Abstract
In this detailed and scholarly book, the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft are explored, making them both relevant and accessible to modern concerns. I had not considered Wollstonecraft as a theologian before and Dumler-Winckler is concerned to change that. She seeks to show Wollstonecraft’s theology, shaped by her Dissenting Church tradition, maintaining that this underpins her writing. It enables her to critique the establishment while seeking to stay true to the Christian faith. From this, Wollstonecraft developed nuanced discourse about virtue, politics and the imitation of Christ. Dumler-Winckler maintains that Wollstonecraft offers an important middle way between the virtue ‘defenders’ and the virtue ‘despisers’ of modern times. She holds together a valuing of tradition and a call to the prophetic, genuinely hoping for a world where justice and love truly shape behaviour while being honest about the injustices of her time. Wollstonecraft was concerned with societal structures that limit the capacity to be virtuous. She was opposed to slavery in all its forms, an abolitionist and a champion of the rights of women.
Rather than accept the idea that common goods are obsolete, Dumler-Winckler encourages us to learn from Wollstonecraft: ‘Like an expert tailor, she uses the tools at her disposal to augment the wardrobe of the 18th century moral imagination’ (p. 79). Dumler-Winckler explores this metaphor of the wardrobe to show how Wollstonecraft developed a theory of taste and virtue that was not shaped by fixed standards. Reacting against the notion that there were particular female virtues, she speaks of common human virtues that she recognizes can be cultivated and embodied in diverse ways. Learning to live virtuously is always contextual, understanding the difference between the semblance of virtue and true virtue is helped by finding good exemplars and realizing that they can be found in all walks of life.
Dumler-Winckler explores the debates during Wollstonecraft’s lifetime and shows the relevance of her ideas to modern concerns. Her challenge to sexed virtues has relevance for feminist challenges to patriarchal structures. Modern debates on rights and virtues can learn from her ideas of justice as right relationships and love as friendship. Returning to theology, we see how Wollstonecraft holds together love of God, love of neighbour and love of self. Always, we note her challenge to despotism, to structures that are unjust and the hypocrisy of those who practise the semblance of virtue while colluding in or condoning injustice.
Dumler-Winckler wants Wollstonecraft to be recognized as an important thinker in virtue ethics and in theology. This book makes that case well. It should appear on many reading lists and encourage the inclusion of Wollstonecraft in theological ethics both for her place in the history of the tradition and for the rich insights she can offer to modern discourse.