ABSTRACT
Although separated by almost two hundred years, the possibility of rights and freedom for women in Wollstonecraft’s and Beauvoir’s historical moments are fended off by social and political anxieties about monstrous women, or women who write. The most famous monster of all is useful here as a reference since Frankenstein is conceived by none other than Wollstonecraft’s daughter, Mary Shelley. Inspired by Shelley’s story and her preoccupation with monsters, I bring Wollstonecraft and Beauvoir together to argue that not only are Wollstonecraft and Beauvoir cast as monstrous women, but they also write monstrous texts. Not only the affect, but also the structure, of each of their (in)famous works is a call by and to monstrous women to boldly shape themselves (and all) anew and to reproduce differently. Wollstonecraft and Beauvoir engage in the monstrosity of writing, the creative act par excellence, to call new creatures into being. Together, theirs is a feminist vision of a new community, the future yet to come that we, today’s monsters, have yet to make real from the imagination of our feminist mothers.
