The main characters in Wollstonecraft's last novel-Maria, who is rich but has nothing, and Jemima, who steals as a matter of principle-illustrate the commodification of women in a society where even rights are regarded as possessions. Her critique of property moves beyond issues of redistribution to a feminist appraisal of a property structure that turns people into either owners or owned, rights‐holders or things acquired. Dissociating herself from the conceptualization of rights in terms of self‐ownership, she casts economic independence-a necessary political criterion for personal freedom-in terms of fair reward for work, not ownership. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Revolutionary Life.
Her critique of inequality of wealth is undisputed, but is it a complaint only of inequality or does it strike more forcefully at the institution of property? The argument in this article is that Wollstonecraft's feminism is partly defined by a radical critique of property, intertwined with her conception of rights. This work by a Wollstonecraft scholar aims to show the diversity of Wollstonecraft’s writings within an account of her life and the contexts in which she wrote. The scholarship on Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) is divided concerning her views on women's role in public life, property rights, and distribution of wealth. Wollstonecraft wrote Mary at the town of Hotwells in Bristol while a governess for the Anglo-Irish Kingsborough family.
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