A Mother’s Legacy In Mary Shelley’s Mathilda Essay

AbstractMary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley are cardinal writers whose ideas are likely to be similar. Shelley admits that she is influenced by her mother. Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to find out and to identify the ideas presented in Wollstonecrafts essay on womens rights A Vindication for the Rights of Woman (1792) and see if they are incorporated into Shelleys novella Mathilda (1819).My analysis of A Vindication for the Rights of Woman shows that Wollstonecrafts main ideas are that express education, the subjugation of women by the family, female dependency on men and romantic thinking are the get-go for womens inferiority. This essay identifies and examines these ideas in the light of some secondary material and tries to suggest that they are glaring as themes in Shelleys Mathilda. In Mathilda, these ideas are visible as themes throughout the novel. The tragedy that befalls the characters illustrates the humble and self-destructive te ndencies which women obtain when being subject to these conditions. On the other hand, Shelley does not emphasize a escape of education and offers an additional point of view where Wollstonecrafts views on motherhood are criticized.The conclusion bony is that Wollstonecrafts ideas must have had an influence on Shelley as the fate of the characters is an illustration of the society that is criticized in A Vindication for the Rights of Woman and its destruction. However, Shelley does not agree on ideas with the subject of upbringing and goes against a few of her mothers main points, namely the role of mothers and the pre-eminence of education. They just aboutly have a consensus as most ideas that are present in one work are present in the other only when Shelley has rebelled against some of her mothers notions.