How Did Mary Wollstonecraft Influence The French Revolution

In the late 18th century, France experienced a time of change that would later be known as the French Revolution. Initially, the people of France challenged the Old Order of ruling due to a growing financial burden from past war ventures in the Atlantic. Government officials, primarily from the commoners, reacted with a call for governmental changes regarding power. As Enlightenment ideas of equality and natural rights thrived, people began to recognize the dire need for social changes involving an individual's rights as well. Influence from the American Revolution and turmoil at home guided France to establish a new constitutional monarchy that gave people new rights involving the influence and voice they had in French society. For the first

Mary Wollstonecraft in the early stages of the Revolution was one of the first to help defend the movement through her writings. This is shown in The Vindication of Rights of Man where Wollstonecraft defends the ideas of liberalism and the natural rights of the individual. The article helped to support the ideas of the French revolution because it validated one of the main ideas of the movement: the natural rights of Men. This helps to show how Women were involved in the French revolution because it helps to support what the common people were fighting for. It helped to defend the idea of equal rights and liberalism, which were being questioned at this time. Similarly, Mary Wollstonecraft had a major impact through her writings on Women's rights as well. After achieving the goal of equal rights for Men, Mary wrote A Vindication of Rights of Woman. This article focuses on the idea of natural rights extending to Woman, defending the idea that woman should have similar rights to men. This was as important as her first work because it extended the ideas of liberalism to include feminism. Liberal Feminism helped to greatly influence Women's rights and even helped to get woman in politics. This explains Mary Wollstonecraft’s impact on the FR because through her writing she was able to open new doors for Women regarding their rights and voice in politics.

Early in the French Revolution as inner turmoil and debt grew, people looked for somebody to blame for the hardships. Since the monarchy still held power and luxury in France, the people looked to the wife of King Louis XVI, Mary Antoinette, to blame for the condition of France. The first incident that occurred to Marie was The Necklace Scandal. While Marie Antoinette had no involvement, a third party representative claimed to be friends with the Queen and was to buy a very expensive necklace on her behalf. This led to the people associating her with ideas that she was oblivious and that during the hardships she was still living life extravagantly. This explains how women were involved in the french revolution because it shows how they were expressed as scapegoats. Marie Antoinette had no affiliation with this scandal and yet she is blamed and seen as oblivious to what is going on. While the French Revolution was a time of moving forward, people still held on to earlier beliefs of women as corrupt influences, which is why it was easy to blame the queen. Marie Antoinette was also similarly blamed for the problems of France’s government. To the general population of France, Marie was known as “Madam Deficit” and “L’ Autrichienne”. She was directly blamed for the problems of debt and instability in France, which led to