(1) She was mainstream, not a radical outsider. She was part of the Victorian intellectual establishment. Politically, she moved from being a centrist to being openly conservative.

 

But scholars looking at historical women thinkers have been looking out for radical, marginal champions of the oppressed.​

And we assume women weren't allowed into the intellectual establishment.

 

(2) She was religious - seriously religious. Christianity pervades her work. At first she was close to Christian socialism, and gradually she got closer to the mainstream Church of England. She had some religious doubts as a person but she kept them out of her published writing.

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But scholars looking for historical women thinkers often think Christianity was a tool of women's oppression.

 

(3) Wedgwood wrote mainly on 'masculine' topics - science, theology, the history of civilisations, language, the classical world. She could read Greek and Latin and challenge the big men on their own terms.

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But scholars today assume that Victorian women were 'tracked' into writing on themes judged suitable for a woman - like virtuous conduct, domestic stuff, improving the world. 

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TL;DR - she doesn't fit what we expect from a Victorian woman!

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Also, she challenges other assumptions we might have, i.e.

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(I) that Victorian women mostly wrote literature and not philosophy because literature was judged more suitable for women.

Actually Wedgwood was one of lots of women who wrote theory (others: Frances Power Cobbe, Constance Naden, Harriet Martineau, Victoria Welby, Arabella Buckley, Edith Simcox, Mary Augusta Ward, Millicent Fawcett, Anna Kingsford, Annie Besant ... I'll stop there.)

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(II) that Victorian women intellectuals needed a liaison with a famous man, e.g. Harriet Taylor Mill and John Stuart Mill. None of the above women relied on these liaisons apart from possibly Millicent Fawcett (with Henry Fawcett). Wedgwood never married and didn't want to marry. She made her name in her own right.

(and in any case, the Harriet Taylor/John Stuart Mill partnership was more reciprocal than used to be thought)

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