Mary Wollestonecraft

Question 1

What did she think of marriage

Answer 1

Saw it as slavery and had her first child out of wedlock

Question 2

How did Horace Warpole describe Mary Wollestonecraft

Answer 2

He called her a “hyena in petticoats”- basically called her a whore

Question 3

What did she announce at the age of 15

Answer 3

That she would never marry- later married William Godwin in 1797

Question 4

What did she argue about reason

Answer 4

That women were capable of reason- all they lacked was education

Question 5

What did she argue in Vindication of the rights of Woman

Answer 5

That if women were going to be good wives and mothers they needed to be intelligent, educated citizens

Question 6

Example of an attempt to vilify Wollstonecraft

Answer 6

the Anti Jacobin review of 1798 went so far as to index her under P for prostitute

Question 7

Why is she regarded as a formidable figure

Answer 7

Challenged the sexual and moral norms of her society in radical ways

Question 8

Why did her career not develop around a single genre

Answer 8

produce very diverse writings from travel lit, political commentary to autobiographical writings

Question 9

How is her lack of formal education reflected in her writing

Answer 9

often hasty and unpolished

Question 10

What did she state about Mary: A Fiction

Answer 10

“a tale to illustrate an opinion of mine, that a genius will educate itself “

Question 11

What role does Eliza play in Mary: A Fiction

Answer 11

Wollstonecraft’s typical romantic heroine, familiar to any reader of the periods of sentimental fiction

Question 12

How does Wollstonecraft concluded Mary: a fiction

Answer 12

by looking forward to a better world in which a woman desire is not trammeled by the compulsory love plot. A world “ where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage”

Question 13

How does the Wrongs of Woman open

Answer 13

in medias res

Question 14

What is the reader able to understand by implication about Mary a fiction

Answer 14

It will not be the kind of novel that caters to the thwarted sexual desire of female readers such as the heroines mum Eliza

Question 15

What does the quote “ woman fragile flower! why were you suffered to adorn a world exposed to the inroad of such stormy elements” show about women (WoW)

Answer 15

the lack of material ,legal and personal resources avaliable for women to withstand brutality
recalls Hamlet -frailty thy name is woman

Question 16

What did Mary Poovey criticise Mary Wollstonecraft for

Answer 16

remaning “ a prisoner of the category she most vehemently tried to reject”

Question 17

What happens in the wrongs of Woman of Woman

Answer 17

Concerns Maria’s struggle for freedom and her effort to separate legally from her vindictive husband George Venables
The novel also contains the details of other characters disastrous marriages in which women are abused, robbed, and abandoned

Question 18

How does she present marriage in the Wrongs of Woman

Answer 18

Wollstonecraft describes marriage as a prison and women as slaves. “A wife being as much a man’s property as his horse, or his ass, she has nothing she can call her own.”

Wollstonecraft deconstructs the ideology of marriage, by which women are exchangeable commodities, are objectified, and are denied their natural rights.

Question 19

Why did she think that women pursued sensibility

Answer 19

because they had been taught to do so.
female education emphasied the nurturing of emotion so that women would be distorted into sexual and passionate beings and grow subordinate to men

Question 20

What is one way that the wrongs of women - announced in the tile are inflicted

Answer 20

through the physical and legal force exercised by men.
accepts marriage proposal to escape her fathers “absolute authority”
marital rape?

Question 21

How was the Wrongs of Women intended to be received

Answer 21

as didatic

Question 22

How is Maria clearly marked by her education in sensiblity in the Wrongs of Woman

Answer 22

Laments at the lack of imagination in her husband and blames his vicious conduct partly on this.
She sees generous emotions as ‘ the foundation of every true principle of virtue”

Question 23

What does Wollstonecraft show in the contrast between Maria and Jemima

Answer 23

excessive sensiblity without reason makes people romantic and vulnerable
excessive reason without sensibility makes them coldly selfish

Question 24

When did she become a truly scandalous figure

Answer 24

After her death in 1797 when her hubby william Godwin gave an unvarnished account of her life including details of her love affairs, suicide attempts and illegitimate pregnancies

Question 25

What do the diffrerent relationships in Mary a fiction allow Wollstonecraft to explore
(Mary and Ann
Mary and Henry
Mary Legal Husband)

Answer 25

whether it is possible for a woman to attain emotional fulfilment in a flawed patriarchal world