![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() We must all have thoughts about how to prepare our children for the world and whether we educate them in such a way as to ensure that they survive in the world as it is or as we think they ought to be. I mention in the book how whilst traveling in Scandinavia, and writing to Gilbert Imlay with their child, a little girl, Fanny, she says (these are not her exact words), ‘I don’t know whether to prepare her for the world as it is or for the world as it should be.’ For somebody who’s written The Vindication of the Rights of Woman, it’s an amazingly honest thing to say. So that’s one set of reasons.įor me, she’s important because she’s a very honest intellectual. There’s always something to argue about her and that maintains a kind of interest and controversy about what she really wanted women to do and what the meaning of her work really is. For some feminists, she talks too much about motherhood, for others she doesn’t talk about sex in the right way. Mary Wollstonecraft is often called the first English feminist-which she isn’t-but she continues to draw a lot of interest partly, I think, because readers find her both very interesting but, also, sometimes because they’re disappointed. Foreign Policy & International Relationsīefore we get to the books, why is Mary Wollstonecraft an important figure? Why should I be paying attention to her in the 21st century?įor a start, because she’s said to be important and sometimes one just has to know about people who are said to be important, even if one is disappointed. ![]()
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