firm, decided tone. ‘Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used-not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.’” –Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell(1810-1865), North and South(1855)
“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.” –Jane Austen(1775-1817), Persuasion(1817)
“The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.” –Queen Victoria (1819-1901) [source unknown]
“Give us back our suffering, we cry to Heaven in our hearts — suffering rather than indifferentism; for out of nothing comes nothing. But out of suffering may come the cure. Better have pain than paralysis! A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore!” –Florence Nightingale(1820-1910), Cassandra(written 1860; published posthumously)
“'What help?’ I asked. 'You’d scorn my help,–as Nature’s self, you say, Has scorned to put her music in my mouth, Because a woman’s. Do you now turn round And ask for what a woman cannot give? […] –am I proved too weak To stand alone, yet strong enough to bear Such leaners on my shoulder? poor to think, Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought? Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can, Yet competent to love, like [GOD]?’" –Elizabeth Barrett Browning(1806-1861), Aurora Leigh(1856)
" As all virtues nourish each other, and can no otherwise be nourished, the consequence of the admitted fallacy is that men are, after all, not nearly so brave as they ought to be; nor women so gentle. But what is the manly character till it be gentle? The very word magnanimity cannot be thought of in relation to it till it becomes mild, Christ-like. Again, what can a woman be, or do, without bravery? Has she not to struggle with the toils and difficulties which follow upon the mere possession of a mind ? Must she not face physical and moral pain, physical and moral danger ? Is there a day of her life in which there are not conflicts wherein no one can help her— perilous work to be done, in which she can have neither sympathy nor aid? Let her lean upon man as much as he will, how much is it that he can do for her ? from how much can he protect her ? From a few physical perils, and from a very few social evils. This is all.” –Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), “WOMAN. General Treatise on the Education, Morals, Religion, and Overprotection of Women.” (1834-7)
“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists—I wish to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.” –Mary Wollstonecraft(1759-1797), A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
’“Our country,”’ she will say, 'throughout the greater part of its history has treated me as a slave; it has denied me education or any share in its possessions. “Our” country still ceases to be mine if I marry a foreigner. “Our” country denies me the means of protecting myself, forces me to pay others a very large sum annually to protect me, and is so little able, even so, to protect me that Air Raid precautions are written on the wall. Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect either myself or my country. For,’ the outsider will say, 'in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.’“ –Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), Three Guineas(1938)
Every year, I return to these gems. Ten doesn’t even scratch the surface of these texts, these authors, or the glorious history of women whose thoughts have changed the world.
Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft, sister-in-law of Mary Wollstoncraft and aunt of author Mary Shelly, was a US botanist, naturalist, botanical illustrator & women’s rights advocate. Her manuscript with artworks on plant specimens (1828) was rediscovered recently ♀️
On This Day in Herstory, August 30th 1797, English novelist, and dramatist, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in Somers Town, London. Shelley is best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein (1818), this novel was the first of its kind, and helped to create a new genre of literature, Science Fiction.
The daughter of political philosopher William Godwin, and philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley was raised by Godwin alone, as Wollstonecraft died less than a month after giving birth. Her father raised her with his radical political ideas, and her mother’s feminist texts. She went on to marry a political poet, and was friends with many well known writers, these influences pushed her to pursue a career in writing.
Her most famous work came about as a result of a game. One summer in Geneva, her friend Lord Byron challenged her to wrote a ghost story, and thus Frankensteinwas born. The book was widely popular, but Shelley was not recognized for her work; many people thought her husband had written the book. Shelley had to publish the first edition of her book anonymously, her name was then added in the second printing.
Shelley’s work brought her much success, and she continued her career as a writer. She paved the way for women in literature, and proved that women were as capable as men, a revolutionary idea at the time.
Shelley died on February 1st 1851, at the age of 53. She was buried with the cremated remains of her husband’s heart, that she had carried with her for nearly 30 years.
Open marriage, sexual equality, gratification, free love: these are the Christian virtues that inspired William Blake (1757-1827).
Critics in his own time called him a lunatic, for his non-conformity and his visions, which included appearances by angels. Blake, in turn, thought he lived in a mad world, How else to explain the tendencies toward violence, cruelty, selfishness and repressive morality?
He was an engraver by profession and very accomplished. Someone who knew him as a young man might have assumed his fame would come from his art, not his poems. He was prolific in his writing, but his talent with words wasn’t appreciated by most of his contemporaries. Blake is read today because future generations of scholars rediscovered him. In his own time he was a silly eccentric, mostly harmless, though his radical political and religious views were cause enough for a charge of high treason. (He was acquitted.)
The rehabilitation of Blake is demonstrated in the idiosyncrasy that one of his poems (with music added by Hubert Parry in 1916) has become England’s unofficial national anthem. God Save the Queen is sung to represent the United Kingdom as a whole, but at events where athletes compete under St. George’s Cross (not the Union Jack), And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time plays in the background when England wins a gold medal (for example, at the Commonwealth Games.)
The poem, seen above as Blake originally published it, includes the biblical image of the Chariot of Fire, which was modified to become the name of the 1982 Oscar winner for Best Picture. Its rhyming partner, however, is a more interesting line: “Bring me my Arrows of desire.” For Blake, the liberation of sex from morality and the triumph of the imagination were preconditions for England becoming a new Jerusalem–essentially, heaven on earth.
Parry composed the music during World War I at the behest of a militarist group. Almost immediately, he had misgivings. In 1788, Blake had written a poetic essay with the title, All Religions Are One. On another occasion, he asserted “all men are alike (tho’ infinitely various.“) The poet would have been horrified by the slaughter in the trenches. When the song started to become popular, Parry gifted the rights to the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in early 1918. Blake admired Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, so he probably would have been pleased with that outcome.
Though he advocated for sexual freedom, Blake was happily married to his wife Catherine for 35 years and by all accounts they were monogamous–though he did ask if she could be persuaded to try a threesome.
(Additional source: English Romantic Writers, ed. David Perkins.)
