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A Vindication of the Woman Known as Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)

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Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women Writers

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing ((PSLW))

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Abstract

From panegyric to vituperative, heroic to denigrative, from puritanical to whorish, from radically subversive to domestically entrenched, biographies and critical articles have represented and misrepresented, labeled and mislabeled Wollstonecraft as a woman to such a disparate extent, it is nearly impossible to know who she was and what she believed. This chapter synthesizes the biographies, critical studies, and Wollstonecraft’s own writing with the purpose of exposing the gaps and contradictions and then attempts to fill and reconcile them, respectively. It is an effort to resituate Wollstonecraft as a woman of her time and to identify those influences that made her who she was.

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  1. Liberty University, Lynchburg, USA

    Brenda Ayres

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  1. Brenda Ayres
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  1. Department of English, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia, USA

    Brenda Ayres

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Ayres, B. (2017). A Vindication of the Woman Known as Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797). In: Ayres, B. (eds) Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women Writers. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56750-1_3

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