A graphic biography of Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft imagines a domestic scene. Picture a husband and wife at home:

The domestic trifles of the day have afforded matters for cheerful converse, and innocent caresses have softened toils which did not require great exercise of mind or stretch of thought: yet, has not the sight of this moderate felicity excited more tenderness than respect? An emotion similar to what we feel when children are playing, or animals sporting.

Mary wanted to bring about nothing less than ‘a revolution in female manners’. She wanted women to gain respect, dignity, independence. For that they had to be allowed to act like grown-ups: ‘How grossly do they insult us who thus advise us only to render ourselves gentle, domestic brutes!’

Women were expected to marry, thereby becoming legal property of the husband: ‘the slavery of marriage’, as Mary described it. She knew from her own experience that other options were limited: ‘Few are the ways of making a subsistence, and those very humiliating’. Lady’s Companion, Teacher, Governess – she’d tried them all. Governess was definitely her least favourite.

So, in August 1787, she became a staff writer for Joseph Johnson Esq of St Paul’s Churchyard. And she proudly announced to her sisters: ‘I am the first of a new genus’