"Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath"
About this Quote
Mary Wollstonecraft declares independence the grand blessing of life and the ground of virtue, then vows to secure it by contracting her wants even to the point of choosing a barren heath over comfort. She makes a moral claim before a political one: genuine virtue requires the capacity to choose without fear, bribery, or servility. If a person depends on another’s favor for survival, praise becomes flattery and obedience masquerades as goodness. Freedom from need, or at least from unnecessary wants, protects the integrity of judgment.
Set against late 18th-century Britain, the words cut especially deep for women. Laws, property customs, and education engineered female dependency on fathers, husbands, or patrons. Wollstonecraft’s feminism insisted that women could be rational, virtuous citizens only if they had economic and intellectual autonomy. To contract one’s wants is a strategy of liberation: voluntary simplicity breaks the chains that luxuries and social expectations tighten. The vivid image of the barren heath signals a stoic resolve to suffer hardship rather than surrender the self.
Her life gives the line weight. She supported herself as a teacher, governess, and writer, forged a career in the male world of print with Joseph Johnson, crossed to revolutionary France, and navigated love, single motherhood, and scandal without retreating into safe dependence. She argued in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman that education should equip women to stand upright, not to please. The phrase basis of every virtue distills that program: independence enables responsibility, truth-telling, friendship among equals, and love chosen freely rather than bartered for security.
There is also a critique of luxury politics shared with republican and dissenting currents of her age. Luxury breeds corruption; simplicity fortifies character. The line remains bracing now, when consumer culture inflates wants and dependence shifts to employers, algorithms, or social approval. To contract wants is to expand the space in which conscience can breathe.
Set against late 18th-century Britain, the words cut especially deep for women. Laws, property customs, and education engineered female dependency on fathers, husbands, or patrons. Wollstonecraft’s feminism insisted that women could be rational, virtuous citizens only if they had economic and intellectual autonomy. To contract one’s wants is a strategy of liberation: voluntary simplicity breaks the chains that luxuries and social expectations tighten. The vivid image of the barren heath signals a stoic resolve to suffer hardship rather than surrender the self.
Her life gives the line weight. She supported herself as a teacher, governess, and writer, forged a career in the male world of print with Joseph Johnson, crossed to revolutionary France, and navigated love, single motherhood, and scandal without retreating into safe dependence. She argued in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman that education should equip women to stand upright, not to please. The phrase basis of every virtue distills that program: independence enables responsibility, truth-telling, friendship among equals, and love chosen freely rather than bartered for security.
There is also a critique of luxury politics shared with republican and dissenting currents of her age. Luxury breeds corruption; simplicity fortifies character. The line remains bracing now, when consumer culture inflates wants and dependence shifts to employers, algorithms, or social approval. To contract wants is to expand the space in which conscience can breathe.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|
More Quotes by Mary
Add to List
