Mary Wollstonecraft and Big Ideas

Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics, by Sylvana Tomaselli is an accessible overview of Wollstonecraft’s entire body of work. Tomaselli places Wollstonecraft’s books and essays in the political context of her time, with the French Revolution playing a big role. Although this wasn’t a biography of Wollstonecraft, elements of Wollstonecraft as a person are included: her love of music, poetry, and art; her strong love of physical exercise (mostly walking/hiking); and how she was affected by becoming a mother. I really enjoyed how Tomaselli showed the ways in which Wollstonecraft wrestled with Big Ideas by engaging with current works by Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Edmund Burke and how her ideas were so compelling that they could not be ignored even though she was a woman. I learned for the first time about Olympe De Gouges, a French woman who, like Wollstonecraft, advocated for the rights of women through essays and other writing. She died by the guillotine during the French Revolution. Highly recommend this book.