276 Eileen Hunt Botting
managed to identify herself, her feminist “movement,” and her conservative
culture with the Rights of Woman’s resounding moral defense of female
self-governance. Fawcett ultimately recast Wollstonecraft in her own im-
age: she was “the essentially womanly woman” whose far-seeing theory
anticipated the commendable Victorian concern with making women’s
rights compatible with “the motherly and the wifely instincts” (1890, 23).
Although she underscored the Rights of Woman’s visionary commit-
ment to women’s suffrage, careers in medicine, and economic indepen-
dence, Fawcett displayed her political acumen in accentuating the harmony
of these rights with marriage and family life both within Wollstonecraft’s
book and in their “own time.” Eberle notes that Fawcett was more explicit
in tying the “movement” for women’s rights to Wollstonecraft’s book than
Pennell, but misses that they share a strategic feminist rhetorical approach
in upholding the value of Wollstonecraft’s life and ideas for their conserva-
tive culture (2002, 242).
The centennial of Wollstonecraft’s death inspired several German stud-
ies of her life and work, including Bertha Pappenheim’s article “Das Frau-
enrecht” (1897) and her new German translation of the Rights of Woman
(1899). Pappenheim was the leader of the Jewish women’s rights move-
ment, best known for founding the Jüdischen Frauenbundes Deutschlands
(Jewish Women’s Organization of Germany) in 1904. Pappenheim is also
known as “Anna O,” a famous early case of hysteria treated in part by
Freud and Brauer (the originator of the “talking cure”). This personal
struggle led her to advocate for women’s rights, primarily in the area of
education. It also led her to an interest in Wollstonecraft, whom she saw
as a kind of “mother” fi gure for the German Jewish women’s movement
(Loentz 2007, 233).
Only the second translation of the Rights of Woman into German since
Salzmann’s of 1793 –1794, Pappenheim’s edition included an introduction
that treated Wollstonecraft’s life and ideas. In it she represented Wollstone-
craft as a prophetic voice in the wilderness who awakened women’s group
consciousness of their rights and duties as human beings: “the fi rst woman
who with overwhelming clarity awoke the consciousness in women —
and also had the courage to voice — that women have rights, not assumed
through raw force or custom, but rather human rights whose basis lies in
irrefutable duties” (1899, xiii). Like Fawcett, she read Wollstonecraft as
theorizing both the moral and the political means for the emancipation
of women: “the means [Wollstonecraft] anticipated in achieving emanci-
pation, freeing the soul of women, range from duty to law” (1899, xx).