Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination

Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination PDF Author: Barbara Taylor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521004176
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In the two centuries since Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), she has become an icon of modern feminism: a stature that has paradoxically obscured her real historic significance. In this in-depth 2003 study of Wollstonecraft's thought, Barbara Taylor develops an alternative reading of her as a writer steeped in the utopianism of Britain's radical Enlightenment. Wollstonecraft's feminist aspirations, Taylor shows, were part of a revolutionary programme for universal equality and moral perfection that reached its zenith during the political upheavals of the 1790s but had its roots in the radical-Protestant Enlightenment. Drawing on all of Wollstonecraft's works, and locating them in a vividly detailed account of her intellectual world and troubled personal history, Taylor provides a compelling portrait of this fascinating and profoundly influential thinker.

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters; With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters; With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life PDF Author: Mary Wollstonecraft
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3387303319
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 77

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Book Description
Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.

Wollstonecraft

Wollstonecraft PDF Author: Sylvana Tomaselli
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691169039
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
A compelling portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft that shows the intimate connections between her life and work Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, is a work of enduring relevance in women's rights advocacy. However, as Sylvana Tomaselli shows, a full understanding of Wollstonecraft’s thought is possible only through a more comprehensive appreciation of Wollstonecraft herself, as a philosopher and moralist who deftly tackled major social and political issues and the arguments of such figures as Edmund Burke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Adam Smith. Reading Wollstonecraft through the lens of the politics and culture of her own time, this book restores her to her rightful place as a major eighteenth-century thinker, reminding us why her work still resonates today. The book’s format echoes one that Wollstonecraft favored in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: short essays paired with concise headings. Under titles such as “Painting,” “Music,” “Memory,” “Property and Appearance,” and “Rank and Luxury,” Tomaselli explores not only what Wollstonecraft enjoyed and valued, but also her views on society, knowledge and the mind, human nature, and the problem of evil—and how a society based on mutual respect could fight it. The resulting picture of Wollstonecraft reveals her as a particularly engaging author and an eloquent participant in enduring social and political concerns. Drawing us into Wollstonecraft’s approach to the human condition and the debates of her day, Wollstonecraft ultimately invites us to consider timeless issues with her, so that we can become better attuned to the world as she saw it then, and as we might wish to see it now.

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

A Vindication of the Rights of Women PDF Author: Mary Wollstonecraft
Publisher: Gildan Media LLC aka G&D Media
ISBN: 1722525215
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
A FEMINIST CLASSIC This classic 1792 political treatise by British writer Mary Wollstonecraft argues that women should be treated with equal dignity and respect to men, especially regarding education. It was instrumental in laying the foundation for the women's suffrage and feminist movements. Her trailblazing work posits that the educational system deliberately trained women to be frivolous and incapable. Wollstonecraft’s goal was not to undermine the role of women in the home as she pointed out that if girls were allowed the same advantages as boys, women would not only be exceptional wives and mothers, but they would also be capable workers. She encouraged society to see them as a valuable resource and called for women and men to be educated equally for without an education, women are merely men’s “slaves” and “playthings”—not the intelligent, rational companions of a just and equal society. “...Effect a revolution in female manners...restore to them their lost dignity...as a part of the human species...reforming themselves to reform the world.” Tackling many of the punitive patriarchal attitudes that dominated eighteenth-century society, she launched a broad attack against sexual double standards, urging women to prioritize reason over emotion to break free from male notions of female fragility and foolishness. This, her signature, classic work of early feminism remains as relevant today as it was when first released and an essential text in feminist literature. ,MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT died in 1797 at age 38, eleven days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who would become a noted writer herself, as the author of Frankenstein.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft PDF Author: Jane Moore
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351919458
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 585

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Book Description
The essays in this collection represent the explosion of scholarly interest since the 1960s in the pioneering feminist, philosopher, novelist, and political theorist, Mary Wollstonecraft. This interdisciplinary selection, which is organized by theme and genre, demonstrates Wollstonecraft's importance in contemporary social, political and sexual theory and in Romantic studies. The book examines the reception of Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman but it also deals with the full range of her work from travel writing, education, religion and conduct literature to her novels, letters and literary reviews. As well as reproducing the most important modern Wollstonecraft scholarship the collection tracks the development of the author's reputation from the nineteenth century. The essays reprinted here (from early appreciations by George Eliot, Emma Goldman and Virginia Woolf to the work of twenty-first century scholars) include many of the most influential accounts of Wollstonecraft's remarkable contribution to the development of modern political and social thought. The book is essential reading for students of Wollstonecraft and late eighteenth-century women's writing, history, and politics.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley PDF Author: Betty T. Bennett
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801859762
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
"Recognition of Mary Shelley's systemic dual focus on public and domestic power as the means to interrogate traditional norms and propose alternatives materially alters parochial perceptions of her objectives and her achievements. Her novels, outside of Frankenstein, and recently, The Last Man, have been dismissed as simple, mutual dissociated "romances" or experiments in genre solely to intersect with a market niche; they are neither. Rather, they and all of Mary Shelley's major works voice a cosmopolitan, socio-political reformist ideology that evolved as their author's acute awareness of world events enabled her to calibrate her literary voice to deal with unfolding rather than past societal issues. Her multidisciplinary fusion of literature, political philosophy, and history calls for a commensurate multidisciplinary reading in order to understand the complexities of both the author and her works." —Betty T. Bennett In this book, Betty T. Bennett offers an extensively expanded version of the introduction she wrote for Pickering and Chatto's eight volume set, The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley. Along with her insightful retelling of Mary Shelley's eventful life story, Bennett gives us a fresh reading of Frankenstein in the context of its author's full career. She also discusses a variety of Mary Shelley's lesser known works, including Matilda, Valperga, The Last Man, Perkin Warbeck, Lodore, Falkner, and her travel books. The result is a compelling portrait of Mary Shelley as she saw herself—an inventive, irreverent writer whose desire for political and social reform was at the heart of her literary expression for three decades.

A History of Feminist Literary Criticism

A History of Feminist Literary Criticism PDF Author: Gill Plain
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139465821
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Feminism has transformed the academic study of literature, fundamentally altering the canon of what is taught and setting new agendas for literary analysis. In this authoritative history of feminist literary criticism, leading scholars chart the development of the practice from the Middle Ages to the present. The first section of the book explores protofeminist thought from the Middle Ages onwards, and analyses the work of pioneers such as Wollstonecraft and Woolf. The second section examines the rise of second-wave feminism and maps its interventions across the twentieth century. A final section examines the impact of postmodernism on feminist thought and practice. This book offers a comprehensive guide to the history and development of feminist literary criticism and a lively reassessment of the main issues and authors in the field. It is essential reading for all students and scholars of feminist writing and literary criticism.

The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer

The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer PDF Author: Mary Poovey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226675289
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
"A brilliant, original, and powerful book. . . . This is the most skillful integration of feminism and Marxist literary criticism that I know of." So writes critic Stephen Greenblatt about The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer, Mary Poovey's study of the struggle of three prominent writers to accommodate the artist's genius to the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century ideal of the modest, self-effacing "proper lady." Interpreting novels, letters, journals, and political tracts in the context of cultural strictures, Poovey makes an important contribution to English social and literary history and to feminist theory. "The proper lady was a handy concept for a developing bourgeois patriarchy, since it deprived women of worldly power, relegating them to a sanctified domestic sphere that, in complex ways, nourished and sustained the harsh 'real' world of men. With care and subtle intelligence, Poovey examines this 'guardian and nemesis of the female self' through the ways it is implicated in the style and strategies of three very different writers."—Rachel M. Brownstein, The Nation "The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer is a model of . . . creative discovery, providing a well-researched, illuminating history of women writers at the turn of the nineteenth century. [Poovey] creates sociologically and psychologically persuasive accounts of the writers: Wollstonecraft, who could never fully transcend the ideology of propriety she attacked; Shelley, who gradually assumed a mask of feminine propriety in her social and literary styles; and Austen, who was neither as critical of propriety as Wollstonecraft nor as accepting as Shelley ultimately became."—Deborah Kaplan, Novel

The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft

The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft PDF Author: Mary Wollstonecraft
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231131421
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
This is the only single-volume edition containing all Wollstonecraft's known correspondence.

The Rights of Women

The Rights of Women PDF Author: Erika Bachiochi
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268200807
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Erika Bachiochi offers an original look at the development of feminism in the United States, advancing a vision of rights that rests upon our responsibilities to others. In The Rights of Women, Erika Bachiochi explores the development of feminist thought in the United States. Inspired by the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Bachiochi presents the intellectual history of a lost vision of women’s rights, seamlessly weaving philosophical insight, biographical portraits, and constitutional law to showcase the once predominant view that our rights properly rest upon our concrete responsibilities to God, self, family, and community. Bachiochi proposes a philosophical and legal framework for rights that builds on the communitarian tradition of feminist thought as seen in the work of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Jean Bethke Elshtain. Drawing on the insight of prominent figures such as Sarah Grimké, Frances Willard, Florence Kelley, Betty Friedan, Pauli Murray, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Mary Ann Glendon, this book is unique in its treatment of the moral roots of women’s rights in America and its critique of the movement’s current trajectory. The Rights of Women provides a synthesis of ancient wisdom and modern political insight that locates the family’s vital work at the very center of personal and political self-government. Bachiochi demonstrates that when rights are properly understood as a civil and political apparatus born of the natural duties we owe to one another, they make more visible our personal responsibilities and more viable our common life together. This smart and sophisticated application of Wollstonecraft’s thought will serve as a guide for how we might better value the culturally essential work of the home and thereby promote authentic personal and political freedom. The Rights of Women will interest students and scholars of political theory, gender and women’s studies, constitutional law, and all readers interested in women’s rights.