The Family as Cave, Platoon and Prison: The Three Stages of Wollstonecraft's Philosophy of the Family

Abstract

Twentieth-century feminist scholarship has largely ignored the foundational role of theology in Wollstonecraft's moral and political philosophy, and its role in shaping the development of her philosophy of the family through three distinct stages. Wollstonecraft was a traditional trinitarian Anglican in her early writings, a rationalistic unitarian Christian Dissenter in her middle writings, and a Romantic deist, skeptic and possible atheist in her late writings. The early Wollstonecraft views the traditional family as a cave that traps humanity in a morass of corruption with no hope of escape except in the next life; the middle Wollstonecraft believes that once the family takes a new, egalitarian form, it can serve as a “little platoon” (to use Burke's phrase) that instills the moral, social and political virtues in each generation of citizens; while the late Wollstonecraft fears that the traditional family is a prison from which women have little hope of escape, either in this world or through passage to the next.

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