Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers , and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences. During her brief career she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative , a history of the French Revolution , a conduct book , and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman , in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but appear to be only because they lack education.
She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay , Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin , one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38 leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. She died 11 days after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley , who became an accomplished writer and the author of Frankenstein.
Wollstonecraft's widower published a Memoir of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important.
Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April in Spitalfields , London. Consequently, the family became financially unstable and they were frequently forced to move during Wollstonecraft's youth. Moreover, he was apparently a violent man who would beat his wife in drunken rages.
As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her mother's bedroom to protect her. In a defining moment in , she persuaded Eliza, who was suffering from what was probably postpartum depression , to leave her husband and infant; Wollstonecraft made all of the arrangements for Eliza to flee, demonstrating her willingness to challenge social norms.
