Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú

In Human Intelligence, novelist and writer Naomi Alderman looks at some of the most brilliant minds in history.

Among her subjects in the series is women’s rights pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft who Naomi describes as “the first modern woman”. As well as philosophical works on the rights of women and girls, including A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, Wollstonecraft wrote novels and a number of travelogues with a sociological angle.

Here are 8 things we learnt about Mary Wollstonecraft:

Born in Spitalfields, London in 1759, Mary did not enjoy an easy start in life. “She wasn't especially beautiful, and she had no fortune,” remarks Naomi, adding: “those are the things that gave women an adequate life in the 1770s.” Her father had squandered the family’s money and he would beat or rape Mary’s mother, something Mary would try to stop by sleeping outside her mother’s bedroom.

Her friends were her inspiration

Mary did not get a good education, and her family were not aspirational for her. Instead, Mary sought out friends who had received a better education to teach her or “let her read her way through their libraries”, as Naomi puts it. One of her friends was local landowner and MP, Bamber Gascoigne – a direct relation to the academic and former University Challenge host of the same name.

Mary had what Naomi describes as “a series of passionate friendships with women in her early life”. She didn’t define herself as gay, and Naomi believes that since she was happy to be outspoken on so many things and given “how brave she was about every single other bit of her life”, she would have been open about her sexuality.

She had numerous jobs before writing

Mary was probably one of the first women in England to earn a living through writing alone, Naomi believes. Before that, “She tried every job open to women at that time: teacher, governess, servant.”

Her writing career saw her expand her friendship circle to include Dr. Johnson and various London publishers. Mary’s iconic work, A Vindication on the Rights of Woman, which argued that women should be seen as just as capable of rational thought as men and needed equal education and opportunity, was published in 1792.

Mary’s work marked her out as part of The Enlightenment (also known as The Age of Reason) where reason and logic were emphasised and where the authority of the church was being questioned, so it was no surprise that the political upheaval across the Channel inspired her. In the same year of the publication of A Vindication… Mary travelled to France to witness the Revolution. Naomi says that Mary was “thrilled by it”. Of Mary’s thought process, Naomi observes: “If kings could be dethroned, then everything was overturned and up for question. If this was happening, then the revolution in women's lives couldn't be far behind. She was so hungry for it.”

She made questionable romantic choices

Mary was an influence on the later Romantic movement, but her own small-r romantic life was epic for all the wrong reasons.
While in France, she fell for an American called Gilbert Imlay. He claimed he was a captain in the American army, that he was an abolitionist, like Mary, and that he agreed with her about the emancipation of women. In reality, he was a slave owner and trader and a con man who fled his creditors. He also fled when Mary fell pregnant, leaving her and her newborn to cross France – by then in the grip of a brutal massacres by the First Republic known as "The Terror" – in search of him. Mary eventually found Gilbert in London, in the arms of an actress. Distraught, and already afflicted by mental health issues, she threw herself into the Thames – but thankfully survived.

Mary’s next romantic adventure was much happier. She met anarchist philosopher and novelist William Godwin, and they moved into two houses next to each other, something that Naomi describes as “maybe the most perfect domestic living arrangement possible for two writers who loved to argue”.

“She was really trying something out here, I think,” adds Naomi, “living fully, but also trying to live according to her understanding of the absolute equality between men and women.” In 1797, Mary gave birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. Tragically, less than two weeks later, Mary Wollstonecraft died, aged just 38, of a bacterial infection known as "childbed fever".

Her legacy is impossible to overstate

“She was the first woman to try to live in the way that women live now,” Naomi asserts. “That I should be allowed to get a decent education, to be able to own my own property, to be able to live with a man without being owned by him; that I should be able to travel alone, to have children whether I'm married or not; that I should be treated as an equal, not an idiot servant: all of that is Mary Wollstonecraft. She saw this world coming. She wanted to live in it and she broke it open for all of us… and she suffered for it. It was incredibly brave.”