Lynne Reynolds 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Woman of the Day philosopher, historian and author Mary Wollstonecraft born OTD 1759 in Spitalfields, London, widely regarded as one of the UK’s first feminists. Her reputation was unjustly shredded for a century after her early death but her influence was far-reaching and can still be seen today. Born into an affluent family, Mary was treated very differently to her brother. An extensive and expensive education for him, a couple of years at day school for her - it rankled. She was made to hand over to her profligate, abusive and drunken father the money held in trust for her till she reached adulthood, and she suffered from his violent rages. As a teenager, she tried to protect her mother by lying outside her mother’s bedroom door. Those early years left a mark on her. Friendships with independently minded women also made their mark and by the age of 25, Mary had opened a small girls’ school in North London with her two sisters and her friend Fanny Blood. Money was short and when Fanny died in childbirth, Mary reluctantly worked as a governess for an aristocratic couple in Cork. It was a fractious working relationship. She found the lady of the house ‘frivolous’ with ‘neither sense nor feeling’ and was sacked. Back to London she went, penniless and depressed, but it was a turning point. In 1787, Mary found a radical publisher willing to publish her first book - Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, based on her experiences - and she built up a literary career, meeting and sharing ideas with other radical thinkers including William Godwin. He didn’t impress her when they first met in 1791. Not at all. They argued all evening and he left, irritated. Five years later, Mary defied social convention and got in touch again with William. By this time, she had lived in Paris during the Reign of Terror, had two affairs, given birth to a daughter out of wedlock, attempted suicide - she threw herself off Putney Bridge and was saved only by the intervention of passing watermen - and published her groundbreaking work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Vindication was prompted by Talleyrand’s 1791 report to the French National Assembly stating that women should only receive domestic education. It went against everything Mary believed in and she argued that women were not inferior to men but if they appeared to be, it was because they were denied education. She posited that men and women alike should be treated as rational beings and treated equally. It made her name. In 1797, Mary and Godwin married but their domestic set-up was regarded as controversial. She was pregnant when they wed, he spent his days twenty doors away so they could maintain some independence, and they communicated via letters. On 30 August 1797, after 18 hours of labour, Mary gave birth to her second daughter, Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein). The attending surgeon - she’d actually wanted a midwife - was out of his depth and she suffered acute haemorrhaging followed by infection. Eleven days later, she died, aged just 38. In 1798, William published a well-intentioned but poorly judged account of Mary’s life. The affairs, the child born out of wedlock, the unorthodox religious opinions - they were the sticks and stones with which Mary’s reputation was comprehensively trashed and the mud stuck for a century. I’ve spoken before of the quite lovely invisible thread of sisterhood connecting women in history to each other. Olympe de Gouges’ 1791 Declaration of The Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen influenced Mary’s Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. In turn, Mary influenced Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Elizabeth, a vocal supporter of Mary, reflected those views in her verse-novel, Aurora Leigh, which in turn influenced Susan B. Anthony’s thinking about the traditional roles of women, especially in relation to marriage versus independence. Susan’s fight led in time to the Nineteenth Amendment which finally granted American women the vote. Such dangerous women, daring to think for themselves and, worse, influencing each other. Brava, Mary.

You can only pick one... THE JAM - IN THE CITY or THE CLASH - WHITE RIOT What's it going to be?