Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)

Anna Deavere Smith: Meet English writer Mary Wollstonecraft. A feminist long before the term was invented, she argued passionately for equality between the sexes in her 1792 book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

In the wake of the French Revolution, at a time when sweeping social change seemed attainable, Wollstonecraft called on women to challenge rigidly defined and oppressive gender roles. 

Here, in a plain white dress, Wollstonecraft is a shining light against a darkened background. This posthumous portrait testifies to her early influence in the United States. It was commissioned in 1803 by Vice President Aaron Burr for his daughter Theodosia, whom he raised on Wollstonecraft’s egalitarian principles. 

Though it’s a faithful copy of an earlier portrait, the painter added one detail: the black lace at the subject’s right elbow, a subtle sign that the painting was made after her death.

It’s difficult to tell here, but when the original was painted in 1797, Wollstonecraft was pregnant. Sadly, she died just ten days after childbirth. But her baby, the future Mary Shelley, inherited her mother’s genius and grew up to write her own groundbreaking book: Frankenstein.

Mary Wollstonecraft was just 38 when she died, but through her writings she left a powerful legacy. More than a century later, writer Virginia Woolf said of her: “she is alive and active, she argues and experiments, we hear her voice and trace her influence even now among the living.”