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Mary Wollstonecraft ( 27.April 1759- 10. September 1797) Mary Wollstonecraft was a British writer, philosopher and feminist. She wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children’s book. Mary is best known for __A vindication of the rights of women__ in which she talks about the equality of men and women.

Mary Wollstonecraft was born on April 27. 1759 in London England. As a child she moved around a lot and therefore her education was not very good. However she did enjoy learning and made it her goal in life to achive equaltiy in education for girls. In 1780s she opened a private school with her sisters in London where she taught until 1786. In 1787 she published her first novel //Mary.// She moved to France in 1792 where she wrote her famous novel //A vindication of the rights of woman//, in which she fights for the equality of man and woman. Mary had a child with Gilbert Imlay as well as with William Godwin, who she married in 1797. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin died on September 10. 1797.

Excerpt from [|__http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111wollstone.html__]

A vindication of the rights of woman

“After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits. . . . I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result?--a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore, and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so hobbled by this specious homage, that the civilised women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect. . . .“

Mary, after reading many books about education as well as watching parents‘ behaviour and school systems, was very depressed. The reason for this was that she felt women like her were not given the same rights in education as men. Also she found that women were portrayed as weak. The way women carried themselves was seen as crazy; meaning that they were mentally unstable. She compares women to flowers to say that they are only supposed to be beautiful. She blames this on men who have written books which show women just as women rather then humans. Men made women to be mistersses instead of wives and mothers. These books made women look for love, only instead of aspiring to their full potential.

This text means that women in the 1800 century were made to believe that they cannot be anything else but females. This was due to the fact that any books written about „ feminism“ were written by male authors. These books did not allow women to educate themselves, but rather had them be inferior. This time period basically gave women no rights and no education. It just saw women as an object of beauty with nothing else behind it.