Mary Wollstonecraft – författare

Mary Wollstonecraft har gått till historien med sitt välformulerade försvar av kvinnans rättigheter. Här möter vi samma författare, i samma ärende, men i två texter där hon utvecklar sitt manifest i skönlitterär form.

Huvudpersonerna i de bägge kortromanerna delar förnamn med sin författare – kanske inte av en slump. I Mary skildras ”en karaktär som skiljer sig från dem som vanligen porträtteras”, nämligen ”en kvinnosjäl som kan tänka”, såsom Wollstonecraft själv skriver. Kvinnans utsatthet syftar på äktenskapets despotism, kvinnans stora olycka enligt författaren. Detta kom att bli det sista hon skrev och har kallats hennes mest radikala verk.

Blygsamma till formatet men nydanande i sitt sätt att skildra kvinnors intellektuella utveckling – dessa två pärlor är en kritik av den stereotypa litterära hjältinnan och av de fördomar som framfött henne. De föreligger nu i svensk översättning av Erik Carlquist. En inledning har skrivits av Elisabeth Mansén.

I Brev till en svekfull älskare blir Mary Wollstonecraft alltmer desperat i sina försök att få idealbilden av en kärleksfull make och far att stämma överens med den svårhanterliga verkligheten. Hon befinner sig i Paris under franska revolutionens blodigaste skede och förälskar sig i en charmig amerikansk författare och äventyrare som vill bli rik i krigets kaos. Hon föder en dotter till en vardag där giljotinens kniv ständigt faller, samtidigt som det saknas bröd, tvål och ved. Mellan två självmordsförsök och i en sista ansträngning att rädda förhållandet gör hon för sin älskares räkning en resa till Skandinavien för att spåra ett försvunnet skepp lastat med silver. Det går inte som hon hoppas och hon blir alltmer kritisk mot en tillvaro som styrs av kommers och ekonomisk vinning.

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by celebrated British novelist Jeanette Winterson, CBE. This definitive recording includes an introduction to the audio edition written and performed by Jeanette Winterson.Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity, and instead laid out the principles of emancipation: an equal education for girls and boys, an end to prejudice, and for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. Mary Wollstonecraft''s work was received with a mixture of admiration and outrage - one critic called her ''a hyena in petticoats'' - yet it established her as the mother of modern feminism.

Brought to you by Penguin.This Penguin Classic is performed by Rosalind Eleazar, star of The Personal History of David Copperfield. This definitive edition includes an introduction by Janet Todd. These three works of fiction - two by Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and one by her daughter Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein - are powerfully emotive stories that combine passion with forceful feminist argument. In Mary Wollstonecraft''s Mary, the heroine flees her young husband in order to nurse her dearest friend, Ann, and finds genuine love, while Maria tells of a desperate young woman who seeks consolation in the arms of another man after the loss of her child. And Mary Shelley''s Matilda - suppressed for over a century - tells the story of a woman alienated from society by the incestuous passion of her father. Humane, compassionate and highly controversial, these stories demonstrate the strongly original genius of their authors.(P) Penguin Audio 2020

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)

The first great manifesto of women’s rights, published in 1792 and an immediate best seller, made its author the toast of radical circles and the target of reactionary ones. Writing just after the French and American revolutions, Mary Wollstonecraft firmly established the demand for women’s emancipation in the context of the ever-widening urge for human rights and individual freedom that surrounded those two great upheavals. She thereby opened the richest, most productive vein in feminist thought, and her success can be judged by the fact that her once radical polemic, through the efforts of the innumerable writers and activities she influenced, has become the accepted wisdom of the modern era. Challenging the prevailing culture that trained women to be nothing more than docile, decorative wives and mothers, Wollstonecraft was an ardent advocate of equal education and the full development of women’s rational capacities. Having supported herself independently as a governess and teacher before finding success as a writer, and having conducted unconventional relationships with men, Wollstonecraft faced severe criticism both for her life choices and for her ideas. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman she dared to ask a question whose urgency is undiminished in our time: how can women be both female and free?