Mary Wollstonecraft

Looking again at “Wollstonecraft’s Philosophical Impact on Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Rights Advocates,” the authors study several women’s rights leaders. Two such leaders are Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. According to the authors, “Stanton used the example of the pilloried Wollstonecraft, first and foremost, to demonstrate the need for rethinking the notion of the feminine virtue of purity, just as Wollstonecraft had critiqued the notion of the feminine virtue of modesty in chapter seven of Rights of Woman” (Botting & Carey, 2004).  Stanton also speaks out against the treatment of Wollstonecraft and other “radicals.” She believes that their flawed lives did not hinder them from sharing their valuable knowledge with the world (Botting & Carey, 2004).

            Susan B. Anthony dedicated her 1792 Boston edition of Rights of Woman to the Library of Congress in 1904 with a dedicatory note written on the inside cover uplifting Wollstonecraft as the “founding mother and philosopher of the women’s rights movement” (Botting & Carey, 2004). Anthony also mentioned Wollstonecraft in her last speech to a women’s suffrage convention in 1906 calling her a “great woman” with “eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind” (Botting & Carey, 2004).

            It is clear to see that the women that we Americans look up to for our political freedoms themselves looked up to Mary Wollstonecraft. Despite Wollstonecraft’s posthumous fall from grace, her ideas and views made their way across the pond to influence our leaders.

References

Botting, E. H., & Carey, C. (2004). Wollstonecraft's philosophical impact on nineteenth-century american women's rights advocates. American Journal of Political Science, 48(4), pp. 707-722. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.lib-ezproxy.tamu.edu:2048/stable/1519929