SOURCE: "Jane Austen and the Rebel," in Fanny Wright: Rebel in America, Harvard University Press, 1984, pp. 1–24.

In the following excerpt, Eckhardt contrasts Frances Wright, who even in her youth expressed outrage at oppression and willfully entered into political activism, with the more iconic and conventional figure of femininity drawn by Jane Austen.

On the sixth of September, 1795, a child was born on the southeast coast of Scotland whose life proved as vital as any could be in the nineteenth century, and almost as full of pain. Her name was Frances Wright, and John Stuart Mill would call her one of the most important women of her day.¹

She was important because she dared to take Thomas Jefferson seriously when he wrote, "All men are created equal," and to assume that "men" meant "women" as well. She was important because she made of her life a determined search for...