Written by Mary Brown & edited by Disha Doshi

Dec 9, 2024

What made you want to enter academia in the first place?

I cannot say that it was as wilful as ‘wanting to enter academia’ might imply. When I finished my undergraduate degree in philosophy, I wanted to acquire an understanding of the history of the ideas that I had encountered. When I studied philosophy, it was very much in an analytical vein and when we looked at Hume or Locke, it was completely out of context. My interest was in understanding their views in their context to comprehend them better.

What led you to this project, to write a book about Mary Wollstonecraft?

I do not want to give the impression that I had these set goals in life. Many years ago, I was asked to edit her ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ (1792). I argued that I could not fully understand that vindication without first examining ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’ (1790). The Cambridge University Press agreed to publish both along with the ‘Hints’ in their volume. After editing such a volume, I was asked to think and write about Wollstonecraft further. Princeton asked me to write a book and I thought it would be a good opportunity to bring my thoughts on her together.

You write in the book that you want a ‘Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ to be ‘dethroned’ and you make it clear that her contributions are not solely regarding her thoughts on the relationships between the genders, but also her wider philosophy on humanity. Why do you think that she has been pigeonholed solely as a feminist writer for so many years in the public consciousness?

It has largely to do with her husband, William Godwin’s actions after Wollstonecraft’s death following the birth of her daughter, Mary, who later became Mary Shelley. He publishes an account of her life as the author of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’. In this, he discloses more than was necessary about the fact that she had a child out of wedlock with Gilbert Imlay, which then adds to her notoriety.

Then, regarding the public, there is a mixed reaction to this: she is both rejected to a degree, but it also adds to the intrigue surrounding her. There was a lot of interest in the vindication in America and Eileen Hunt has written about the interest that people in Europe had in her. Therefore, there is some momentum around the text and the fact that she was Godwin’s wife and he was well-known for being a critic of the institution of marriage. These are all factors which raise her profile.

But, of course, who is she? She is the author of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’. This view was embedded in the public consciousness largely, but not solely, by Godwin. Moreover, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’ was just one of many responses to Burke. Once the French Revolution gave way to the Terror and the attitude in England changes towards the revolution and her attack on Burke, it was not going to be a text that would be unlikely to gain prominence. And, of course, Burke turns out to have been right about his prediction of what the revolution would lead to, namely that it would end in desperate tyranny and a Napoleon-like figure who would need to redress the situation.

Then, with the growing interest in the women’s movement and the publications of works by women about women and freedom, you are unlikely to publish a book called ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’. All of this boxes her in and surgically removes the text from the rest of her works. I do not want to claim that I am the first person to look at ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’, nor even less that I am the first person to look at her pedagogical writings and therefore her writings in the main. However, this is to give an account as to why ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’ was relatively neglected, even until recently. It is difficult for some readers to accept if they think that Wollstonecraft is primarily, or possibly solely, a feminist writer concerned about the condition of women and the achievement of civil rights. They usually think that she is only interested in civil rights and that she is in favour of the revolution.

Recently, I was interviewed and all the questions presumed that she was an unqualified supporter of the revolution and that ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’ was an unqualified defence of the early stages of the revolution (it has to be early since the book was published in 1790). In actual fact, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’ is primarily an attack on Burke. It is a very important attack because she looks at a number of his writings in it, including his early essay called ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful’ (1757), in which there is a passage which identifies women with beauty, softness, and weakness. To summarise, Burke posits that women consciously love weakness and being loved. Wollstonecraft picks up on this in her attack on him in ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’. It serves as a spur for her to think about the view that society has of women, what they ought to be, or even what they seek to be.

And so, if you approach Wollstonecraft thinking you are going to study the mother of feminism or the grandmother of feminism, you are unlikely to look at ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’, which would be a disappointment because it is not pro-revolution. You would have to read Burke and be familiar with the context. Then, you would have to be effectively open to the fact that Burke is in some way the trigger for a lot of her thoughts about the condition of women.

In her critique of Burke in particular, we see that the personal is very much political for Wollstonecraft. She embarks on quite a few ad hominem arguments which go far wider in scope than just his arguments about the French Revolution. Most notably, she casts herself as more masculine and him as more feminine. How effective do you think this approach to her argument was? And do you think it strengthened or undermined it?

It is very effective! She is simply a great rhetorician and she expertly reads the room. If you are going to attack someone in 1790s England, how do you go about it? Well, you question their faith and the consistency of what they write with Christianity or possibly even just the belief in God as our creator. The next thing is that you play on gender stereotypes. What could be worse in that time than to say that somebody is womanlike, ruled by passion, dependent, not his own person? Finally, you question his patriotism, the degree to which he is foreign or French rather than truly English. That only makes sense if one remembers that Burke criticised Richard Price, the author of ‘A Discourse on the Love of our Country’ (1789). With all of these things together, it is very effective.

Of the many responses that Burke’s reflections received, Wollstonecraft’s is the most perceptive of his view of civilisation. She will later come to realise that what he was saying had more merit than she had previously thought. Nevertheless, ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’ is not about doing scholarly work on Burke. It is meant to be an attack and she is ruthless. She characterises his pleading the cause of the Americans in parliament as pretence and veneer and argues that he was not a defender of liberty, but rather of property.

She is very good, I would not want her to be attacking me! You want her to be on your side because she has the gift of the gab. It is important to consider that she is not an MP and she was not educated: she did not belong to the Cambridge Union and sharpen her rhetorical skills there. It is a very strong argument, but in a particular context, as philosophy.

Towards the end of the book, you discuss more about what Wollstonecraft believed to be the role of government regarding equalities between citizens. Can you talk more about how this aligned with her beliefs in human independence and individuality?

She does not believe that human beings are equal in the sense that we are all born with the exact same skills, abilities, and talents. She does believe that any set of skills or talents are not the monopoly of any one group of people. And so, you could have a brilliant artist or mathematician or gymnast coming from any section of society.

Nevertheless, some of us have skills which others do not, and vice versa. She thinks that the government should not try to minimise the consequence of certain inequalities. For example, if I had disabilities which made my life incredibly difficult, she believed that the government ought to do something about that. However, she did not think that the government should somehow try to make us all equal in the sense of wearing the same clothes, being identical. She did not think this was either possible or desirable.

I also found her writings on property particularly interesting, such as her arguments against primogeniture and her advocacy for more equal distribution of property regarding inheritance. How were these fairly radical views of hers received during her own lifetime?

These views are not prominent in ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’. Therefore, for the reasons we went through before, these are not views that are challenged, accepted or endorsed.

There is also the fact that primogeniture does not exist in America and the laws of inheritance in France change drastically under Napoleonic law. Therefore, it is a complex matter and I would not really think of her as having any impact in relation to this. There were also far more radical views about inheritance. For example, among socialists, it ceases to be about inheritance, but about property in the first place and its abolition. That is where the debate lies, rather than in distribution.

The main reason for this is that primogeniture is a factor only regarding the aristocracy or landed estate. It is not going to affect the working classes or labouring poor in the 18th century, nor is it really about the middle class society. Therefore, the argument is very much about a tiny segment of society.

The diversity of source literature that you use in the book, from travel writings to literary journalism, was really refreshing. Why was it important for you to incorporate the wide range of genres that her corpus included?

I wanted to give as wide a scope of her thought as possible and I wanted to see whether it hung together. When I turned to writing the book, I asked myself how I would do this without repeating what I had already said numerous times, which is the thing that she was a critic of. So I reflected on questions such as: what did she actually think, what did she believe in, what did she hope rather than what did she criticise. I remembered she described herself as a moralist and a philosopher and as my first degree is in philosophy, I felt at home thinking about her as a philosopher.

One type of text that I did not look at very much was her novels because did not feel equipped to analyse them as literary works and they have been discussed ad nauseam by those far more qualified to discuss them than I am. I was also comfortable with the moralising as, by nature, I am a fairly moralising person. Then I thought about what a philosopher in the 18th century would do. They would do the kind of thing David Hume does, which is to look at human nature, the theory of the mind, how we come to our ideas, and what faculties we have. That is how the book takes off. And then from the faculties came the question: did she have a view of human nature? Well, yes, she thought that we are naturally benevolent. From that comes the question: if we are naturally benevolent, how is it that we live in a world she does not believe is governed by benevolence?

Were there any significant challenges or difficulties that you faced in the research and the writing of the book?

I tried to avoid ‘isms’, such as feminism, liberalism, radicalism, or any other ‘ism’. I did not want to pigeonhole her, yet one can end up pigeonholing somebody without using labels. Therefore, I tried to be as open-minded as possible and not say that parts of her work sounded like Mill or Locke, except of course when her source was Locke or Plato. I tried as best as I could to give her a chance to be thought of as a moralist and a philosopher so that the readers could make what they will of it. I also did not want to have a work which presented her as someone who is not quite a feminist as we think a feminist is. That was difficult insofar I had to be as self-conscious as possible.

And finally, do you have any advice that you’d give students who are looking into entering academia?

Yes, but I am not sure that you will want to publish it. I think there is a tendency that, once you are in academia, it becomes mesmerising, not to say that I did not fall prey to that. You almost think there is no life worth living outside of it. They engage in the master’s, want to do a PhD, then want to be an academic. The result of this is that it makes students think that the best thing in the entire world is getting an academic job. And then if they fail to do this, they might think about doing a law conversion or entering the civil service. I think that that kind of hierarchy is not healthy and also not prudent because there are not many academic jobs. The world we live in is one where there are plenty of research opportunities and we have access to plenty of sources. You do not need to be inside the Cambridge University Library and have an academic job in order to do research.

That said, one might want to consider becoming an academic. I think in the humanities because of the way, and it is very regrettable in my view, academic life is assessed at present, one needs to be focused. You need to complete your thesis, produce written work, secure publications, and just treat it as a job. In order to get a fellowship or a postdoc of some sort (as there are few, and it is very competitive), you need to be very focused and think about what will enable you to complete the thesis in very good time and have publications.

You also need to think that you might want to present as, say, you are a historian, a historian of more than one century or an economic historian or a historian of political history. Speaking as I am with you, a History and Spanish student, you might try and play up Spanish literature and obtain a position in a department which teaches that. Or you could go for a politics department instead of history as you might be interested in events under Franco’s dictatorship. Try to make sure that one might be able to compete in the academic job market. The most important thing is to remember that the world changes very rapidly, and there are many areas in which one can pursue research outside of narrowly constructed academia.

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