270 Eileen Hunt Botting
interior psychology of patriarchal oppression, and to elicit greater sympa-
thy for the cause of women’s rights (Taylor 2003, 238 –244). The autobio-
graphical basis of Maria and many of Wollstonecraft’s other publications
has been long known and studied, ever since Godwin published the fi rst bi-
ography of his wife’s life and work, alongside her posthumous writings, in
- Their fascinating autobiographical subtext is one reason why these
works exerted great personal and literary appeal for female intellectuals in
the nineteenth century, including Wollstonecraft’s daughters Fanny Imlay
and Mary Shelley (Gordon 2005, 447).
My close reading of the fi rst-person narration of the Rights of Woman
should enable scholars and students to see Wollstonecraft’s most infl uential
work as more closely tied to her autobiographical and literary writings, as
they are all grounded in her personal experience and observation of patri-
archal oppression. The other dominant rhetorical methods of the Rights
of Woman— including irony, wordplay, satire, sarcasm, and understate-
ment — also give the abstract arguments of this political treatise an appeal-
ing literary fl avor. Indeed, it even shows that feminists can be funny.
First Person Plural: First-Wave Feminist Responses
to Wollstonecraft and the Rights of WomanWollstonecraft directed many of her arguments in the Rights of Woman
to enfranchised men, because they had the political power to promote the
egalitarian transformation of family, society, and state. Some scholars have
charged her with misogyny and male identifi cation, for her harsh critiques
of the degraded social condition of women of her time, her general presen-
tation of herself as an exception to this rule, and her push for women to
have the right to strive for the same moral standards as men have been al-
lowed. Poovey went so far as to claim that she “rejected a female speaking
voice” in the Rights of Woman (1984, 79).
But as we have seen, Wollstonecraft often spoke in the fi rst person as
a woman and to women, in solidarity with their experiences and interests.
She also frequently used fi rst-person plural in the Rights of Woman to lo-
cate herself as part of the broader group of women who face patriarchal
injustice: “we might as well never have been born, unless it were neces-
sary that we should be created to enable man to acquire the noble privilege
of reason,” she pointed out with dark humor (89). This fi rst-person plural
formulation anticipates what has been called the “radical feminist” turn
of Wollstonecraft’s fi nal novel, wherein the middle-class Maria learns to