Letters to Mary - Episode 3

Series in which three writers send an informal letter to the influential British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, updating her on the progress of her often radical ideas in the 250 years since her birth. Writer and feminist Natasha Walter looks at Wollstonecraft's central work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. This was a book written in a hurry, during the turbulent years at the end of the 18th century when it seemed to some that the Revolution in France might truly be ushering in a new age of freedom and equality. Mary completed it in just six weeks, taking pages to the printers before the book was finished. Loosely argued and sometimes showing signs of the speed with which it was composed, her central argument is nevertheless as simple and powerful as ever - that the existence of inequality between the sexes did not prove that women were intrinsically inferior. Natasha happily updates Mary on the immense advances that have been made in equality of the sexes since her day, considering how delighted she would be with the many opportunities which women now rightly take for granted in terms of education, careers and political engagement. But she also looks at Mary's own experience of family life and considers how, in this key area, there is still some way to go before Mary's dreams are truly achieved.