Awoman with a tumultuous career, Mary Wollstonecraft was a single parent, writer, teacher, mistress, wife to a philosopher, and mother of a famous novelist. Her life reflected the social and political uncertainties of her day. Born into a middle-class London family, Wollstonecraft endured a harsh upbringing. The decline of her family's fortunes resulted in their eventual descent into the lower classes. The work for which she is most remembered, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was the product of personal experience and the turbulent events and ideas of the late 1700s.
Romanticism. The movement that served as a backdrop for Wollstonecraft's work is referred to as "Romanticism," a European cultural trend that took place roughly from 1770 to 1848. Romanticism was a reaction to the focus on reason and skepticism in the movement known as the Enlightenment. In contrast, Romantics focused on emotions, personal reactions, nature, and the imagination. Excited by the revolutions in America and France as well as wars of independence elsewhere, members of the movement championed new attitudes and standards of behavior in society.
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