Mary Wollstonecraft and Feminist Republicanism

Mary Wollstonecraft is a writer whose work continues to provoke scholarly debate. But Wollstonecraft the historical figure often obscures her importance as a philosopher. Halldenius explores Wollstonecraft's political philosophy, focusing on her treatment of republicanism and independence, to propose a new way of reading her work - that of a 'feminist republican'. Wollstonecraft's works of fiction and non-fiction are analysed and the use of her own experience of a lack of freedom (the lot of an eighteenth-century woman) is examined as a valid line of philosophical enquiry and not - as others have viewed them - as a form of autobiography.