Mary Woolstonecraft

"Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience"

Mary Woolstonecraft was a woman centuries ahead of her time. Though she wrote many articles and books, her most lasting work was A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was published in 1792. A Vindication for the Rights of Woman is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy, which argues that women ought to have an education, and that women are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.

Woolstonecraft had a very challenging personal life - she was the second of seven children, and watched her family gradually become more and more financially unstable. Her father was abusive, and she assisted her sister Eliza in leaving her husband and infant. She had two affairs, the second of whom she had her first daughter with, and then married William Goodwin, one of the fathers of the anarchist movement. She died while giving birth to her second child.

Her life story and works were embraced with the advent of the modern feminist movement, and are still studied today.

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.