WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.519 So picture this. It's 1798 and a grieving husband 00:00:04.519 --> 00:00:08.359 sits down to write this really loving but brutally 00:00:08.359 --> 00:00:11.320 honest tribute to his wife who had just passed 00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:14.160 away. Right. And he genuinely thinks he's immortalizing 00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:16.920 her, you know, like cementing her as one of the 00:00:16.920 --> 00:00:19.399 greatest philosophers of the 18th century. Exactly. 00:00:19.679 --> 00:00:22.420 He wanted the world to see her complete authentic 00:00:22.420 --> 00:00:26.039 self. But instead, he accidentally destroys her 00:00:26.039 --> 00:00:30.160 legacy. He turns her name into this toxic, scandalous 00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:32.939 punchline for, like, the next hundred years. 00:00:33.219 --> 00:00:35.799 Yeah, it's honestly the ultimate historical cautionary 00:00:35.799 --> 00:00:38.219 tale of oversharing. I mean, he practically handed 00:00:38.219 --> 00:00:41.079 society the exact ammunition they needed to cancel 00:00:41.079 --> 00:00:42.960 a woman who was already threatening the entire 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:45.899 social order. Welcome to today's deep dive. If 00:00:45.899 --> 00:00:47.840 you're joining us, we are taking a really close 00:00:47.840 --> 00:00:50.320 look at the life and work of Mary Wollstonecraft. 00:00:50.640 --> 00:00:52.640 And if you know the name, you probably know the 00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:54.619 big heavy titles attached to it. Right. Like 00:00:54.619 --> 00:00:57.320 the mother of feminism or the author of A Vindication 00:00:57.320 --> 00:01:00.960 of the Rights of Woman. Or honestly, just Mary 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:03.119 Shelley's mother. So, OK, let's unpack this, 00:01:03.299 --> 00:01:04.859 because if you really want to understand her, 00:01:05.099 --> 00:01:08.200 you have to look past that sanitized marble bust 00:01:08.200 --> 00:01:10.670 of the great thinker. You really do, because 00:01:10.670 --> 00:01:13.209 she wasn't just sitting in a quiet room theorizing. 00:01:13.650 --> 00:01:16.670 No, not at all. We're looking at a woman who 00:01:16.670 --> 00:01:20.439 lived her philosophy out loud. I mean, navigating 00:01:20.439 --> 00:01:23.079 political revolutions, surviving devastating 00:01:23.079 --> 00:01:25.760 heartbreak, fighting for intellectual survival. 00:01:25.859 --> 00:01:28.340 And doing all of that in a world that literally 00:01:28.340 --> 00:01:31.180 demanded her silence. The 18th century world 00:01:31.180 --> 00:01:34.359 she was fighting against was, it was entirely 00:01:34.359 --> 00:01:37.040 defined by rigid inequality. Yeah, we have to 00:01:37.040 --> 00:01:39.359 establish that context for you listening, because 00:01:39.359 --> 00:01:41.959 as a woman back then, your identity was essentially 00:01:41.959 --> 00:01:44.400 a legal fiction. Exactly. You were the property 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:46.859 of your father, and then upon marriage, your 00:01:46.859 --> 00:01:49.250 legal existence was effectively suspended and 00:01:49.250 --> 00:01:51.569 just absorbed into your husband's. So to demand 00:01:51.569 --> 00:01:54.650 to be treated as a rational independent mind 00:01:54.650 --> 00:01:57.030 in that environment. I mean it wasn't just progressive 00:01:57.030 --> 00:01:59.430 it was a profound rebellion. It was incredibly 00:01:59.430 --> 00:02:02.870 radical. And to understand why she viewed that 00:02:02.870 --> 00:02:05.870 traditional social structure not as this like 00:02:05.870 --> 00:02:09.629 romantic ideal but as a literal trap we have 00:02:09.629 --> 00:02:11.710 to look at her childhood it was basically domestic 00:02:11.710 --> 00:02:14.189 warfare. Yeah she was born in Spittlefields London 00:02:14.189 --> 00:02:18.349 in 1759 second of seven children. And her father 00:02:18.349 --> 00:02:19.789 started out with a pretty comfortable income, 00:02:20.009 --> 00:02:22.229 right? He did, but he completely squandered it 00:02:22.229 --> 00:02:24.610 on these disastrous speculative farming projects. 00:02:25.129 --> 00:02:28.770 And as his financial power collapsed, he compensated 00:02:28.770 --> 00:02:30.810 by asserting his physical power. Right, he was 00:02:30.810 --> 00:02:34.110 a violent alcoholic who regularly beat Mary's 00:02:34.110 --> 00:02:36.550 mother. Which is just horrific. It is. And that 00:02:36.550 --> 00:02:38.889 dynamic is so crucial to understanding Mary. 00:02:39.270 --> 00:02:41.710 She spent her teenage years literally sleeping 00:02:41.710 --> 00:02:43.949 on the landing outside her mother's bedroom door 00:02:43.949 --> 00:02:46.090 to protect her from his drunken rages. Oh, wow. 00:02:46.349 --> 00:02:49.349 So she absorbed, at a completely visceral level, 00:02:49.770 --> 00:02:51.770 that economic dependence in a marriage could 00:02:51.770 --> 00:02:54.430 directly equate to physical danger. Precisely. 00:02:54.729 --> 00:02:57.009 And because of that, she became this fiercely 00:02:57.009 --> 00:02:59.590 protective matriarch to her siblings, especially 00:02:59.590 --> 00:03:02.610 her sisters, Everina and Eliza. Which perfectly 00:03:02.610 --> 00:03:05.150 sets the stage for this deeply controversial 00:03:05.150 --> 00:03:08.770 pivotal choice she makes in 1784. So her sister 00:03:08.770 --> 00:03:11.310 Eliza had recently married and given birth. But 00:03:11.310 --> 00:03:13.629 she was suffering from a total psychological 00:03:13.629 --> 00:03:15.949 collapse, what we would totally recognize today 00:03:15.949 --> 00:03:18.750 as severe postpartum depression. Right. And Mary 00:03:18.750 --> 00:03:21.250 observes this situation and decides the marriage 00:03:21.250 --> 00:03:24.909 itself is what's destroying her sister. So. Her 00:03:24.909 --> 00:03:27.689 solution is extreme. She orchestrates an escape. 00:03:27.909 --> 00:03:30.310 Yeah, she literally persuades Eliza to flee the 00:03:30.310 --> 00:03:32.409 house and completely abandon her husband and 00:03:32.409 --> 00:03:35.669 her infant child. And Mary hides her away until 00:03:35.669 --> 00:03:38.530 a legal separation is forced. But the fallout 00:03:38.530 --> 00:03:40.789 from that was swift and brutal, isn't it? Oh, 00:03:40.789 --> 00:03:42.930 absolutely. By leaving her husband and child, 00:03:43.090 --> 00:03:45.830 Eliza suffered total social excommunication. 00:03:46.169 --> 00:03:48.870 She couldn't legally remarry, so she was condemned 00:03:48.870 --> 00:03:51.590 to a life of poverty, just scraping by through 00:03:51.590 --> 00:03:53.710 grueling work. The human cost was devastating. 00:03:53.960 --> 00:03:56.080 But I had to play Dell's advocate here, though. 00:03:56.219 --> 00:03:58.460 Wait, so Mary's idea of a rescue mission was 00:03:58.460 --> 00:04:00.340 to convince a woman suffering from postpartum 00:04:00.340 --> 00:04:03.080 depression to abandon her baby and become a total 00:04:03.080 --> 00:04:05.560 social outcast. Yeah, when you put it like that. 00:04:05.710 --> 00:04:08.469 I mean, that sounds incredibly destructive. How 00:04:08.469 --> 00:04:11.330 is this a triumphant origin story for a philosopher? 00:04:11.449 --> 00:04:13.810 Well, it is destructive and it's certainly not 00:04:13.810 --> 00:04:16.870 a neat triumphant narrative. But what's fascinating 00:04:16.870 --> 00:04:20.389 here is that it illustrates her absolute uncompromising 00:04:20.389 --> 00:04:23.250 willingness to challenge ironclad social norms. 00:04:23.370 --> 00:04:26.089 Right. This wasn't an academic exercise for her. 00:04:26.110 --> 00:04:28.689 She watched her mother destroyed by submission 00:04:28.689 --> 00:04:30.970 and she believed she was watching her sister 00:04:30.970 --> 00:04:34.209 lose her sanity in the exact same institution. 00:04:34.370 --> 00:04:36.689 So she viewed the traditional structure of female 00:04:36.689 --> 00:04:40.269 dependence as basically a burning building. Exactly. 00:04:40.389 --> 00:04:42.509 You don't politely unlock the door of a burning 00:04:42.509 --> 00:04:44.829 building. You shatter the window and drag the 00:04:44.829 --> 00:04:46.610 person out, even if they get cut on the glass. 00:04:47.069 --> 00:04:49.689 She prioritized psychological survival over social 00:04:49.689 --> 00:04:53.129 respectability. OK, that makes sense. But without 00:04:53.129 --> 00:04:56.009 the safety net of a family or a marriage, Mary 00:04:56.009 --> 00:04:59.040 still had to survive economically. And the options 00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:02.379 for a poor but respectable woman back then were 00:05:02.379 --> 00:05:04.720 pretty bleak. Very bleak. I mean, she tried being 00:05:04.720 --> 00:05:07.620 a ladies' companion, which she found deeply humiliating. 00:05:07.779 --> 00:05:09.939 She tried setting up a school in Newington Green, 00:05:09.980 --> 00:05:12.459 but that collapsed financially. Yeah. And then 00:05:12.459 --> 00:05:14.379 she worked as a governess in Ireland for the 00:05:14.379 --> 00:05:16.819 untral wealthy Kingsborough family. And while 00:05:16.819 --> 00:05:19.480 she actually loved the children, she absolutely 00:05:19.480 --> 00:05:22.540 despised the subservience she had to show to 00:05:22.540 --> 00:05:24.860 their aristocratic mother. Right, because those 00:05:24.860 --> 00:05:28.139 roles... governess, companions. They were essentially 00:05:28.139 --> 00:05:30.579 just different flavors of servitude. They required 00:05:30.579 --> 00:05:33.300 women to shrink themselves. And she was so frustrated 00:05:33.300 --> 00:05:36.620 by that reality, so she decides to invent a completely 00:05:36.620 --> 00:05:39.399 new path. She actually writes to her sister, 00:05:39.639 --> 00:05:42.279 declaring she's going to become, quote, the first 00:05:42.279 --> 00:05:44.720 of a new genus. I love that. The first of a new 00:05:44.720 --> 00:05:47.220 genus. Basically, she decides to become a professional 00:05:47.220 --> 00:05:50.019 female author. So she moves to London, sets up 00:05:50.019 --> 00:05:52.740 shop on Dolben Street, and teams up with a liberal 00:05:52.740 --> 00:05:55.949 publisher named Joseph Johnson. She's incredibly 00:05:55.949 --> 00:05:58.750 driven. She learns French and German. She translates 00:05:58.750 --> 00:06:01.209 texts, writes reviews, and she just immerses 00:06:01.209 --> 00:06:04.009 herself in this circle of radical thinkers. Right. 00:06:04.269 --> 00:06:06.230 Dining with people like Thomas Paine and the 00:06:06.230 --> 00:06:08.870 philosopher William Godwin. And it's in this 00:06:08.870 --> 00:06:11.050 intellectual crucible that she really hones her 00:06:11.050 --> 00:06:13.410 voice. She realizes she doesn't just want to 00:06:13.410 --> 00:06:15.930 write fiction or polite essays. She wants to 00:06:15.930 --> 00:06:18.370 dismantle the political philosophy of her time. 00:06:18.670 --> 00:06:21.089 Which brings us to the works that cemented her 00:06:21.089 --> 00:06:24.980 legacy. First, in 1790, A Vindication of the 00:06:24.980 --> 00:06:28.319 Rights of Men, and then her 1792 masterpiece, 00:06:29.160 --> 00:06:31.420 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Yes, the 00:06:31.420 --> 00:06:34.060 heavy hitters. Now, to understand the explosive 00:06:34.060 --> 00:06:36.439 nature of these texts, we have to look at the 00:06:36.439 --> 00:06:39.139 political battlefield. Her first vindication 00:06:39.139 --> 00:06:42.300 was a direct, aggressive attack on conservative 00:06:42.300 --> 00:06:44.939 Whig MP Edmund Burke. Right, because Burke had 00:06:44.939 --> 00:06:47.600 just published this famous defense of the monarchy, 00:06:47.939 --> 00:06:50.620 the aristocracy, and the traditional social order. 00:06:50.879 --> 00:07:06.100 all in response to the French Revolution. Of 00:07:06.100 --> 00:07:09.660 course. And in that historical context, Burke's 00:07:09.660 --> 00:07:12.420 argument relied heavily on emotion and tradition. 00:07:12.959 --> 00:07:15.860 He used highly gendered language, essentially 00:07:15.860 --> 00:07:18.160 arguing that the state was like a vulnerable, 00:07:18.899 --> 00:07:21.120 beautiful woman. Specifically Marie Antoinette, 00:07:21.300 --> 00:07:23.720 right? Exactly. And that this vulnerable woman 00:07:23.720 --> 00:07:26.180 needed the chivalrous protection of the aristocracy. 00:07:26.620 --> 00:07:29.720 He associated beauty with feminine weakness and 00:07:29.720 --> 00:07:31.980 used that emotional imagery to drum up loyalty 00:07:31.980 --> 00:07:34.600 for the crown. And Wollstonecraft saw right through 00:07:34.600 --> 00:07:37.680 that. She recognized exactly what he was doing, 00:07:38.139 --> 00:07:40.540 and she argued that politics must be rooted in 00:07:40.540 --> 00:07:44.060 cold, hard reason, not emotional manipulation 00:07:44.060 --> 00:07:46.439 and hereditary privilege. Right. She was laying 00:07:46.439 --> 00:07:48.660 the groundwork for her next book, taking that 00:07:48.660 --> 00:07:51.160 demand for rational equality and turning it toward 00:07:51.160 --> 00:07:53.980 the condition of women. Which leads to a vindication 00:07:53.980 --> 00:07:55.980 of the rights of women, where she makes this 00:07:55.980 --> 00:07:59.040 foundational claim. Women are not naturally inferior 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:01.600 to men. They only appear that way because society... 00:08:01.629 --> 00:08:04.589 deliberately denies them an education. Yes, it's 00:08:04.589 --> 00:08:07.149 an argument about systemic deprivation. The source 00:08:07.149 --> 00:08:10.149 quotes this amazing part where she famously compared 00:08:10.149 --> 00:08:14.230 uneducated pampered women to spaniels and toys 00:08:14.230 --> 00:08:17.949 roaming around a guilt cage seeking only to adorn 00:08:17.949 --> 00:08:20.449 their prison. It is a harsh metaphor, but she 00:08:20.449 --> 00:08:22.829 was calling out an educational system that taught 00:08:22.829 --> 00:08:25.529 women. You know, needlework, basic piano, and 00:08:25.529 --> 00:08:28.230 superficial charm solely to catch a husband. 00:08:28.410 --> 00:08:30.230 It's like trying to run a marathon while wearing 00:08:30.230 --> 00:08:33.190 a tightly -laced corset. Exactly. If the runner 00:08:33.190 --> 00:08:36.129 collapses, society says, look, she is naturally 00:08:36.129 --> 00:08:39.549 weak, she lacks the stamina. Wollstonecraft was 00:08:39.549 --> 00:08:42.049 pointing at the corset. She was saying, you have 00:08:42.049 --> 00:08:44.169 physically and intellectually bound women from 00:08:44.169 --> 00:08:46.570 childhood, and then you have the audacity to 00:08:46.570 --> 00:08:48.789 claim their weakness is the design of nature. 00:08:49.289 --> 00:08:52.009 It's such a powerful way to frame it. But here's 00:08:52.009 --> 00:08:54.210 where it gets really interesting. The source 00:08:54.210 --> 00:08:56.769 points out she explicitly admitted in the text 00:08:56.769 --> 00:08:59.730 that men might have superior physical strength 00:08:59.730 --> 00:09:02.230 and valor based on the constitution of their 00:09:02.230 --> 00:09:04.250 bodies. She did write that, yes. And she didn't 00:09:04.250 --> 00:09:07.590 even use the word feminist. So to modern ears, 00:09:07.730 --> 00:09:10.149 isn't that a massive contradiction for the supposed 00:09:10.149 --> 00:09:12.889 founder of feminist philosophy? Well, we really 00:09:12.889 --> 00:09:15.110 have to calibrate our vocabulary to her era. 00:09:15.340 --> 00:09:17.519 The word feminist didn't even exist until the 00:09:17.519 --> 00:09:20.200 1890s, a full century later. Oh, wow. Good point. 00:09:20.379 --> 00:09:23.019 Yeah. And Wollstonecraft was not arguing for 00:09:23.019 --> 00:09:25.960 identical biological sameness. Her argument was 00:09:25.960 --> 00:09:28.639 theological and philosophical, that men and women 00:09:28.639 --> 00:09:31.320 are equal in the eyes of God. Right. She posed 00:09:31.320 --> 00:09:35.159 a brilliant question. If virtue has only one 00:09:35.159 --> 00:09:38.059 eternal standard, how can virtues differ between 00:09:38.059 --> 00:09:41.100 the sexes? You can't have one moral standard 00:09:41.100 --> 00:09:44.000 of truth and reason for men and a separate standard 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:46.639 of submissive emotional manipulation for women. 00:09:47.080 --> 00:09:49.399 Okay, that makes total sense. So having mapped 00:09:49.399 --> 00:09:52.019 out the architecture of radical equality on paper, 00:09:52.480 --> 00:09:54.139 she doesn't just stay at her desk in London, 00:09:54.759 --> 00:09:56.600 she decides she needs to witness the birth of 00:09:56.600 --> 00:09:58.950 a society based on reason. She does. She packs 00:09:58.950 --> 00:10:01.809 her bags. Yeah. In December 1792, she heads straight 00:10:01.809 --> 00:10:04.190 into the epicenter of global upheaval, Paris, 00:10:04.490 --> 00:10:07.350 France. And she arrives right on the precipice 00:10:07.350 --> 00:10:09.789 of the reign of terror. The timing is almost 00:10:09.789 --> 00:10:12.169 unbelievably dangerous. I mean, she gets there 00:10:12.169 --> 00:10:14.909 about a month before King Louis XVI is guillotined. 00:10:15.210 --> 00:10:17.710 She actually watches him being escorted to his 00:10:17.710 --> 00:10:20.269 trial from her window and weeps at the sight. 00:10:20.389 --> 00:10:22.789 It's just incredible to imagine her there. And 00:10:22.789 --> 00:10:26.899 soon, France goes to war with Britain. Suddenly, 00:10:27.279 --> 00:10:29.919 Mary is an enemy alien in a country descending 00:10:29.919 --> 00:10:33.720 into absolute paranoia. The Jacobins seize control, 00:10:34.159 --> 00:10:36.279 and the daily reality becomes this nightmare 00:10:36.279 --> 00:10:38.399 of surveillance. Right. Friends disappearing 00:10:38.399 --> 00:10:41.120 to the guillotine forced public displays of loyalty 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:43.620 to the Republic. It was terrifying. And amidst 00:10:43.620 --> 00:10:46.100 this atmosphere of constant terrifying violence, 00:10:46.720 --> 00:10:49.600 she seeks a lifeline. She meets Gilbert Imlay. 00:10:49.860 --> 00:10:52.679 Ah, yes, Gilbert Imlay. He's an American adventurer. 00:10:52.779 --> 00:10:55.639 Yeah. And Mary, who just for a whole book explicitly 00:10:55.639 --> 00:10:57.940 warning women not to be ruled by their passions, 00:10:58.580 --> 00:11:00.759 falls completely recklessly in love with him. 00:11:01.019 --> 00:11:02.960 They sleep together out of wedlock. And to protect 00:11:02.960 --> 00:11:05.539 her from being imprisoned by the Jacobins, Imley 00:11:05.539 --> 00:11:08.019 registers her as his wife at the U .S. Embassy, 00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:10.659 which grants her American citizenship. Right. 00:11:10.899 --> 00:11:13.620 But while Mary is pregnant, and navigating a 00:11:13.620 --> 00:11:16.879 literal revolution. Imlay is busy chartering 00:11:16.879 --> 00:11:19.559 ships to run the British blockade. He's smuggling 00:11:19.559 --> 00:11:22.559 food and soap into France and selling it at an 00:11:22.559 --> 00:11:25.539 exorbitant premium. He was straight up a wartime 00:11:25.539 --> 00:11:27.860 profiteer. He's the 18th century equivalent of 00:11:27.860 --> 00:11:31.120 a sleazy finance bro. He is capitalizing on the 00:11:31.120 --> 00:11:34.779 blockade while she is having his baby Fanny in 00:11:34.779 --> 00:11:38.620 a foreign war torn country. And eventually. The 00:11:38.620 --> 00:11:41.059 profiteer loses interest. He leaves her in Paris, 00:11:41.179 --> 00:11:43.360 goes back to London, and starts a relationship 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:45.840 with another woman. Which is just devastating. 00:11:46.360 --> 00:11:48.539 When Mary finally returns to London and realizes 00:11:48.539 --> 00:11:51.659 the extent of his betrayal, she completely shatters. 00:11:51.919 --> 00:11:54.840 She attempts suicide twice. The second time is 00:11:54.840 --> 00:11:57.139 chillingly methodical. Yeah, the source details 00:11:57.139 --> 00:11:58.879 this. She walks up and down in the rain for half 00:11:58.879 --> 00:12:00.500 an hour to ensure her clothes are heavy with 00:12:00.500 --> 00:12:02.620 water, then jumps off a bridge into the freezing 00:12:02.620 --> 00:12:05.259 river Thames. She is only saved because a passing 00:12:05.259 --> 00:12:07.580 boatman spots her and pulls her out unconscious. 00:12:08.279 --> 00:12:10.120 She later wrote that she viewed that suicide 00:12:10.120 --> 00:12:13.159 attempt as a deeply rational act, a fixed determination. 00:12:13.720 --> 00:12:16.419 The pain was just absolute. But I struggle with 00:12:16.419 --> 00:12:20.059 this, though. She wrote an entire treatise telling 00:12:20.059 --> 00:12:23.039 women not to be the prey of their senses, right? 00:12:23.659 --> 00:12:26.840 Warning that being blown about by every gust 00:12:26.840 --> 00:12:29.980 of feeling destroys a woman's capacity for reason. 00:12:30.460 --> 00:12:32.620 Right, that was a core part of her philosophy. 00:12:32.840 --> 00:12:35.559 Then she completely loses herself over a guy 00:12:35.559 --> 00:12:38.200 who is blatantly ignoring her and she jumps in 00:12:38.200 --> 00:12:41.659 a river. Doesn't her agonizing breakdown invalidate 00:12:41.659 --> 00:12:44.480 the very philosophy she championed? It's the 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:46.740 exact paradox that her critics have always seized 00:12:46.740 --> 00:12:50.149 upon. But if we connect this to the bigger picture, 00:12:50.649 --> 00:12:53.149 the reality of her breakdown actually deepened 00:12:53.149 --> 00:12:56.110 her philosophical work. How so? Well, while in 00:12:56.110 --> 00:12:58.590 France, she was writing an historical and moral 00:12:58.590 --> 00:13:01.070 view of the French Revolution. In that work, 00:13:01.149 --> 00:13:03.570 she analyzed how the oppressive French monarchy, 00:13:03.809 --> 00:13:06.190 the ancient regime, conditioned women to use 00:13:06.190 --> 00:13:08.990 manipulation and charm. Right, even Queen Marie 00:13:08.990 --> 00:13:11.700 Antoinette. Because society valued their bodies 00:13:11.700 --> 00:13:14.620 over their intellects. Exactly. Through her heartbreak 00:13:14.620 --> 00:13:16.980 with Imlay, Mary was realizing firsthand that 00:13:16.980 --> 00:13:19.460 this conditioning, this sensibility, wasn't just 00:13:19.460 --> 00:13:21.820 a bad habit you could turn off. It was physically 00:13:21.820 --> 00:13:24.580 deeply ingrained. Oh, I see. You cannot just 00:13:24.580 --> 00:13:28.240 flip a switch to pure cold reason when society 00:13:28.240 --> 00:13:30.620 has spent decades programming your nervous system 00:13:30.620 --> 00:13:34.100 for emotional dependence. Wow. So hitting absolute 00:13:34.100 --> 00:13:36.659 rock bottom in the waters of the Thames forced 00:13:36.659 --> 00:13:39.679 her to confront the agonizing gap between her 00:13:39.679 --> 00:13:42.440 rational theories and her messy human reality. 00:13:42.679 --> 00:13:44.919 Yes. And she had to find a way to drag herself 00:13:44.919 --> 00:13:47.679 back to life, which led to one of the most bizarre 00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:50.590 business trips in history. Seriously. To try 00:13:50.590 --> 00:13:53.129 and win M. Lay back, she agrees to act as his 00:13:53.129 --> 00:13:56.120 legal proxy. she undertakes this incredibly grueling 00:13:56.120 --> 00:13:58.659 journey to Scandinavia. She takes her baby daughter 00:13:58.659 --> 00:14:01.460 Fanny and a maid and travels to Scandinavia to 00:14:01.460 --> 00:14:03.860 track down a Norwegian sea captain who had stolen 00:14:03.860 --> 00:14:06.220 a shipment of Himalayan silver. Just picture 00:14:06.220 --> 00:14:08.840 the sheer grit of this. An unescorted single 00:14:08.840 --> 00:14:12.200 mother in 1795 traversing the rugged, isolated 00:14:12.200 --> 00:14:14.759 landscapes of Sweden, Norway and Denmark conducting 00:14:14.759 --> 00:14:16.980 forensic accounting with hostile merchants. It's 00:14:16.980 --> 00:14:19.399 wild, but what is truly brilliant is how she 00:14:19.399 --> 00:14:22.240 processed that experience. She turned that desperate 00:14:22.240 --> 00:14:24.759 errand into a wildly popular travel narrative, 00:14:25.200 --> 00:14:27.139 letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. 00:14:27.500 --> 00:14:30.080 She basically writes a best seller out of her 00:14:30.080 --> 00:14:33.259 heartbreak. The book weaves her melancholic reflections 00:14:33.259 --> 00:14:37.039 on nature with sharp critiques of commerce, which 00:14:37.039 --> 00:14:40.059 she clearly associates with the mercenary Imlay. 00:14:40.600 --> 00:14:42.919 And returning to London, the success of the book 00:14:42.919 --> 00:14:45.960 helps her finally close the door on him. She 00:14:45.960 --> 00:14:48.320 re -enters the intellectual scene and rekindles 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:50.379 her acquaintance with the philosopher William 00:14:50.379 --> 00:14:52.700 Godwin. The same Godwin she'd clashed with at 00:14:52.700 --> 00:14:55.860 a dinner party years earlier. Right. But he read 00:14:55.860 --> 00:14:58.179 her Scandinavian travel book and remarked that 00:14:58.179 --> 00:15:00.279 it was a book calculated to make a man fall in 00:15:00.279 --> 00:15:02.940 love with its author. They developed this profound, 00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:06.379 deeply intellectual connection and soon she is 00:15:06.379 --> 00:15:09.889 pregnant again. which forces a massive ideological 00:15:09.889 --> 00:15:12.889 collision. A huge collision. Wait, because Godwin 00:15:12.889 --> 00:15:15.610 literally wrote a famous philosophical treatise, 00:15:15.750 --> 00:15:17.970 Political Justice, advocating for the abolition 00:15:17.970 --> 00:15:20.610 of marriage, viewing it as an oppressive monopoly, 00:15:21.009 --> 00:15:23.669 and Mary was notoriously anti -patriarchal marriage. 00:15:23.889 --> 00:15:26.330 Very anti -marriage. So why on earth did these 00:15:26.330 --> 00:15:29.330 two famous rule -breaking radicals quietly go 00:15:29.330 --> 00:15:31.289 to a church in St. Pancras and tie the knot? 00:15:31.450 --> 00:15:34.769 It was the ultimate pragmatic compromise. They 00:15:34.769 --> 00:15:37.950 knew exactly how punitive and cruel their society 00:15:37.950 --> 00:15:41.509 was. Mary had lived it. Right. She saw her sister's 00:15:41.509 --> 00:15:43.929 ruin, and she had endured the immense stigma 00:15:43.929 --> 00:15:47.049 of raising Fanny as an unmarried mother. Exactly. 00:15:47.309 --> 00:15:50.090 So they chose to sacrifice their public ideological 00:15:50.090 --> 00:15:53.370 purity to shield their unborn child from that 00:15:53.370 --> 00:15:55.809 brutal social ostracization. But they managed 00:15:55.809 --> 00:15:58.269 the compromise brilliantly. They moved to Summerstown, 00:15:58.649 --> 00:16:00.990 but Godwin rents an apartment 20 doors down the 00:16:00.990 --> 00:16:03.330 street for his study. They maintained completely 00:16:03.330 --> 00:16:06.370 separate living spaces, often communicating via 00:16:06.370 --> 00:16:09.309 notes delivered by servants. They designed a 00:16:09.309 --> 00:16:11.769 marriage that preserved their individual intellectual 00:16:11.769 --> 00:16:14.549 boundaries. It was a profoundly modern arrangement. 00:16:14.889 --> 00:16:17.070 They found a way to be legally bound while remaining 00:16:17.070 --> 00:16:19.789 fiercely independent. It seemed Mary had finally 00:16:19.789 --> 00:16:22.049 engineered her perfectly balanced ending. But 00:16:22.049 --> 00:16:24.809 the universe is rarely that neat. No, it isn't. 00:16:24.889 --> 00:16:28.070 On August 30th, 1797, she gives birth to her 00:16:28.070 --> 00:16:30.169 second daughter, Mary, who, by the way, will 00:16:30.169 --> 00:16:32.389 grow up to write Frankenstein. The delivery initially 00:16:32.389 --> 00:16:35.029 seems fine, but the placenta fails to deliver 00:16:35.029 --> 00:16:38.070 completely. An infection sets in. Child bed fever. 00:16:38.450 --> 00:16:41.450 And 11 days later, Mary Wollstonecraft dies of 00:16:41.450 --> 00:16:44.190 sepsis at the age of 38. Godwin was shattered. 00:16:44.470 --> 00:16:46.690 He wrote to a friend stating he firmly believed 00:16:46.690 --> 00:16:48.850 her equal did not exist in the world and that 00:16:48.850 --> 00:16:50.809 he would never know happiness again. Which brings 00:16:50.809 --> 00:16:53.679 us back to where we started. Driven by grief 00:16:53.679 --> 00:16:56.080 and a desire to honor her complete humanity, 00:16:56.620 --> 00:16:59.299 Godwin publishes his memoirs of the author of 00:16:59.299 --> 00:17:02.279 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1798. 00:17:02.559 --> 00:17:05.500 And he holds nothing back. He details her lack 00:17:05.500 --> 00:17:08.059 of religion, the out of wedlock child, the obsessive 00:17:08.059 --> 00:17:10.279 love for Imlae, and the suicide attempts. And 00:17:10.279 --> 00:17:13.869 society reacted with vicious glee. The conservative 00:17:13.869 --> 00:17:16.390 press, already terrified by the radicalism of 00:17:16.390 --> 00:17:19.150 the French Revolution, weaponized her life story 00:17:19.150 --> 00:17:22.029 to discredit her political ideas. She was literally 00:17:22.029 --> 00:17:24.990 labeled a hyena in petticoats. By presenting 00:17:24.990 --> 00:17:27.650 her unapologetically, Godwin handed the establishment 00:17:27.650 --> 00:17:30.690 the excuse it needed to bury her work. So basically, 00:17:30.849 --> 00:17:33.009 Godwin overshared before the internet even existed, 00:17:33.349 --> 00:17:35.569 and accidentally got his own late wife historically 00:17:35.569 --> 00:17:37.880 canceled. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. 00:17:37.960 --> 00:17:39.720 And this raises an important question, right? 00:17:40.079 --> 00:17:43.220 It shows how society historically demands moral 00:17:43.220 --> 00:17:46.180 purity from female thinkers in a way it rarely 00:17:46.180 --> 00:17:49.039 does from men. That is so true. For almost a 00:17:49.039 --> 00:17:51.839 century, she was historically cancelled. Writers 00:17:51.839 --> 00:17:55.180 like Jane Austen suddenly nodded to Mary's ideas 00:17:55.180 --> 00:17:58.759 in her novels, but Austen never dared print Mary's 00:17:58.759 --> 00:18:01.329 name. It wasn't until the late 19th century that 00:18:01.329 --> 00:18:04.430 the suffragettes dared to exhume her legacy. 00:18:04.890 --> 00:18:06.690 Millicent Fawcett wrote an introduction to the 00:18:06.690 --> 00:18:09.569 centenary edition of Rights of Woman in 1892, 00:18:09.849 --> 00:18:11.910 claiming her as the intellectual foremother of 00:18:11.910 --> 00:18:14.150 the struggle for the vote. But even today, how 00:18:14.150 --> 00:18:17.519 we remember her is fraught. Take the 2020 controversy 00:18:17.519 --> 00:18:19.339 over the commemorative sculpture in London by 00:18:19.339 --> 00:18:21.660 Maggie Hamblin. Oh, the silver statue, yes. Right, 00:18:21.779 --> 00:18:24.640 it featured a small nude symbolic female figure 00:18:24.640 --> 00:18:27.440 rising out of a silver mass. And critics were 00:18:27.440 --> 00:18:29.660 furious, arguing it diminished her by focusing 00:18:29.660 --> 00:18:32.799 on a stereotypical naked body rather than her 00:18:32.799 --> 00:18:35.180 formidable intellect. It perfectly encapsulates 00:18:35.180 --> 00:18:37.480 the ongoing struggle to reconcile her brilliant 00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:40.660 mind with her physical bodily reality. But I'd 00:18:40.660 --> 00:18:44.349 ask you listening to reflect on this. How often 00:18:44.349 --> 00:18:47.750 do we let a person's messy personal life blind 00:18:47.750 --> 00:18:50.829 us to the brilliance of their ideas? The fact 00:18:50.829 --> 00:18:53.390 that we now read her life alongside her philosophy, 00:18:53.970 --> 00:18:57.069 embracing that messy human reality, it shows 00:18:57.069 --> 00:18:59.109 that the world is finally catching up to Mary. 00:18:59.410 --> 00:19:01.930 The messiness wasn't a distraction from her genius. 00:19:02.069 --> 00:19:04.809 It was the crucible that forged it. So what does 00:19:04.809 --> 00:19:07.369 this all mean? We started this deep dive looking 00:19:07.369 --> 00:19:10.230 for the real woman behind the heavy titles. And 00:19:10.230 --> 00:19:12.710 we found a thinker who clawed her way out of 00:19:12.710 --> 00:19:15.450 an abusive home, shattered the theoretical foundations 00:19:15.450 --> 00:19:18.410 of inequality, and stared down the French Revolution. 00:19:18.670 --> 00:19:21.349 Chased a stolen silver shipment across the Scandinavian 00:19:21.349 --> 00:19:23.869 wilderness, and loved with a ferocity that almost 00:19:23.869 --> 00:19:26.269 killed her. She was exactly what she set out 00:19:26.269 --> 00:19:28.789 to be, the first of a new genus. I will leave 00:19:28.789 --> 00:19:30.910 you with a final thought to ponder. When Mary 00:19:30.910 --> 00:19:33.890 died at 38, her desk was covered with unfinished 00:19:33.890 --> 00:19:36.460 work. There was a fragment called Lessons, and 00:19:36.460 --> 00:19:38.940 most tantalizingly, a set of notes titled Hints 00:19:38.940 --> 00:19:41.460 Outlines meant for a second volume of Gil, A 00:19:41.460 --> 00:19:43.319 Vindication of the Rights of Woman. A second 00:19:43.319 --> 00:19:46.859 volume. Right. Imagine for a moment if Mary hadn't 00:19:46.859 --> 00:19:50.000 died. Having finally found a stable, intellectually 00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:53.079 equal partnership with Godwin, what would that 00:19:53.079 --> 00:19:55.789 second volume have looked like? fascinating to 00:19:55.789 --> 00:19:58.009 think about. How might the agonizing heartbreak 00:19:58.009 --> 00:20:00.430 in Paris, her confrontation with her own deep 00:20:00.430 --> 00:20:02.769 -seated emotional conditioning, and her ultimate 00:20:02.769 --> 00:20:05.369 domestic happiness have reshaped her revolutionary 00:20:05.369 --> 00:20:08.710 theories? It's a ghost of a masterpiece waiting 00:20:08.710 --> 00:20:10.630 in the margins of history for you to explore.