Mary Wollstonecraft Research Paper

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Pages: 4

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and passionate advocate of education and social equality for women. She was often considered a "liberal feminist" because she honors women's natural talents and her insistence that women not be measured by men's standards.

Mary Wollstonecraft was born April 27, 1759 in Spitalfields, London. Her father Edward, spent years looking for jobs, never succeeding causing him, and his family to live in an unstable basis. Failing on a professional level, he was also an abusive person, mostly to his wife Elizabeth, Mary being shown these experiences at a young age affected her later writings about women and marriage bondage. In 1784, Mary starts a school for girls in Newington Green with her bestfriend Fanny Blood, and with her sisters Eliza and Everina Wollstonecraft. In 1785 Fanny left the school to accept an offer of marriage in Lisbon, Portugal. She soon became pregnant, she wrote Mary Wollstonecraft, asking her to see her through the birth of her child. Although it meant jeopardizing the success of the school, Mary left for Lisbon, where she encountered her friend in premature
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Fanny died in Mary's arms, and the baby survived for only a short time after her. This devastating event brought Mary to write the first few chapters of her novel, Mary, A Fiction, published in 1788.

Mary contributed to the world during the Enlightenment Period by writing several novels, and books that women should receive formal education. Mary said "Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in." Wollstonecraft believed that educated women could strengthen society and could intellectually be equal to their husband in society. Wollstonecraft still believed that women should maintain traditional roles as mothers and wives in society, so she did not call upon equal rights for women, but simply believed that women should receive formal education in order to contribute