Tauchert, Ashley; (1997) Mary Wollstonecraft in her time and our time. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis seeks to analyse Mary Wollstonecraft's post-1790 writings in relation to their immediate contexts, and to their reconstruction by feminist literary history. It is partly a critique of the valuable work put in place by feminist predecessors, and partly a contribution to future feminist understanding. I take as a starting point the hermeneutic loop between feminist appropriations of Wollstonecraft as an originating figure in feminist literary history, and subsequent attempts to address her writings overridingly in relation to that discipline. Chapter 1 establishes the ground work for this study by looking at problems in editing Mary Wollstonecraft, and establishing the compass of her works. Chapter 2 reconsiders the Vindication of the Rights of Men, not as a stage towards the Rights of Woman but as a critique of patriarchal assumptions in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Chapter 3 assesses the complex and shifting relationship between Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman and feminist literary history, and restores her controversial claim that women are desiring and reasonable creatures to the context of the works it answers. Chapter 4 looks at Wollstonecraft's most neglected mature work: the Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution, and speculates on its relative obscurity in Wollstonecraft studies. In this chapter I offer a psychoanalytically informed discussion, which takes into account Wollstonecraft's first experience of pregnancy at the time of writing. Chapter 5 addresses Wollstonecraft's last two major works: the Short Residence in Sweden and Wrongs of Woman, both of which, I argue, have received critical attention which emphasises the author's failed relationship with Gilbert Imlay, at the expense of the maternal relationship that I suggest is at the heart of these writings.

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