Shelley (portrayed in the film by Elle Fanning ) was raised with an impressively liberal pedigree. Her father, noted philosopher William Goodwin, is considered the architect of modern anarchism. Her mother was none other than Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer of feminist thought at a time when women were considered, at best, property. She wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was published in 1792, just shortly after the American Revolution. In the book, Wollstonecraft made the incredible insight that women are actually people, and are deserving of the same social rights of the time. She also argued that men and women should follow the same conventions regarding modesty and sex — a prototypical version of the double-standard idea. If women weren’t allowed to have premarital sex, why should men?