Ask someone if the villain was Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde: nine out of ten will say Jekyll, even though he was the peaceful one. Ask someone who Frankenstein was and nine out of ten will say it was the monstrous artificial creature, when in fact it was the scientist who made him. The well-informed will recognize Frankenstein as the main character of a novel, and those who are even more familiar with the story will also know it was written by Mary Shelley. However, the author's surname was actually her husband's, as Mary was born Wollstonecraft.

Some people are known as 'son or daughter of,' others as 'father or mother of.' This is the former case. This Mary was born the daughter of another Mary Wollstonecraft, who, much less famous, if remembered at all, is now known as the mother of Mary Shelley, the poet’s wife. The writer was named Mary because her mother died of sepsis shortly after giving birth: one might see a kind of transgenerational continuity, where the daughter’s fame brings attention to the mother, who was brilliant and strong-willed. Born on April 2, 1759, in a suburb of London, Mary did not experience an easy childhood. Her father had been a weaver, then a farmer, but he failed in both, and the family fell into poverty. In her early twenties she left her father’s house to earn a living. Although she became a highly cultured thinker and writer, she didn’t achieve so through formal schooling but thanks to her own determination and cultured friendships. Her somewhat irregular education was far from lacking: her writings show a deep knowledge of the Bible and the classics, of Shakespeare and Milton. However, due to her social position, her prospects seemed limited: at best, she might have become a governess or a schoolteacher. She herself, along with her sisters and a friend, opened a school in 1768 to make ends meet, and later worked as a governess in Ireland. But it must be noted that she was a sharp critic and a skilled translator, and these two talents brought her into contact with thinkers like Leibniz and Kant. She translated numerous books, and each time they appeared as if they were her own, both because she agreed with the authors and because she essentially re-wrote them.

In 1787, she began working with the journal Analytical Review and joined the intellectual circle of publisher Joseph Johnson, which included figures such as William Blake, Thomas Paine, Joseph Priestley, and painter Heinrich Füssli. That same year, her friend Johnson published Mary’s first work: Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life. It is a conduct book offering advice on female education, particularly directed at the emerging middle class. Although it mainly focuses on morality and etiquette, it also includes basic guidelines for educating young girls, even down to the care of infants. The author had carefully observed the girls in her school and wanted to present her views on the education of women, who, in her opinion, were no less capable of learning than men. One of her well-known quotes says: 'Who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift of reason?' She believed that everything started with education, and that the cause of the subjugation of women lay in ignorance and their exclusion from society.

During the fervour of the revolution in Paris, in 1791, Condorcet published Cinq mémoires sur l'instruction publique, where he stated that providing education is the state's responsibility, although it should not impose its own rules on it. It is very likely that Mary Wollstonecraft, who was closely following the 1789 revolution, was aware of this work. In 1792, firmly convinced that education was key to women's liberation, she published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The work criticizes the educational system of the time, which ignored women and used inadequate methods.

If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence? Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex, when they do not keenly satirize our headstrong passions and grovelling vices. I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance! The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force.1

The work highlights the political and civil importance of education as a fundamental right, to the point where she even strongly criticizes Rousseau.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s intellect was so impressive that he is claimed by philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, and educators; his morality, on the other hand, was somewhat flexible: it is well-known that he left his children to public care. Despite this (or perhaps because of this), he preached about duties and rights. In Emile (1762), he assigned women the role of mother and nurturer: a role he considered noble, of course, but he condemned women who were unworthy of it, such as those who did not breastfeed their children, leaving them to wet nurses: "For those women, it is not enough to get rid of their children and joyfully indulge in pleasures... now they no longer even want to bring them into the world"2. Mary Wollstonecraft's independence of thought is absolute: her admiration for Rousseau does not stop her from harshly criticizing his educational theory, a criticism she is not willing to sugarcoat:

As for Rousseau's remarks […] that they [women] have naturally, […], independent of education, a fondness for dolls, dressing, and talking, they are so puerile as not to merit a serious refutation.3

At the time the educational system was designed by men who saw women not simply as human beings, but as "females" in a subordinate role, who needed to be taught to be kind, polite, obedient, decent, and beautiful, so that they could find a husband who would "settle" them. Women were therefore treated like pets, kept in a perpetual childhood. Mary’s reasoning here is quite simple: why is it believed that women possess virtues inferior to those of men? If both had been educated using the same methods and principles, women would have achieved what men typically did. It also happened that a woman with high interests and virtues would be contemptuously labelled as "masculine"; but Wollstonecraft observes that it was not at all unusual for many women to have more common sense than their husbands.

If women are by nature inferior to men, their virtues must be the same in quality, if not in degree, or virtue is a relative idea; consequently, their conduct should be founded on the same principles, and have the same aim.4

Almost all educators unanimously praise Emile as the masterpiece of pedagogical thought. Perhaps it is true, but in a negative sense, as it stands as the ultimate example of something that, even if practicable, cannot serve as a model; for it completely eliminates the dimension of social interaction, as Emile grows up with his tutor as his sole

interlocutor. Moreover, if this model requires one educator for each student, it would be impossible to replicate.

Mary Wollstonecraft begins chapter 12 of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, titled On National Education, with the following words:

[…] A man cannot retire into a desert with his child, and if he did he could not bring himself back to childhood, and become the proper friend and play-fellow of an infant or youth. And when children are confined to the society of men and women, they very soon acquire that kind of premature manhood which stops the growth of every vigorous power of mind or body. In order to open their faculties they should be excited to think for themselves; and this can only be done by mixing a number of children together, and making them jointly pursue the same objects. A child very soon contracts a benumbing indolence of mind, which he has seldom sufficient vigour afterwards to shake off, when he only asks a question instead of seeking for information, and then relies implicitly on the answer he receives. With his equals in age this could never be the case, and the subjects of inquiry, though they might be influenced, would not be entirely under the direction of men, who frequently damp, if not destroy, abilities, by bringing them forward too hastily: and too hastily they will infallibly be brought forward, if the child could be confined to the society of a man, however sagacious that man may be.5

It is fair to say that the famous poet, a friend of Lord Byron, was Mary Wollstonecraft’s son-in-law (although he never had the chance to meet her).


Translated by Viola Motti.
1 Original text available here (page 19)
2 Original text available here (page 18-19)
3 Original text available here (page 43)
4 Original text available here (page 26)
5 Original text available here (page 171-172)