SOURCE: "Mary Wollstonecraft on Sensibility, Women's Rights, and Patriarchal Power," in Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, edited by Hilda L. Smith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 148-67.

In the following essay, Shanley explores Wollstonecraft's discussion of the relationship between domestic and political patriarchy.

One of the results of the resurgence in feminist scholarship over the past twenty-five years has been the inclusion of Mary Wollstonecraft in the ranks of early modern political theorists. The "rediscovery" of Wollstonecraft focused attention on both her life and her writings. It was not surprising that feminists interested in politics and political theory found Wollstonecraft's life a source of inspiration. In an age when female writers were rare and a challenge to "the traditional male monopoly of literacy, learning, and publication,"¹ Wollstonecraft was one of the few women of her day who supported herself by her writing. She was...