Hutchings-Georgiou, Hannah;
(2025)
The Body in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
My thesis explores the human body in the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, and asks to what extent she creates a radical corporeal ideology. The opening section, ‘Corporeal Parts’, is devoted to a kind of literary excavation and analysis of bodily metaphors and parts (such as the heart, nerves and the mind-body problem), which are embedded in her writing. These chapters demonstrate the influence of medical and philosophical theories (morbid anatomy, cardio pathology, nervous physiology, moral philosophy and Rational dissent) on Wollstonecraft’s thought. Corporeal metaphors act as sites of renegotiation, reconstruction and reformation for ideas on gender, education, familial and social relationships, political structures and identities; they act as nodes that reorient both writer and reader towards an alternative, reformed body. Section two, ‘Corporal Strategies: Corporeal Schemes’, uses the visual and material culture of the period to examine the bodies which are elided, erased or rhetorically exploited in Wollstonecraft’s polemics. In her emerging corporeal ideology, othered bodies – queered, racialized, gendered, classed and disabled – are called upon to further her argument about the inadequate socialisation of white middle-class women. In doing so, Wollstonecraft often demands a more liberating corporeal agenda at the expense of these marginalised and oppressed groups, and their lived bodily experiences. The final section, ‘Corporeal Legacies’, surveys the visual representations of Wollstonecraft throughout history (from John Opie to Maggi Hambling) and asks who these works honour more: Wollstonecraft and her feminist ideas, particularly around the maternal body, or the reputations and interests of male patrons, artists and partners. In these visual depictions of Wollstonecraft’s own body what and whose beliefs are embodied? And how are these pictorial portrayals used to advance the ideas of women artists and feminists today?
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The Body in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of English Lang and Literature |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208209 |
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