Wollstonecraft's Radicalism: Social Relations in Vindication and Maria (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Orienting to Others

Abstract

Feminist receptions of Mary Wollstonecraft are contested. That is, her work has been interpreted in ways that make her amenable to a wide range of feminist traditions and political aims. I identify a source of this contestation by exploring how different interpretations of Wollstonecraft’s view of women bear on our understanding of Wollstonecraft’s broader political project. Within existing literature, I propose three central interpretations of Wollstonecraft’s view of women: i) women as deficient, ii) women as improvable, and iii) women’s condition as a social condition. In both the deficiency and improvability interpretations of women, it is implied that, because women are the object of analysis for Wollstonecraft, they must also constitute the ground of their own liberation. This is to say, because women have been excluded from political life on the basis of traditional understandings of women, a solution to women’s oppression must necessarily center on women. In this view, Wollstonecraft becomes amenable to a liberal or reformist feminist project. In this paper, I am interested in the third interpretation of Wollstonecraft’s view of women: that women’s condition is a social condition, and thus, amenable to a radical feminist project. While existing feminist interpretations have drawn attention to the radical nature of Wollstonecraft’s thought, I argue that a reading of her lesser known gothic novel Maria: Or, The Wrongs of Woman, allows us to more fully appreciate her radical social critique and positive political project, wherein these radical insights are made more ambiguous in Vindication: The Rights of Woman. Through an examination of both texts, I ask: how does Wollstonecraft critique social relations in her depiction of the condition of women and how do her concrete solutions seek to transform these social relations?

My paper moves through three parts. In part one, I examine feminist receptions of Wollstonecraft. First, I trace the logic of the deficiency and improvability interpretations. I then situate my own project within the third interpretation of Wollstonecraft’s view of women—that women’s condition is a social condition. I expand on this third view by seeking to clarify three points: i) what exactly Wollstonecraft’s radical project consists of, ii) the extent to which Wollstonecraft fully elaborates a radical project in her novel Maria, and iii) whether or not a radical Wollstonecraft is also present in Vindication. In part two, I examine women’s condition as a social condition in Maria. I suggest that the medium of the gothic novel offered Wollstonecraft new possibilities for communicating her radical ideas, whereas the political treatise presented gendered political constraints that removed these possibilities. I then show that women’s condition is a systemic social problem for Wollstonecraft by reconstructing her critique of social isolation in Maria. In part three, I draw out the logic of Wollstonecraft’s positive political project in Maria and use this logic to contextualize her concrete prescriptions in Vindication. Ultimately, I argue that Wollstonecraft’s institutional prescriptions are grounded on transforming social relationships, and that her radical political project remains consistent throughout Vindication and Maria.

Author

• Erica Kunimoto