Mary Wollstonecraft

Across disciplines, languages, and nations: Recent scholarship on Mary Wollstonecraft

“…This impression of Wollstonecraft's censoriousness has been linked to a refusal of sisterhood—what Taylor calls ‘anti‐womanism’ (Taylor, 2003, p. 17)—especially vis‐à‐vis women perceived as co‐conspirators in their construction as sexual objects incapable of authentic self‐determination. While it is by no means straightforward to reclaim Wollstonecraft for sex‐positive feminism, revisionary readings have dwelt on the unabashed, lyrical eroticism of Short Residence (Kirkley, 2022a; Weiss, 2006) as well as identifying sapphic elements in her fictions which suggest longing for feminocentric community (Johnson, 1995). As several critics have observed, Wollstonecraft sketched her most arresting vision of solidarity across social boundaries in her draft of Wrongs of Woman , where one projected ending consolidates a salutary bond between the heroine, Maria, and the former prostitute, Jemima, whose psychological complexity surpasses contemporary clichés of lurid criminality or Magdalene penitence (Johnson, 1995; Kipp, 2003; Taylor, 2003).…”

“…Literary critics, in particular, often revisit her vexed self‐identification with his Solitary Walker, whose twinned capacities for hypersensitivity and insight make conformity impossible and exclusion excruciating (see, for example: Favret, 1993; Taylor, 2017; Yousef, 1999). Recent analyses have also investigated the resonances and distinctions between Wollstonecraft and Rousseau's philosophical outlooks, including their different perceptions of the imagination and its relationship to reason (Reuter, 2017) and the philanthropic potential of reverie as a nonrational mode of cognition (Kirkley, 2022a).…”

“…Once dismissed as potboilers, her translations are now recognised as creative works integral to her critical engagement with European thinkers. Comparative analyses of her texts and their foreign‐language sources demonstrate increasing interventionism, often in the service of a reformist and feminist agenda (Kirkley, 2022a). Scholars of eighteenth‐century children's literature (Blamires, 2009; Lathey, 2010) particularly recognise the importance of Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children (1790), Wollstonecraft's adaptation of Christian Gotthilf Salzmann's Moralisches Elementarbuch (1782−1783; illustrated edition 1785).…”

“…She argues that, despite making no explicit reference to gender inequality, Wollstonecraft cuts episodes solely applicable to male children and favours moral lessons with a universal reach. My recent monograph, Mary Wollstonecraft: Cosmopolitan (2022), considers Wollstonecraft's translation work as integral to her development as a cosmopolitan intellectual. I argue that she domesticates her source texts to give universal moral standards homegrown appeal and that her translational choices constitute a commentary on gender inequality, social injustice, and the cultural landscape of eighteenth‐century Europe.…”