Mary Wollstonecraft was born and raised in London, England, and was a renowned women’s rights activist since her work is known as one of the earliest pro-women and equality for women. Wollstonecraft was self-educated and had several jobs throughout her life. She was a teacher, governess, translator for publishing, and a writer and author. Wollstonecraft strongly believed in education and that women should have the same educational opportunities as men. One of her most well-known works is A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, published in 1792, a continuation of her novel,  A Vindication of the Rights of Man, published in 1790. The same year as publishing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft left England to observe the French Revolution in Paris. Returning to London, she wrote several other pieces before passing: Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman. The Wrongs of Woman was actually a sequel to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but Wollstonecraft didn’t finish it due to passing away and her husband, William Godwin, published it for the public. While several people, mostly women, reacted positively to her work, many women and men reacted negatively to the novel. As R. M. Janes stated in her article, On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, “Most reviewers took it to be a sensible treatise on female education and ignored those recommendations in the work that might unsettle the relations between sexes” (Janes, 294).

Horace Walpole, a writer and art historian, was strongly against Wollstonecraft and the work she was publishing. Walpole wrote several letters that talked poorly about Wollstonecraft and how she was a disgrace to the writing world and society. In one of the letters he wrote to his friend, Miss Hannah More, he called her a “philosophizing serpent,”  and a “hyena in petticoats” (The Project Gutenberg, Letter 419). He continued to strongly go against Wollstonecraft when she published works about the French Revolution. Walpole wasn’t the only person to go against Wollstonecraft. Several magazines and newspapers also went against Wollstonecraft: the British Critic, the Anti-Jacobin- Review, the Analytical Review, and The Critical Review. The Critical Review commented significantly on Wollstonecraft’s work, stating that, “-Miss Wollstonecraft has converted this method of proceeding with the same success: reasoning on the boasted principles of the Rights of Man, she finds they lead very clearly to be the object of her work, a Vindication of the Rights of Woman; and, by the absurdity of many of her conclusions, shows, while we admit the reasoning, that the premises must be, in some respects, fallacious” (The Critical Review, 389). The newspaper about her is several pages long and continuously mocks her work and dehumanizes her for wanting women to have a right to education. When in reality, Wollstonecraft wanted women to be able to take care of themselves. As stated in  A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, "Educate women like men," says Rousseau, "and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us." This is the very point I aim at. I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves” (Wollstonecraft). While there isn’t a specific line that connects Wollstonecraft to the 4B movement, there are similarities between what Wollstonecraft wanted with what the women want in South Korea and throughout the world. Wollstonecraft’s work helped push the feminist movement and for it to continue throughout London and then throughout the world. As Janes stated, “The shift in the treatment of feminist works between 1792 and 1798 indicated the continuing approbation of improved education for women and the solidifying opposition to works that seemed to threaten the established relations between the sexes” ( Janes, 302). Not only does Wollstonecraft’s work connect to the 4B movement, but also the way men reacted to her work strongly resembles how men in South Korea and North America react to women who are a part of the movement. While the 4B Movement is mainly connected to being treated equally, the President of South Korea, Yoon Seok-Yul, is trying to abolish the gender equality ministry. According to The Guardian, as stated by Betsy Reed in her article,  Outcry as South Korean President Tries to scrap gender equality ministry to ‘Protect’ women, “The 2022 World Economic Forum global gender gap report ranks South Korea 99th out of 146 countries in an index that examines jobs, education, health and political representation” (The Guardian). Yoon Seok-Yul continues to bash women’s rights and has several followers of men backing up his claims and pushing to get rid of gender equality. The same happened with Wollstonecraft and her own works about feminist rights. 

Even after two hundred years as passed since Wollstonecraft’s work, there are still parts of her declaration for women’s rights that have yet to be fulfilled and the reasoning why women in several different countries still have to fight for basic rights.

Works Cited:

Primary Sources:

Walpole, Horace. “The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 4.” Https://Www.gutenberg.org/Files/4919/4919.Txt, 1 Jan. 2004, gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4919/pg4919-images.html. Accessed 28 Apr. 2024.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Verso, 1792.

D. "ART. I. Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman." The Analytical Review : Or, History of Literature, vol. 13, no. 4, 1792, pp. 481-489. ProQuest, http://ulib.iupui.edu/cgi-bin/proxy.pl?url=http://search.proquest.com/hi...

Secondary Sources:

Janes, R. M. “On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft’s: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 39, no. 2, 1978, pp. 293–302. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2708781. Accessed 28 Apr. 2024.

Additional Sources:

McCurry, Justin. “Outcry as South Korean President Tries to Scrap Gender Equality Ministry to “Protect” Women.” The Guardian, 7 Oct. 2022, www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/07/outcry-as-south-korean-president-t....