Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: A Vindication of Mary Wollstonecraft
- Chapter 1 Scripturally Annotated: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
- List of Contentmatter
- Dedication
- Advertisement
- Introduction
- Chapter I The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered
- Chapter II The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed
- Chapter III The Same Subject Continued
- Chapter IV Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman Is Reduced by Various Causes
- Chapter V Animadversions on Some of the Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity, Bordering on Contempt
- Chapter VI The Effect Which an Early Association of Ideas Has Upon the Character
- Chapter VII Modesty—Comprehensively Considered, and Not as a Sexual Virtue
- Chapter VIII Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of a Good Reputation
- Chapter IX Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society
- Chapter X Parental Affection
- Chapter XI Duty to Parents
- Chapter XII On National Education
- Chapter XIII Some Instances of the Folly Which the Ignorance of Women Generates; With Concluding Reflections on the Moral Improvement that a Revolution in Female Manners Might Naturally Be Expected to Produce
- Chapter 2 Ripe for Revolution and Revelation
- Chapter 3 A Biblical Accounting for the Equality of Women
- Chapter 4 Femme Godwin and Her Religion
- Chapter 5 The Crafters of Wollstonecraft’s Religion
- Chapter 6 Fellow Heirs, Travelers, and Sojourners
- Chapter 7 Postmortem Rendering of Wollstonecraft’s Beliefs
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 7 - Postmortem Rendering of Wollstonecraft’s Beliefs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 March 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: A Vindication of Mary Wollstonecraft
- Chapter 1 Scripturally Annotated: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
- List of Contentmatter
- Dedication
- Advertisement
- Introduction
- Chapter I The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered
- Chapter II The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed
- Chapter III The Same Subject Continued
- Chapter IV Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman Is Reduced by Various Causes
- Chapter V Animadversions on Some of the Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity, Bordering on Contempt
- Chapter VI The Effect Which an Early Association of Ideas Has Upon the Character
- Chapter VII Modesty—Comprehensively Considered, and Not as a Sexual Virtue
- Chapter VIII Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of a Good Reputation
- Chapter IX Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society
- Chapter X Parental Affection
- Chapter XI Duty to Parents
- Chapter XII On National Education
- Chapter XIII Some Instances of the Folly Which the Ignorance of Women Generates; With Concluding Reflections on the Moral Improvement that a Revolution in Female Manners Might Naturally Be Expected to Produce
- Chapter 2 Ripe for Revolution and Revelation
- Chapter 3 A Biblical Accounting for the Equality of Women
- Chapter 4 Femme Godwin and Her Religion
- Chapter 5 The Crafters of Wollstonecraft’s Religion
- Chapter 6 Fellow Heirs, Travelers, and Sojourners
- Chapter 7 Postmortem Rendering of Wollstonecraft’s Beliefs
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In her book Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (2010), Sarah Apetrei made an accurate and fearless criticism: “There is something slightly grating, something nigglingly unsatisfactory about the expressions used by many historians to describe the cultural interplay between women and religion” (2010, 27), and by “historians,” one may include literary critics. “But many recent scholars while recognizing the partisan agenda, are unconcerned with Wollstonecraft’s personal belief,” Lisa Plummer Crafton noted in her scholarship on the debate about the French Revolution in English literature, “American scholars, especially, and those who to Wollstonecraft via liberal feminism, place Wollstonecraft in a secular framework dominated by the language of rights” (1997, 30). As an example, she critiqued Gary Kelly’s own treatment of Wollstonecraft as a Revolutionary feminist writer (1992) in which she accuses him, with foundation, for being like “many writers on early feminists” in “explain[ing] away” religious references an assuming that “the argument is stronger without them” (30). She also noticed that especially “twentieth-century liberal feminism” has chosen to ignore Wollstonecraft’s religious beliefs. Those who have written on her treat religion as “predictable or irrational” and that it “does not ‘count’ as political” (30).
And to cite just one more of several who have observed the anti-Christian climate of the Postmodern Age:
Feminists today have decidedly mixed views about the value of religious belief. Materialists of course discount all religion as oppressive; secular humanists see it as either silly or pernicious. Even feminist theologians debate whether or not Christianity can possibly “empower” women. Some would say, since Christianity is rooted in a patriarch past, it can never she patriarchal values; others would argue that Christ’s teachings are themselves antiauthoritarian and in sense, feminist.
(Michaelson 1993, 291)It is not that the biographers and academics have failed to address Wollstonecraft’s beliefs, doubts, doctrines, and religious practices; indeed, all of them have had much to say on this topic; however, most of them summarily replicate Godwin’s comments on Wollstonecraft and her religion, without considering what Wollstonecraft conveyed about her beliefs throughout her works and letters. Many of them have been too quick to suppose that once Wollstonecraft had become truly “enlightened,” she had very little need for Christianity as if those that subscribed and subscribe to religious faith, respectively, were and are only ignorant, superstitious, and narrow-minded.
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- Wollstonecraft and Religion , pp. 325 - 346Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2024