Wollstonecraft under the influence of Macaulay? An investigation into education and rights

• Grant number: 23/11476-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: January 22, 2024
• End date: July 21, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Yara Adario Frateschi
• Grantee: Sarah Bonfim Matos Nunes
• Supervisor: Sylvana Tomaselli
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Cambridge, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/02257-5 - "Fair defect in creation": Women, liberty, and education in Mary Wollstonecraft, BP.DR

Abstract

During my PhD research, by analysing the debate that Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) proposes to Edmund Burke (1729-1797) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) I better understood the originality of her thoughts, especially her concept of freedom. As the research progressed, I realised Wollstonecraft shared an affinity with Catharine Macaulay (1731-1791). In a letter to Macaulay, on the occasion of the release of the Vindication of the Rights of Men, Wollstonecraft says that Macaulay is the only female writer with whom she shares her opinion about the situation of women in society. I believe that understanding this affinity is critical to investigate what is original in Wollstonecraft's work, and what she borrowed and expanded. With this in mind, this project has the main goal of verifying the extent of the influence of Macaulay's writings' on Wollstonecraft's idea of education and rights. There are two hypotheses that guide this project: first, that the Letters on Education may have informed Wollstonecraft's opinion about female education, leading her to write the Vindication of the Rights of Woman and to criticise Rousseau's Emilie or on Education. The second hypothesis, which still lacks investigation, is if Macaulay also informed Wollstonecraft's opinion about the History of England and the institutionalisation of rights.