Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1985. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-171).

This thesis has investigated the life and publications of Mary Wollstonecraft. The thesis is divided in to three chapters the first chapter explores the political and social context of late Eighteenth century England in which Wollstonecraft lived the majority of her life. It then moves on to discuss the 'Revolution Controversy' and Wollstonecraft's contribution to that debate. Giving specific attention to A Vindication of the Rights of Man as it is Wollstonecraft's first political publication, and was the first published response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Without first publishing A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Wollstonecraft could not have published her most famous work. Next the second chapter investigates Eighteenth century education, and how Wollstonecraft ideas on changing the nature of education would help reform society in her eyes. Education was recognized as having special significance by many Enlightenment philosophers, this thesis looks at the contribution of John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau to educational theory, and they ways in which Wollstonecraft responded to their ideas. In the final chapter the inclusive nature of Wollstonecraft's gender theory is considered. Wollstonecraft is widely recognised as publishing what became for many the founding document of modern western feminism. What is given less recognition is that Wollstonecraft was in fact interested in broad social reform, similar to many other Enlightenment philosophers, Wollstonecraft's social theory included changing education and socialisation for both women and men. Society could not be reformed without changing social and educational practices with regard to both II men and women. Wollstonecraft furthered the contemporary debate on the rights of man to include the rights of woman. Wollstonecraft criticised the unnatural distinctions of gender and class, setting out in both Vindications the negative consequences for the character of both men and women. Another less recognised aspect of Wollstonecraft's philosophy which this thesis has highlighted is the vital role that religion played, and its implications for her ideas. This aspect of Wollstonecraft's thought has tended to be over looked by many Wollstonecraft scholars, who try to place Wollstonecraft in some kind of political and social continuum which I think misses the revolutionary and far sighted nature of Wollstonecraft's philosophy. In taking a historicist approach or understanding to Wollstonecraft, by reading Wollstonecraft in the terms of the political and social environment of the late eighteenth century, it becomes easier to understand the radical nature of Wollstonecraft's ideas, and the personal hardships she faced as both a woman and a member of the lower middle class.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759- 1797) wrote both A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman within a matter of weeks. Why she wants to write the second book about rights continued from the preceding one? I would try to probe into the correlations between these two works. In her argument for women¡¦s rights (even all human being¡¦s rights), Wollstonecraft contested the gendered construction of reason and virtue in political theory. I situate the pioneering feminist as a canonical thinker alongside Locke and Rousseau. Yet, although I admit that Wollstonecraft¡¦s works have been largely been overlooked by mainstream political theorists, in this paper my analysis will offer little explanation as to why Wollstonecraft has been marginalized within the conversation of political thought. To explain why Wollstonecraft¡¦s works has not been included in the canon I pose the question of how this revolutionary woman was authorized to write about political rights. In addition to her perspectives of politics, she also challenged the idea of contemporary patriarchy to fight for women¡¦s citizenship. Therefore, Complex conversations between past and present are involved in any attempt to read Wollstonecraft¡¦s texts or to find the problems of traditional liberal feminism. My study makes no pretension to offer answers to pressing problems. It does, however, provide insights into how present concerns make us resonant to themes in Wollstonecraft¡¦s writing, such as her dealing with the politics of gender difference, her awareness of sexuality and romance, her passionate wrestling with reason, and the relevance of her version of the Enlightenment humanist project to women¡¦s citizenship today. On a more somber note, her proposition makes clear how much exclusion and subjugation of women has taken place within Western feminist tradition from Wollstonecraft onwards and how attentive we need to be to decolonizing the thinking in our own heads while we dream of liberating wider theory.

This essay attempts to define Mary Wollstonecraft’s Mary: A Fiction and Maria or The Wrongs of Woman as early feminist propaganda from its historical perspective. Initially, feministic values as well as propaganda are connected to the eighteenth century with the help of contemporary scholars.  These theories are then applied on Wollstonecraft’s Mary: A Fiction and Maria or the Wrongs of Woman, in order to establish these as propaganda. The conclusion reached is that Wollstonecraft had a political and feminist aim when writing her novels as there are many similarities between Mary: A Fiction and Maria or The Wrongs of Woman and her political text A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Thus, it is possible to regard Mary: A Fiction and Maria or The Wrongs of Woman as early feminist propaganda.

Th. lett. Genève, 1998 ; L. 442. / Im Buchh.: Basingstoke etc. : Palgrave. Register. Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-213) and index.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2009. / Title from web page (viewed on Sep. 2, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 367-379).

Zugl.: Düsseldorf, Univ., Diss., 2006

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 279-292).

This thesis examines selected prose fiction works of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in an effort to establish a clearer understanding of the creative principles informing her writing, based on more evidence than her well-known novel Frankenstein provides. Overturning the hitherto dismissive and/or reductive critiques of her lesser-known works, this thesis challenges negative assessments by reinterpreting the structure of Shelley's fiction. Concentrating particularly on the early Frankenstein(1818), Mathilda (written in 1819), and The Last Man (1826), with a focus on the use of insistent embedded quotations, this thesis begins by exploring Shelley's belief in textuality as a form of "grafting." As scholars have suggested, Shelley's literary borrowings are a result of her materialist-based views of human reality. The persistent use of embedded quotations is one way in which Shelley's fiction represents texts as collations of materials. The core of the argument posits that citational "grafting" has distinctive and striking effects in each of the works examined. In Frankenstein, quotations underscore existential alienation by pointing to the need for texts to fill in the lacunae of human understanding; in Mathilda, the narrator uses citations to create a sense of personal identity; and in The Last Man, citational excerpts are used with the assumption that they are shared pockets of meaning belonging to a community of human readers. This reconceptualization of Shelley's writing contributes to the generic taxonomies that are now being used to retheorize "the novel" in more inclusive and specific ways.