The life and character of Wollstonecraft have been the subject of many biographies, most recently three (Flexner 1972, Tomalin 1974, Sunstein 1975) written at the crest of the second wave of feminism, and two more big books (Todd 2000, Gordon 2005) published in the early twenty-first century. After her death-she died in London on September 10, 1797, of puerperal fever, a consequence of her biological life as a woman and of bad (male) doctoring-Wollstonecraft was vilified by enemies as an 'unsex'd female,' and eulogized by friends for her 'ardent, ingenuous, and unconquerable spirit.' She has figured ever since then in discussions of sex and gender, most often as a figure-a woman who experimented sexually, a rejected lover, and an unmarried mother who died after giving birth to the child who would become the author of Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. A child of the Enlightenment, she was also a Romantic, and believed that all women 'who have acted like rational creatures, or shewn any vigour of intellect, have accidentally been allowed to run wild.' She was influenced by the ideas that informed the French Revolution, especially those of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with whom she argues in the Vindication. Violently opposed to 'the preposterous distinction of rank,' Wollstonecraft was a person of unwavering moral seriousness and commitment. Her strong polemic against gender inequality is no longer easy reading, but the author herself continues to stir the imagination. Mary Wollstonecraft, who was born in London on April 27, 1759, is famous as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argued that women are 'rendered weak and wretched' by 'a false system of education' and 'mistaken notions of female excellence' pervasive in society.

Mary wollstonecraft 1759 1797