A Different Face: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft
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- Synopsis
- Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the eighteenth-century classic, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, is a fascinating subject for biography. She did not march through life toward specific goals of feminism, but fought her way to personal independence with a passionate, stubborn intensity at a time when women--presumed inferior--were narrowly circumscribed by law, custom and religious belief. She demanded also a ration of happiness and sexual fulfillment, refusing to conform to the model of a submissive, decorative, domestically useful woman. Possessed of great intellectual ambitions, and largely self-educated, Mary Wollstonecraft rebelled against injustice everywhere she perceived it, and gradually became a political radical. Without money or family support, she yet refused to marry for security. In 1787 she went to live in London, where she supported herself by her writing, at thirty-three composing her great work and finding herself a famous and controversial figure. In private life she had never been able to find satisfaction, however; she desperately sought affection. After two disastrous infatuations, an illegitimate child, and two attempts at suicide, she fell in love with William Godwin, finally securing the domestic tranquillity and love she yearned for, tragically dying in childbirth a few months after her marriage. The question Mary Wollstonecraft's life poses is one of great interest today: What kind of life should a woman ask for herself? Mary Wollstonecraft wanted it all--career and family, independence and attachment, intellectual achievement and love. In A Different Face the complexities and contradictions of a remarkable woman are examined as the author, drawing extensively from Mary Wollstonecraft's own writings, endows the biography with the living voice of Mary Wollstonecraft herself. Excellently researched, it is a dramatic and readable biography, consistently fair to the courageous, exasperating and vivid personality of one of England's most extraordinary women.
- Copyright:
- 1975
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 383 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780060142018
- Publisher:
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Date of Addition:
- 07/10/15
- Copyrighted By:
- Emily W. Sunstein
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs
- Submitted By:
- BookLady
- Proofread By:
- Janey Chao
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.