Mary Wollstonecraft and Nature

Abstract

During the period of the composition of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft read and reviewed a number of works of natural history for the Analytical Review.¹ Examining the remit of these works, and Wollstonecraft’s response to them, it is possible to see Vindication as offering a kind of natural history of woman. The books that Wollstonecraft read and reviewed compared ‘man’ to animals and plants, and men and women to each other; the authors felt qualified to discuss the ‘natural’ distinctions between men and women and consequently to advise women on what behaviour and conduct was ‘natural’ to them. From such texts, Wollstonecraft learned that natural knowledge could be put to political use and she follows this model in Vindication. She determines to prove that women should be regarded as part of the ‘human species’ rather than the ‘mere animals’ they seem to some (Works, V, 73, 76). This chapter explores the links between natural history and natural rights in this critical moment when the concept of what was ‘natural’ was debated.² Wollstonecraft emerges as an astute reader of natural history texts, who challenges as well as utilizes natural knowledge for her own political ends.