Who is at the helm? Mary Wollstonecraft’s contribution to the romantic construct of the imagination

Abstract In my essay I pursue the line of inquiry which has recently been proposed by scholars who have reconstructed historical context Wollstonecraft’s feminism to bring into sharper focus what can be seen as consistent motives her thought. Starting out from thesis Barbara Taylor that was deeply rooted in egalitarian theology Radical Protestantism (Barbara Taylor, Mary Wollstonecraft and feminist imagination Cambridge University Press, 2003) will argue brief career shows how, analysis hierarchy cognitive faculties, first she redefined reason ascribing it power intuitive apprehension, eventually replaced with distinctive attribute human mind. Positioning herself—through Price’s moral philosophy—in Platonic pagan well Christian Neo-Platonic traditions, arrived several years before Wordsworth or Coleridge not only at an intuition creativity thinking but a definition supreme mental faculty. As result, some emotionally highly charged passages Letters Written During Short Residence Sweden, Norway, Denmark (1796), constructed own version early Romanticism England. These read side epiphany Wordsworth’s 1805 Prelude most powerful examples leading through investment quotidian apprehension immortality.