Mary Wollstonecraft

Broschiertes Buch

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Beschreibung

In June 1795, Mary Wollstonecraft embarked on a three-month trip around Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, on undisclosed business at the request of her lover Gilbert Imlay. During the course of this voyage she wrote twenty-five letters to him, which were compiled the following year at the behest of her publisher into this volume. As a travelogue, the letters of course contain descriptions of the natural beauty of the places she visited and the habits and interests of the people she met; but what is more apparent is Mary¿s growing realization that this journey she has undertaken for Imlay ultimately won¿t heal their relationship. Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark was the last work of Mary Wollstonecraft¿s published during her lifetime; she died two years later, shortly after the birth of her second child, Mary Shelley. It follows the themes of her earlier works: a belief in reason¿s ability to elevate people, the injustice of society¿s oppression of women, and a spreading idea that commercialism does more to deprave than to enlighten humankind.

Autor

Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London. She was the second of the seven children of Elizabeth Dixon and Edward John Wollstonecraft. Although her family had a comfortable income when she was a child, her father gradually squandered it on speculative projects. Consequently, the family became financially unstable and they were frequently forced to move during Wollstonecraft's youth. The family's financial situation eventually became so dire that Wollstonecraft's father compelled her to turn over money that she would have inherited at her maturity. Moreover, he was apparently a violent man who would beat his wife in drunken rages. As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to lie outside the door of her mother's bedroom to protect her. Wollstonecraft played a similar maternal role for her sisters, Everina and Eliza, throughout her life. In a defining moment in 1784, she persuaded Eliza, who was suffering from what was probably postpartum depression, to leave her husband and infant; Wollstonecraft made all of the arrangements for Eliza to flee, demonstrating her willingness to challenge social norms. The human costs, however, were severe: her sister suffered social condemnation and, because she could not remarry, was doomed to a life of poverty and hard work.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Culturea
• Seitenzahl: 186
• Erscheinungstermin: 16. Juli 2023
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 210mm x 148mm x 11mm
• Gewicht: 249g
• ISBN-13: 9791041802258
• Artikelnr.: 68433627