Written in just six weeks, Mary Wollstonecraft's 300-page A Vindication of the Rights of Women was published in 1792 to great acclaim and controversy. After her death, her husband, William Godwin wrote with foresight: "when we consider the importance of its doctrines, and the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it will be read as long as the English language endures ... Mary Wollstonecraft will perhaps here-after be found to have performed more substantial service for the cause of her sex, than all the other writers, male or female, that ever felt themselves animated on the behalf of oppressed and injured beauty." It paved the way for modern feminism and Wollstonecraft has since been revered as the great-grandmother of women's rights.
Unconventional in both thoughts and deeds, Wollstonecraft outraged her contemporaries in her support of revolution and women's rights. She spent her life arguing against the distinction of the sexes, and women's lowly status. "Gentleness, docility and a spaniel-like affection are consistently recommended as the cardinal virtues of the sex;" Mary wrote, "one writer has declared that it is masculine for a woman to be melancholy. She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and must jingle in his ears whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused." Wollstonecraft argued that the lack of education for women kept them in a state of "ignorance and slavish dependence", and that women are forced into vanity and passivity by a lack of mental and physical stimulus. Mary Wollstonecraft's short life came to an end in 1797 eleven days after the birth of her second daughter, Mary, who later married Percy Bysshe Shelley and found fame herself as the author of Frankenstein.
