Such changes will make them finer companions for men, better tutors to their children, and generally more useful in society. Influenced by personal as well as political events, Wollstonecraft reached these conclusions based on her own experience and on turbulent developments in France and England during the early 1790s.
Wollstonecraft’s life. Mary Wollstonecraft was the second of seven children. Her father, unsuccessful at farming, consoled himself by drinking to excess and tyrannizing his timid wife. Mary’s mother provided her with no more support than her father. Pampering her eldest son, Elizabeth Wollstonecraft was unusually severe with and neglectful of her other children. Consequently, Mary sought affection elsewhere, forming close ties with her sister, Eliza, and with her friend, Fanny Blood, both of whom she attempted to support financially and emotionally.
Intending to support her sister and herself, Wollstonecraft started a school with Fanny in 1784. The school was combined with a boarding house for women and their children, but in order for it to succeed, Wollstonecraft had to abide by traditional notions of “respectability,” which called for girls to be educated for the marriage market.
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