Mary Wollstonecraft · Politics

Legal Prostitution: Marriage and Independence

Wollstonecraft delivered a searing critique of marriage as it was - a system that left women economically dependent, legally powerless, and reduced, she charged, to a respectable form of bondage.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Wollstonecraft attacked the dependence at the heart of marriage. In your own words, why did she think a woman who had no choice but to marry for support could not be free or virtuous?

Leads to John Stuart Mill.

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