‘Uncompromising politics’: Mary Wollstonecraft and Catherine Macaulay

This chapter focuses on Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft, which are considered to be the two most important women writers on politics and society in late 18th-century England. Both were instrumental in the development of feminist political thought and by the 1790s, ‘Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft had achieved a kind of political articulacy and a degree of public audibility that are central to the emergence of modern feminist politics in Britain’. This was not seen as an area that women should comment on. Both Macaulay and Wollstonecraft showed that women as public intellectuals could defend republican political principles. In addition, both contributed to debates on education and both believed in the same education for women and men. Wollstonecraft argues that the education of women should be about giving them more independence. Similarly, Wollstonecraft maintained that women should work and become independent. As such, Wollstonecraft's feminism can be located in a general trend towards sexual liberation.