Intro/Outro (00:06)
From the Bill of Rights Institute, Fabric of History weaves together US history, founding principles, and what all of this means to us today. Join us as we pull back the curtains of the past to see what’s inside.

Haley (00:21)
in our continued celebration of the 19th Amendment’s ratification. Mary, Gary, and Eryn take a look at two iconic women from history who happened to be mother and daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. They’ll discuss how both women were icons in their own rights, with Wollstonecraft famously advocating for women’s education and Shelley penning the powerful Sci-Fi classic, Frankenstein. How did this pair prove to be an empowering force in the early struggle for women’s rights and equality?

Mary (00:54)
There is a saying that well behaved women rarely make history, which for rural followers like myself is kind of a letdown. But it is interesting to think about some of the women who have come before us and really had a big influence on women’s rights movements. And this year marks the hundredth anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. So we thought it would be interesting to explore some of these early feminists and what their ideas were. And even though there were some early feminists that influenced the women’s movement in the United States, how are they still very much a product of their times and how did their times empower them or how did their times hold them back? And the women in question are Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley.

Gary (01:49)
There are so many women. And throughout the story and you mentioned the 19th Amendment, I mean, there’s a huge period of time, but I really like drilling down to these two because as a classroom teacher, they appeared in not only our history curriculum but also in colleagues English curriculum. And I always found it really having the stories of these two women, these two people and their connection to each other was really helpful. And again, from a classroom perspective, diving into the history of it, but also the connection with the English language arts classes and across the country, you’re going to find these two Mary’s in curricula and scopes and sequences. And it’s really a powerful way to take a look at some really big ideas through the choices they made in their lives.

Eryn (02:39)
And Wollstonecraft in particular, and just thinking about the suffrage movement in America, particularly because Mary Wolstencraft was from England. But for the American public, as the women’s rights movement gained steamed, so did the iconic uses of Wollstonecraft, because up until a certain point, a lot of her views were seen as negative due to her lifestyle choices. But as the women’s suffrage movement gave momentum, so did her writings, which is very fascinating that these two things kind of gain momentum.

Mary (03:23)
Mary Wollstonecraft, I’m kind of embarrassed to say, that I first encountered Mary Wollstonecraft as a history teacher in Virginia, where she is featured for offering a Vindication of the rights of women. But like Eryn was saying, she sort of had negative press for most of her life, and that wasn’t actually her first important work. So I think it’s worth pulling going back a little bit to when she was actually alive and when she was actually writing and what was so remarkable about her and what she wrote. Okay, so Mary Wollstonecraft, as I said, she’s usually known or she’s usually mentioned for Vindication of the Rights of Women, which is published in 1792. But her first publication of note was in 1790, and it was a Vindication of the Rights of Men. And she was writing basically as a response to Edmund Burke, who was a politician in Parliament in England who wrote a very famous critique of the French Revolution. So in 1790, the French Revolution is going on, and the French Revolution is not like the American Revolution, and that it goes a little crazy. So Edmund Burke was famous for saying tradition and traditional institutions are important, so we don’t end up like France, which is crazy. So the hereditary titles, property, established Church, these are all good things. And he’s famous for his reflections on the French Revolution. And Wilson craft’s response to him is basically saying these ideals of the French Revolution and this idea of reform is a good thing. It’s actually in the full title addresses him specifically. And she attacks not only his arguments but his prose, which I think is really interesting because Burke has this section where he defends the treatment of the French Queen. And Mary Wollstonecraft does not like that section. And she says it’s very gendered and sexist. Like, why are you just defending the Queen? That sounds like something that you might hear of even today. And this publication is actually extremely well received. It’s published anonymously and it sells out in three weeks. But when it’s published again with her name on it, then it’s being attacked in the press because it has a female author, which I think is fascinating.

Eryn (05:53)
Well, I was going to say so fascinating because she had responded to Burke saying, your description of Marie Antoinette is gendered and sexist. And everyone said, this is amazing. Great writing during the first edition. And then when the second edition comes out with her name, they all start critiquing and contrasting her passion with Burke’s reason. And they are basically critiquing her in the same way that Burke has critiqued Marie Antoinette in the years, which I think is very ironic.

Gary (06:39)
As if the actions or at least the argument itself when taken on its own, get one reaction. But then when the identity of a person is associated with it, a female identity. Right. It alters the perception and the response to it is powerful. And also the whole idea of being a critique of the way things are is a bold thing to say.

Mary (07:02)
Well, I think so. Again, the context here matters. It’s 1790, most women in Britain aren’t writing anything political. And the French Revolution is really shaking people. Like there’s big changes going on. And the United Kingdom is very close to France, so they’re watching it very carefully. So she, I guess, had enough merits in her arguments to receive praise for her arguments. But when it comes out that it is a woman writer, it’s very interesting that it’s when she starts, they start throwing shade as the youth say.

Eryn (07:36)
And this is a time when the domestic sphere was still very prevalent. And so the idea that, quote-unquote the women’s place, she was stepping out of it at home. Absolutely. And that’s why growing up, young girls were educated in things like socializing and sewing because that was within the domestic sphere. And so if it was in the sphere of men, that was appropriate. But once it was associated with women and putting like that is outside the domestic sphere. And I think a lot of that critique probably lie there as well.

Mary (08:14)
I do think so. Again, you normally associate Mary Wilson craft with The Vindication of the Rights of Women. So that’s 1792, but she wrote this first and she had this reception to her work address to Burke come first. And I think that I don’t know, but it would be hard to say that it didn’t factor into her publishing The Vindication of the Rights of Woman. So I think we should maybe explore some of those big ideas when we come back from a break.

Mary (08:45)
Hello, Fabric of History listeners. Join the Bill of Rights Institute and fellow educators this fall as we explore topics such as women’s suffrage, the executive branch, and how to use Socratic discussion with your students. See link in Show notes, and we hope you’ll join us. And now back to the show.

Mary (09:05)
So two years after Mary Wollstonecraft writes A Vindication of the Rights of Men, she writes A Vindication of the Rights of Women, which is her most famous work and where I first encountered her as a teacher back in my teaching days. So in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, she is saying that rights and educational opportunities. Women need better education in order to be empowered sort of at large. It would be better wives, it would be better mothers, and they could even have occupations if their education was better. And again, at the time. So an education for a woman or a girl in Mary Wollstonecraft’s time, it was sort of domestically focused. So sewing and then sort of these pleasant arts of knowing enough French to get a husband or singing, playing music, but sort of the education that a young man would have was definitely not the same at all. So this is her big idea that she puts out there. And she says if you strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, there will be an end to blind obedience, just education as a form of empowerment, not just sort of education for education’s sake. So I think for us in the present day to think about educating girls the same way that we educate boys, I think it’s very like kind of a no brainer. But again, for the time, this was considered sort of a novel idea for her to put this forward. And she actually a Vindication of the Rights of Women is read in the United States. So the young country at that time, and it’s fairly well received. And this concept that emerges after the American Revolution of Republican motherhood again goes to this idea of educating women so they can properly prepare their sons, not their daughters, but their sons, to be responsible citizens. So I think there is an acknowledgment that education is a way of empowering and that she really believed in. And it was easy to say, well, she’s right because she is kind of right. But it was for her time, it was something that again, that’s not what people thought of as women’s education at all.

Gary (11:22)
I mean, contemplating education right in terms of is education something with a purpose or is education something that is an equalizer? I think those are both two arguments or at least two interpretations or two pieces of how people look at education, and yet they’re not always aligned with each other, that they are equalizers or that there’s a purpose to them, to education and what that should look like.

Eryn (11:50)
So even in Vindication of the Rights of women or Women, Mary Wollstonecraft has this very ambiguous comment because, like you said, achieving a point and as an equalizer gets so quickly correlated, especially on the subject so often, but don’t necessarily coexist. And Mary writes in Vindication the Rights of Women, this comment, and it says, Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the order of things. I have already granted that from the Constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue. I speak collectively of the whole sex, but I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtue should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must, therefore, if I reason consequently, as strenuously maintained, that they have the same simple direction as that there is a God.

Mary (12:56)
Yeah. I wonder if to come out and say that whether she believed it or not would have been just a bridge too far for her time period, and that to just say having more opportunities in the sort of education that women receive is really the starting point. I think perhaps I don’t know. But that’s an interesting thought because I know that in the women’s suffrage movement or just women’s rights movement in the United States, it’s sort of what do you ask for and how far do you go and how fast do you demand, it becomes something that splinters people. So that’s an interesting comment that on hearing it, it’s not immediately clear where she stands on that.

Eryn (13:42)
Right. And kind of like we kept saying, and the thing we keep going back to is that these are still women of their times of the 18th century and the decisions they made. What they wrote was still strongly impacted by the world they lived in. And like you said, that could have been approached too far. And that’s why this is written.

Mary (14:07)
Well I think and speaking of being a product of your time, so Mary Wollstonecraft, she dies very young, she dies at age 38. So it was just a few years after publishing the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. And she dies from childbirth fever, because no one really knew how to help a woman have a baby back in the day. And she dies giving birth to a daughter who turns out to be another pretty remarkable woman that many people have encountered today. And that is Mary Shelley. So it’s not too often that you encounter this mother-daughter relationship between two extraordinary women in their own right. And then they usually appear in the curriculum for both literature and history. So Mary Shelley is, of course, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft. And Mary Wollstonecraft dies several days after giving birth to Mary Shelley. So she’s not around for the upbringing of her daughter. But Mary Shelley goes on to be quite a remarkable woman in her own right.

Gary (15:09)
Remarkable mother-daughter combinations, of course, abound. But it’s interesting that they often span different subject areas. So you may learn in history about these combinations, but often, as you said, you might find Mary Wollstonecraft featured heavily in a history curricula. But Mary Shelley will appear heavily in a literature or English language arts class or something like that. And the connection across those two, I think, is really significant. But you’re right. I think it’s often a misconception, maybe. I don’t know. I’m speculating that the influences of Mary Wollstonecraft on Mary Shelley were because she raised her throughout her life and that isn’t the case. Right. So she had passed away when Mary Shelley was born. She was born in 1797. Mary Shelley lives a while. She lives until 1851. So she’s seeing a really powerful time in history throughout the early 19th century. Right. And so taking a look at the choices she made and that she is born into a world where Mary Wollstonecraft is a significant person, particularly being her mother. But also that the idea that they were both pioneers, that Mary Wollstonecraft is a pioneer in the movement in feminism and writing. But Mary Shelley is a pioneer in that we know her from writing for a whole genre that doesn’t exist yet, which is science fiction, that creativity, that ability to think about alternate worlds and nonrealities is super powerful. The story, of course, that usually arrives is about Frankenstein, the writing of Frankenstein, who of course, we’re going to get some letters. It’s the doctor, not the monster.

Eryn (17:06)
I literally didn’t know this for the longest time.

Mary (17:10)
Yeah. He’s just referred to as the monster. Or is it monster with a capital M? I can’t remember. It’s been a while since I read it, but yes. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.

Eryn (17:20)
However, the argument has been because a lot of we’re talking about humanity and humanity was a huge focus in this novel for Mary Shelley and saying that Dr. Frankenstein kind of went against the grain in creating this monster of humanity and this monster and what happened with the repercussions of going against the natural grain of humanity.

Gary (17:47)
Right. Of course. Yeah. And that’s often what’s contemplated in English classes. Right. Is it about science versus nature? Is it about hubris? Is it about? And that’s sort of the beauty of it. The story of it’s coming about is, I think, always noteworthy, as a lot of people know. And it was during the year without a summer that was something interesting to learn is that because of the eruption of the volcano of Mount Tambora, the climate was thrown off and it was just people were stuck inside. Imagine a world where you’re stuck inside for an extended period of time because of extenuating circumstances. What can you do? And so as the story goes, they had been reading ghost stories, which is extremely common, and Lord Byron, of course, which you would also know from our literature class, proposed that they would have a competition. And according to what she said, it was sort of hit her like she said, it was like a waking dream. It just popped into her head. But that had to come from somewhere. And again, we’re not going to speculate now where. But there’s a lot going on in her mind, in her life, in her life experiences, in the time she is in. So she goes ahead and you’re right. The idea of Frankenstein is an amazing concept of piecing together what is humanity and what is it to be alive and everything like that and everything that has come since obviously has altered it. Right. I think in our mind, there’s an allusion to like electricity and machines. But the book is actually slightly different. We’ve come to attach a lot to this concept that she wrote, no pun intended, but it was really powerful. I mean, earlier on you mentioned about the attaching one’s name to it, particularly as a woman in the time. And she does at first she writes it anonymously and a lot of people think her husband wrote it.

Eryn (19:57)
People still argue that today.

Gary (19:59)
Which is fascinating because she included him in the beginning part, mentions him. And some people like, oh, he must have read it.

Eryn (20:05)
Right. He helped edit her work. But the thing that’s really interesting is that if you look at it, might not remember she edited a lot more of his work the other way around. But people have never argued that Mary Shelley wrote a lot of Percy Shelley’s literature.

Mary (20:27)
Which I think is again, that’s interesting.

Gary (20:30)
Yeah. And in defense of the writing process, it’s not like it was a fully formed version of what we know today in that contest. Right. It’s something that she works on for a couple of years and later versions she definitely polishes and adds things into later versions that I think become the versions that we know today. But throughout it are really powerful thoughts that I think are good in both history and literature classes about how writing shapes thought and how beyond the ethical questions, there there’s the idea of feminism and literature and creation. And it’s just so staggering that she did all of that. I had not known, even in teaching that she actually went on to write another novel called The Last Man, who’s about a survivor in a world destroyed by plague. I feel like I might pick that one up.

Mary (21:30)
No, I don’t know that either.

Gary (21:31)
Read it while I’m at home.

Mary (21:33)
So I think she’s grappling with these really big questions, and they’re not questions that are specific to women. And I think you could say the same thing for her mother. Mary Wollstonecraft, just the idea that education is empowering is not something I would argue that’s specific to women. It’s an important idea that just merits discussion on its own. So these two women are extraordinary, and they’re very intellectual and they have very impressive achievements. I’m not writing novels being stuck in quarantine, for instance, and grappling with the what does it mean to be a human idea? I’m just like wearing the same clothes every day, but they’re impressive and they have these really interesting ideas. And even as you think about that, we should look at on their own because of the merits of what they had to say. And even, I think with the women’s suffrage movement. So the 19th Amendment is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It’s sort of the same thing. We shouldn’t look at it because women got the right to vote. We should look at it because it was another step towards the promises of the Declaration of Independence that we are all equal. We’re human. And I think that’s something really powerful that these two particular women sort of embody, but they’re certainly not the only two women. And we’ll certainly be talking about other important women. So if you have any thoughts on Mary Shelley or Mary Wollstonecraft or Frankenstein or what to do in Quarantine or anything from this podcast that you left you with something to say, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you at comments@fabricofhistory.org. Thanks for tuning in.

Gary (23:17)
Thanks. Happy reading, everybody.

Intro/Outro (23:27)
The Bill of Rights Institute engages, educates, and empowers individuals with a passion for the freedom and opportunity that exists in a free society. Check out our educational resources and programs on our website mybri.org. Any questions or suggestions for future episodes? We’d love to hear from you. Just email us at comments@fabricofhistory.com.org and don’t forget to visit us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to stay connected and informed about future episodes. Thank you for listening.