I have always admired people who were not afraid to be their real selves, who listened not to the prevailing clamor emanating from salons, but to their own hearts and minds. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was her own person and was not abashed to state openly and unequivocally her beliefs. Her most famous work, A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN, championed the notions of reason and education not just for men, but also for women, and for children especially. She was an autodidact, perforce. She was indeed the forerunner of the women's liberation movement, but she also wrote novels, a history of the French Revolution through which she lived, treatises, letters (not postcards) of intellectual substance, even a children's book. She lived an unconventional life, having children out of wedlock, for example. To say she was way ahead of her time is, of course, a huge understatemnt. But the aforementioned are the reasons why I fell in love with Mary Wollstonecraft.
Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet, a novelist, and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.
