WOLLSTONECRAFT
PHILOSOPHY, PASSION & POLITICS
SYLVANA TOMASELLI
Princeton, 216pp, £25
Wollstonecraft is not a biography so much as an attempt to make sense of the apparent contradictions between the life, philosophy and scattered thought of the writer often referred to as the ‘mother of feminism’. The work is treated thematically rather than chronologically, with chapter headings such as ‘What She Liked and Loved’ and ‘What Went Wrong?’, ‘The World It Was’ echoing the titles of 18th-century novels. Judith Hawley in the Literary Review found the approach was ‘sometimes bitty’ but she was broadly approving of Tomaselli’s argument that A Vindication of the Rights of Woman should be ‘de-throned’ in favour of lesser-known works. Her approach encouraged ‘readers to break down barriers, just as Wollstonecraft herself did’.
Barbara Taylor in the Guardian admired Tomaselli for her dexterous moving between Wollstonecraft’s feelings and reasonings to produce ‘a portrait that is both fresh and compelling’. But she argued against the junking of the trailblazing feminist in favour of the bold Enlightenment philosopher, protesting that although the term feminist was anachronistic the oppression of women was Wollstonecraft’s ‘overriding concern’. Also she thought Tomaselli was misguided in her determination to reconcile the paradoxes in Wollstonecraft’s work, since this obscured the creative energy that Wollstonecraft brought to the issues she wrote about, ‘shifting tack as she learned more, thought harder. She was not an academic but a revolutionary: what did mere consistency mean to her?’
Ruth Scurr in the Spectator applauded Tomaselli’s ‘characteristic open-mindedness’ in her discussion of Wollstonecraft’s attempted suicide after being deserted by her lover Gilbert Imlay. ‘It was, one could say, out of character, or possibly not, depending on one’s stance on suicide.’
‘This is a portrait that is both fresh and compelling’