On Mary Wollstonecraft, Feminism, and Motherhood

Dear readers, I have succumbed to some kind of late-Spring bug, and getting any new writing done this week has proved impossible. So instead, I thought I would re-share with you a book review from earlier this month which came out in Current, in case you missed it. In it, I discuss two recent books which both attempt to recover Mary Wollstonecraft as a thinker deeply interested in the life of the virtues: Wollstonecraft and Religion by Brenda Ayres, and Modern Virtue: Mary Wollstonecraft and a Tradition of Dissent by Emily Dumler-Winckler. With their respective flaws and strengths (mostly strengths!), both books challenge the contemporary assumption that Wollstonecraft’s feminism was one which was essentially concerned with rights and independence for their own sake. As Dumler-Winckler especially draws out, Wollstonecraft’s ideas about women’s equality did not tend towards atomisation and the elevation of the self above everything else. Rather, Wollstonecraft spoke about rights within the context of our duties towards others, and about independence of mind only as a necessary prerequisite for growth in virtue. If you’re interested in discovering connections between virtue ethics, Christianity, and maternal feminism, this article is for you. I truly hope you enjoy it!

Find the review here: