Note:
This entry is a day late, but way to interesting to let a little thing
like promptness interfere.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published on January 3, 1792 in England. It is widely regarded as the first manifesto
of women’s rights and its author, 32 year old Mary Wollstonecraft, is
now considered the godmother of feminism.
She was one of the first British women to earn “my own living by the
pen,” and enjoyed contemporary fame.
In her short career she published memoirs, essays, a novel, a
travel book, and a children’s book.
But in less than five years, at the height of her
fame, she was dead. The well-meaning
publication of an “autobiography” largely penned by her widower, William
Goodwin the freethinking philosopher and crypto anarchist,
after her death exposed her most intimate and radical opinions as well as her—for
the time—radically sexually unconventional life. Her reputation as a writer was ruined among
all but a handful of devotees and for more than a hundred years she was held up
not for her genius but as an example of a wicked woman corrupting society.
Sound familiar?
The same smears affected the lives and reputations of other daring
feminists and writers with unconventional lives—Margaret Fuller, Victoria
Claflin Woodhull, Margaret Sanger, and even poets like Edna St. Vincent
Millay spring to mind.
But it all started with the woman who was also
remembered for being the mother of a daughter she hardly knew—Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.
Mary was born in London on April 27, 1759 the
second of seven children in genteel and comfortable circumstances. But her improvident father slowly squandered
the family wealth in poor business schemes and seems to have taken out their
reduced circumstances on the family, often attacking Mary’s mother. At an early age as the family moved to ever
humbler accommodation’s, Mary found herself a surrogate mother to her siblings
and a protector of her often ill mother,
She would sleep outside her mother’s door to protect her from her father’s
wrath.
She was an exceptionally bright child and excelled
at what education she was able to get, reading everything she could get her hands
on. She found refuge in two deep friendships
and a surrogate family. Her first great
tie was to Jane Arden, the daughter of a self-taught philosopher and
scientist who gave lectures around Yorkshire where the Ardens lived in Beverly. Mary and Jane read together, attended
Jane’s fathers lectures and engaged in a long, somewhat passionate on Mary’s
side correspondence.
The second figure was Fanny Blood, in whom
Mary felt she had found an intellectual and emotional soul mate. After leaving home—running away really—at the
age of 16 to take a position as a lady’s companion—she moved in with the
Blood family after the situation ended disastrously. Mary was neither suitable for the role of a
glorified servant or for the restrictions she felt put upon young women of
breeding but no income. The experience
as a companion would be the basis of her 1787 book Thoughts on the Education of Daughters.
At the Blood household Mary had access to a fine
library and stimulating conversation.
She idealized the family. She and
Fanny made plans to go off and live together in a free woman’s household,
dependent on no man. Mary was deeply
invested in these plans.
Mary returned home for a brief time in 1780 to nurse
her dying mother—and to try and retrieve from her father a small inheritance she
was due when she reached maturity and which he had coerced from her. After her mother’s death Mary and some of her
sisters joined with Fanny in opening a school together for the Dissenting community
at Newington Green. But Fanny
allowed herself to be courted and married.
Her husband took her to Lisbon, Portugal. There Fanny’s health began to fail. Mary abandoned the school, which then failed,
to rush to the side of her friend to nurse her through her last days. It was a crushing blow.
She would draw on the experience for her first
novel, Mary: A Fiction in
1788.
In emotional and financial crisis, Mary reluctantly
took a job as governess to the wealth Anglo-Irish Kingsborough as
she had in her previous privet employment she found herself at odds with lady
of the house. But she enjoyed the two
lively girls in her charge and they in turn were inspired that she, as one
would write later, “had freed her mind from all superstitions.” After a year she left the household vowing
never to take another such position again.
These experiences also impacted Thoughts on the Education of Daughters and became the basis for her
1788 children’s book, Original Stories
from Real Life which would be illustrated with engravings by William
Blake.
Returning to London, Mary resolved to make her
living as a writer—a virtually unheard of path for any woman. As she wrote to her sister, she was trying to
become “the first of a new genus.”
She had the help of a mentor. Joseph Johnson was a liberal, even
radical, publisher from the dissenting circles of Joseph Priestly. He had expanded from religious publishing to
include scientific and philosophic work by the likes of William Godwin, Thomas
Malthus, and the American Joel Barlow, as well as poetry by Erasmus
Darwin and William Cowper. He
was also a passionate supporter of the French Revolution. He maintained a sort of salon called
the Johnson Circle through which Mary would meet many of these and other
leading liberal figures.
It was at Johnson’s home for such a gathering in
honor of Thomas Paine that Mary first met Goodwin. They did not, at first hit it off. Goodwin was miffed by what he considered Mary’s
rude and persistent cross examination of Payne.
Johnson helped Mary secure lodgings and subsidized
her. He gave her employment and exposure
as a writer with assignments of review in Johnson’s magazine the Analytical Review. In this heady atmosphere she thrived,
expanding her horizons and interests. She
studied French and German and quickly mastered both so well that
she earned additional income as a translator of literary works.
By 1786 Johnson was publishing what proved to be a
virtual fountain of books by Wollstonecraft, who quickly earned a reputation
and a following. She had achieved her
dream of supporting herself with her pen.
Through Johnson, Mary became interested in the
French Revolution. In 1790 she published
one of the first responses to Edmund Burke’s disparagement of the
Revolution, Vindication of the Rights
of Men a full year before
Paine’s similarly titled answer. The
book was her most successful yet and made her a genuine celebrity for the first
time.
Meanwhile Mary was pursuing an ill-fated romantic
obsession, this time with a man, the married artist Henry Fuseli. She was swept up in his genius and
unleashed a torrent of letters. Fuseli
was flattered and seemed to reciprocate the advances. But when Mary proposed an ideal Platonic
relationship in which she would join Fuseli’s household as a third member, the
outraged artist broke off all contact.
Mary was crushed and humiliated.
She remained in London long enough to finish her
follow-up to the Vindication of the
Rights of Men. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman she
broke entirely new ground. This time she
was responding to a report by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand 1791 report
to the French National Assembly, which argued that women should only
receive a domestic education. In full
outrage she set out to refute the idea and advance the status of women to full
social equality with men while maintaining distinct roles for each. She advocated full educational opportunities and
the opening of new professional opportunities.
Ignoring, for the most part, the lower classes, Wollstonecraft’s book
was more than anything a declaration of independence for educated, middle class
women like herself.
Despite the later myth that the book was reviled
upon publication, it was actually a huge success and was greeted with approving
reviews not only in England, but in the United States where editions
were quickly published—editions which would influence the likes of Abigail
Adams and later several female associates of the Transcendental circles,
most notably Margaret Fuller.
When the first edition rapidly sold out, Mary
re-edited a second making numerous small corrections, but also to further sharpen
her arguments. Still, she was not
entirely satisfied and planed on a second volume to expand on her
thoughts. That work, interrupted by her
soon tempestuous life, was never completed, but her last unfinished novel, Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, which
was posthumously published by Goodwin in his definitive editions of Mary’s work,
is often viewed as a fictional sequel.
Wollstonecraft had fled to Paris to escape
the humiliation of her failed affair with Fuseli in 1792 as the second edition
was readied for publication. In Paris
she hoped to breathe the free air of the Revolution—and perhaps join in its
reforms. She also wanted to work on a
planned history of the Revolution. She
arrived in December, just one month before Louis XVI went to the guillotine.
Those were, you should excuse the pun, heady times,
but also dangerous ones. In the midst of
the excitement swirling around her, May fell in love again, this time with an American
adventurer, unscrupulous businessman, and diplomat Gilbert Imlay. To this point in her life all of
Wollstonecraft’s romantic attachments to both sexes had been chaste. Indeed she idealized Platonic love. But this would be different. Imlay swept her
off of her feet. The two were soon
intimate. The thirty year old was a
virgin no more.
After Britain declared war on France in 1793, Mary
was endangered as a British national. To
protect her from possible arrest and internment, Imlay registered her with the
state as his wife, although no marriage had ever occurred. Afterwards she lived
and traveled as Mrs. Imlay.
Imlay impregnated her then abandoned her On May 14,
1794 she gave birth in Le Havre to her first daughter named Fanny after
her old friend and earlier object of obsession.
During her pregnancy Mary had continued to write and
completed her history of the early phases of the Revolution An Historical and Moral View of the French
Revolution, which was published in London in December 1794.
It is unclear if Mary otherwise elated with the
birth of her child, expected or desired marriage. Imlay plainly did not. Kicking into a familiar obsessive pattern, he
deluged him with pleading, pitiful letters. Then she followed him to London in
1795 where he again rejected her. She
attempted suicide by drinking laudanum. Imlay discovered
her and saved her life.
Trying to win back his approval and affection, she
volunteered to give up her writing to act as a business agent for him in some
schemes in Scandinavia. Imlay was
glad to see her far away. Taking her
infant daughter with her, Mary undertook a hazardous war time journey. She chronicled her travels and escalating
sense of betrayal in a series of letters to the uncaring Imlay, which she later
edited into a travel volume, Letters
Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, the
last book published in her lifetime.
Back in London realizing her relationship with Imlay
was hopeless, Mary attempted suicide a second time. Leaving a long note, she jumped into the
Themes but was rescued by passersby.
Old friends and acquaintances rallied around her, including
Goodwin. The philosopher was soon as
smitten by Mary as she had been by Imlay.
When he read her Scandinavian memoir he wrote, “If ever there was a book
calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the
book. She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and
dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius which
commands all our admiration.”
It took a bit of time, but Mary warmed to her
admirer and was soon completely in love herself—this time to a man who actually
cared for her. When she became pregnant
the couple decided to marry. But the
marriage revealed publicly that her claim to be Mrs. Imlay was a sham. The more conventional of Mary’s friends and acquaintances
felt they had to abandon her or be tainted themselves. And many of Godwin’s admirers were shocked
that the former critic of marriage had succumbed to it.
Despite the furor the happy couple married on March
29, 1797. They settled into adjoining
houses known as The Polygon so that each could maintain separate lives
and identities in keeping with their personal philosophies. Although the saw each other daily, they
continued to communicate with letters.
By all reports they were both very happy.
A daughter Mary was born on August 30. The baby was healthy. But the mother’s placenta was torn and
not completely expelled. It became
infected and after days of agony, Mary died of septicemia—then called puerperal
fever on September 10. She was buried
at, not as was widely expected, by dissenters, but at Old Saint Pancras Church
yard. The stone Godwin erected read, “Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman.”
Goodwin was devastated by the loss. He spent much of the rest of his life memorializing
his dead wife. He rushed his biography
of his wife into print in January 1798.
He felt it was a loving vindication of her life and struggles. He was completely, probably stupidly,
candid. He recounted not only her triumphs
and considerable literary achievements, but also her romances and obsessions,
her black depressions, her affairs, out of wedlock pregnancies, and her suicide
attempts. Readers were shocked and
repelled. Goodwin was shocked and
mystified at the storm of condemnation his book brought down on his dead wife.
A small cottage industry sprang up denouncing
Wollstonecraft. At worst she was
denounced as a slut and whore. At best
she was held up as an abject lesson of what can happen to young girls who
aspire too much and are dissatisfied with their rigidly appointed roles in
life. Poet Richard Polwhele unleashed
a long and vicious verse attack on her called The Unsex’d Females, a Poem. Several
women novelists, including at least one erstwhile friend, used her as models
for tragic characters who come to no good end.
Critics who had once hailed her work now reviled it while social and
political reactionaries rejoiced at her downfall.
Goodwin edited her remaining manuscripts and issued
them, as well as comprehensive editions of her published work in an attempt to
revive her reputation. While she
continued to have some fans and supporters, to the general public she was a
dead pariah.
Through the 19th and into the 20th
sordid life story dominated her memory.
There were a few positives. New editions
of her work continued to be re-published to a very select audience. At least one positive biography came out to
counter those that demonized her. Poet Robert
Browning composed a sympathetic verse, Wollstonecraft and Fuseli and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning
referred to her admiringly. George
Eliot was the first to link the lives and fates of Wollstonecraft and
Margaret Fuller.
If Wollstonecraft’s reputation fell in Britain, it
plummeted in the United States, always more puritanical in matters of
sex. Yet pioneering women’s rights figure
Lucretia Mott read and treasured her.
Near the turn of the 20th Century British suffragist
Millicent Fawcett issued a new edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with an admiring
preface. In the new century she was
embraced by Emma Goldman on one hand and Virginia Wolfe on the
other
But full restoration of Wollstonecraft’s reputation
had to wait for the birth of second wave feminism in the 1960’s. Six new biographies were published by the mid
‘70’s. Her work became a staple of the women’s
studies departments being established at major universities in this county.
After all this time, welcome back, Mary
Wollstonecraft.
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