Key Thinkers: Helen Irving on Mary Wollstonecraft

Part 1 | Part 2

In this Key Thinkers lecture (Sydney Ideas), Professor Helen Irving looks at the life and work of Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was the first theorist systematically to give voice to what we now call feminism. Her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was a radical account of the impact of limited education and subordination on women’s lives, built on Enlightenment theories of reason and human progress. Wollstonecraft was not an armchair radical, but lived a life of extraordinary daring and independence, dying tragically young after giving birth to her daughter (the writer, Mary Shelley).

University of Sydney, October 2009

Source:

University of Sydney

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