Wollstonecraft was the junior member of the group; however, in our times, she is the more-often quoted feminist because of gender bias and because of the respect earned by her tract A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. That appeared when Jane Austen was about 16 years old. Another junior member of the group was William Godwin (1756-1836), whom you will see described variously as an "anarchist" or as a "free-thinking" socialist. Godwin would become Wollstonecraft's husband and biographer, but was better known, in his day, as an influential radical philosopher. That couple will receive a great deal of attention in this posting.
 

Mary Wollstonecraft was raised in the home of a brutally abusive father, and that turned her attitudes and outlook - Godwin would say that the experience would "substitute the inflexibility of resistance for the confidence of affection". When only a child, Mary Wollstonecraft would sometimes sleep on the floor in front of her mother's bedroom in order to bar that entrance to the drunken father. Mary's grandfather had become very rich - a self-made man - but the father was profligate and the family was sinking back into its humble origins during Mary's lifetime. Mary was the second in the birth order of her family; there was one older brother, two younger brothers, and there were two younger sisters. She resented her older brother and they eventually became alienated. This was due, in part, to Mary's challenge to his inheritance, a part of which she claimed for herself. There was absolutely no legal basis for this claim, but we can recognize the justice in it. (In this way she gains our respect and, in this way, she began a life-long pattern.) Mary was also terribly jealous of her mother's special love and respect for her first-born son. Mary's younger sisters became very dependent upon Mary, Mary fostered that dependence, and then resented the sisters for it. In due course, they also became alienated from Mary and would fail one of Mary's daughters most sadly. Can you imagine the description of a family more unlike that of the Austens'?

The radicalization of an individual is an interesting thing to study. Every case has its unique features, but there may be some generalizations that can be made. Mary Wollstonecraft was certainly provided a receptive mind by what she experienced in her own family life. However, other preconditions always seem to be required; the fledgling radical also needs the right kind of external political conditions and, most important of all, the right kind of acquaintance. These elements were certainly present in Mary Wollstonecraft's development and you can read an account of those matters in the wonderfully detailed biography of Claire Tomalin [Tomalin-MW].

There were many, many important influences in Mary's life; perhaps the most important were Dr. Price, a Dissenter, and the publisher Joseph Johnson. A "Dissenter" was a religious person who rejected the doctrine of the Anglican Church, and criticized the influence and dominance of that state-sponsored religion. Needless to say, they were discriminated against. Price's kindness to Mary, as well as his considerable intellectual gifts, encouraged Mary and introduced in her a respect for the unconventional. After publication of her first philosophical work, and then her first novel, Johnson eliminated Mary Wollstonecraft's practical needs when he set her up in a house with a servant. (Tomalin believes that he was homosexual so that this arrangement could only have been a purely professional one.) Johnson also satisfied her intellectual needs as his home was the common meeting place for intellectual radicals, of lower class backgrounds, and Mary was a frequent and welcome visitor there. You will be deeply impressed when you learn the list of names of the people that Mary met at those evening meetings. Joseph Johnson seems to be one of those shadowy figures of history that can remain hidden, in plain sight, in spite of the tremendous influence he has upon historical or intellectual events.

I admire Wollstonecraft's bravery, her energy, her physical beauty, and her purposefulness. She was productive and adventuresome and I admire her for that as well, but I don't always admire her writing style. The Rights of Woman was composed in only six weeks and it certainly gives that impression. She would occasionally write in a forced and self-conscious way, and she was, at times, desperate that we think her lyrical. A number of female commentators of our day claim she succeeds, but that must be a political reaction and not an objective judgment. Here is an example of what I mean, this appears in a travelogue and is part of a description of Mary's reaction to a beautiful seascape.

"... - I pause, again breathless, to trace, with renewed delight, sentiments which entranced me, when, turning my humid eyes from the expanse below to the vault above, my sight pierced the fleecy clouds that softened the azure brightness; and, imperceptibly recalling the reveries of childhood, I bowed before the awful throne of my Creator, whilst I rested on its footstool."
 

Gads! And did she say "imperceptibly recalling"? Well, she wrote a number of sentences like that; but we know about her because of the way she lived and because she was also capable of writing other kinds of sentences. Mary Wollstonecraft was a novelist at times, but she was at her best when she wrote as a philosopher. Here are some examples of the good sentences, some of my favorites chosen at random.

"Intoxication is the pleasure of savages, and of all those whose employments rather exhaust their animal spirits, than exercise their faculties. Is not this, in fact, the vice, both in England and the northern states of Europe, which appears to be the greatest impediment to general improvement?"
 

Here is one of my very favorites from Chapter 12 of Rights of Woman.

"Humanity to animals should be particularly inculcated as a part of national education, for it is not at present one of our national virtues. ... This habitual cruelty is first taught at school, where it is one of the rare sports of the boys to torment the miserable brutes that fall in their way. The transition, as they grow up, from brutality to brutes to domestic tyranny over wives, children, and servants, is very easy. Justice, or even benevolence, will not be a powerful spring of action unless it extend to the whole of creation; nay, I believe that it may be delivered as an axiom, that those who can see pain, unmoved, will soon learn to inflict it."
 

This next bit is damn near prescient! Mary was watching some young German soldiers being taught their drills and mused about the matter in this way.

"I view, with a mixture of pity and horror, these beings training to be sold to slaughter, or be slaughtered, and fell into reflections, on an old opinion of mine, that it is the preservations of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of the Deity throughout the whole of nature. Blossoms come forth only to be blighted; fish lay their spawn where it will be devoured; and what a large part of the human race are born merely to be swept prematurely away. Does not this waste of budding life emphatically assert, that it is not men, but man, whose preservation is so necessary to the completion of the grand plan of the universe? ..."
 

Remember, Mary Wollstonecraft was writing nearly fifty years before Darwin. All this reminds me of an argument currently raging over the nature of altruism. One side argues that altruism cannot be the result of evolution because the individual who sacrifices himself for others cannot survive to produce children; ergo, it must be culture and not biology that produces this quality in men. The opponents argue that no individual survives, only a chromosome can survive, and the survival of the fittest chromosome might well require that some of its manifestations sacrifice for the benefit of the others. Do you agree that Wollstonecraft hit upon the latter argument over two hundred years ago?

Before Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", she wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Man"! So, those last four words would appear in one of her titles before they appeared in the more famous title of Thomas Paine. Feminist ideas were in the air (primarily in the French air), and Joseph Johnson convinced a somewhat reluctant Mary to publish her own thoughts on this matter being discussed by so many others. In this way, The Rights of Woman was conceived and produced.

In our times, feminist theory is too often about men, who are stereotyped and categorized. And the feminists of our generation talk about something they call a "male-dominated society" (it sounds ideal but I have never seen such a thing and would place the concept alongside those of the "philosopher's stone" and the "competitive marketplace"). These theorists go on to describe all women as powerless and virtuous victims in this cruel environment. Mary Wollstonecraft had anticipated all of the modern theories and issues; she understood all the ways that men exclude women and complained bitterly about them. However, Mary's picture is far more realistic, more balanced, and agrees better with that of most male readers. Also, Mary's feminism was mostly about women, and about how they should be educated to fulfill their aspirations and potentials. To her, there was a context in which the male and female roles are complementary rather than synonymous. Also, she believed that the male-female relationship could be improved upon and that was an important goal. Most say that Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the first feminists, but I am not so sure - maybe she was the last.

Mary Wollstonecraft understood that some women are, indeed, victims; however, as many other women gain complete control through manipulation, badgering, or with the aid of other "artful" female ways including a rationing of affection. Mary describes even worse attributes of such wives. Jane Austen understood all this as well and illustrated that kind of woman in the characters of the younger Mrs. Dashwood, Mrs. Bennet, Charlotte Lucas, Aunt Norris, Isabella Thorpe, Lucy Steele, Mary Crawford, Mary Musgrove, and, most clearly of all, in the character of Lady Susan. Mary Wollstonecraft's tack was to accuse men of creating this monster and to continually ask male readers if this was the kind of companion they intended. She argues, successfully, that the way to eliminate this kind of wife was to include and to respect women more, and to educate them better. This is not an argument to be ignored.

Mary saw women, first and foremost, as mothers and scolded the gentlewomen of her generation for employing wet nurses (a practice followed, for example, in Jane Austen's family). She also took a stand against the boarding schools then becoming popular in England (and remaining popular among the upper classes to this day). Mary argued that children should be educated in day schools so that they could return to their familiar homes and family affection at night. All that is only a small part of Chapter 12 of The Rights of Woman, an excellent chapter and one of the very high points of her tract. However, this Chapter also illustrates my main complaint about The Rights of Woman, it is not always perfectly coherent. I mean, what class of persons is Mary writing about? It would have been the upper classes that sent their sons to boarding school, but if they were to have kept the boys at home, then they would have brought in tutors. It is the lower classes that might make use of day schools, but surely they were not, at that time, employing wet nurses and educating their sons at boarding school. Things might be perfectly coherent if Mary had assumed that some great leveling was imminent; that certainly would have been to that philosopher's liking, but she states no such assumption.

I don't want to paint Mary Wollstonecraft as a "family values" advocate because she was not; her link to the feminists of our day becomes clearer where she discusses the male-female relationship. Those are the places that we can see the complete evaporation to Mary Wollstonecraft's feminist core; there we can see her bitter resentment of - and alienation from the other sex.

I recommend the thin essay, William Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of the Rights of Woman [MW-memoir]. I have seen this essay referred to as a "biography", but that is an exaggeration; it is merely the recollections of a grieving husband for a recently departed wife. Godwin dutifully recounts Mary's side of every story and, since Mary tended to be egotistical, the accounts may have been very one-sided indeed.

Both Wollstonecraft and Paine went to France during the revolution and both met personal difficulties there. Paine became persona non grata for political reasons (he wouldn't applaud the lopping of so many heads) and Wollstonecraft was impregnated and then abandoned by an American, Gilbert Imlay. The child was to be known as Fanny Imlay (the given name chosen to commemorate Mary's youthful infatuation with a Miss Fanny Blood). Mary published an essay on her travels in Scandinavia [Travels]. This essay takes the form of a series of letters and one has the impression that they are addressed to Gilbert Imlay; at places, the writing seems intended to provoke and to taunt him. People, who study these matters, tell us that they were probably kept in a journal and never actually shown to Imlay; except, of course, when he could read them after publication.

Mary Wollstonecraft thought hard and well but she did not think consistently because her mind was too conflicted and constrained. The cost of not thinking consistently is always the same - a life lived in contradictions. Wollstonecraft was flirtatious and confrontational; idealistic and morally obtuse; and she was lustful and philosophical - she was all over the map. In the Rights of Woman, she tells us that an attenuation of the passion between the sexes is desirable and a sign of a perfecting society; yet, her own husband would refer to her as "a female Werter" because she so often imposed upon marriages or upon committed relationships. She advocated free love, but attempted suicide when her lover demonstrated that he knew how to live that way as well. She insisted on the dignity and independence of women but degraded herself when she begged Imlay to allow her to live with him and his new girl friend. She eschewed marriage as a "selfish" anachronism, and extolled the "independent" life of the unwed mother, but when faced with the prospect of a second daughter born out of wedlock, she convinced Godwin to marry her. Mary Wollstonecraft could go on and on about the terrible way that the upper classes treated the lower, but when she mingled with the common folks she could become their severest critic. She traveled throughout Sweden and Denmark, dependent upon the good will and hospitality of the commoners, and her gratuity would be a sneer. She committed these elitist and condescending views to paper, which she sold as an essay in order to bring herself profit and distinction [Travels]. Godwin's contradictions were greater in number and were more profound, but were born of the same lack of intellectual rigor.

And contradiction begets irony. This brave and brilliant woman was in Scandinavia on a wild-goose chase; sent there by Fanny's father while he bedded some actress in London. And Godwin would say that Mary's essay was the thing that made him love her!

After Mary Wollstonecraft became the wife of William Godwin, she died from complications due to childbirth - that child was to become Mary Shelley. In his own time, Godwin was criticized for the candor shown in his Memoirs of Mary. That can still be one's impression to this day; all the love affairs are carefully recounted, and we read all the technical details of Mary's suicide attempts and of her decline and death after the birth of their child. Godwin did not show much delicacy, but the account does show he had a complete intimacy with his wife that many men of today will envy. I find that, if you read between the lines, the account can often be amusing in an unintended way. For example, Godwin goes to great lengths to inform us about how loving and close his relationship with Mary was, but then we learn that they never actually lived together after the marriage - oh sure, they were "close neighbors". Godwin assures us that Mary also wanted things that way - a surprise given the extraordinary effort Mary made in order to be allowed to live with Fanny Imlay's father. There are a number of things like that; but, if you do chuckle, be careful of where you admit it. Don't get me wrong, the Memoir is also sad, poignant and sweet, and very interesting.

Living in contradiction is not exactly the same thing as hypocrisy - there is a boundary between the two - you will judge for yourself on which side of the line Wollstonecraft and Godwin set themselves. To me, Mary Wollstonecraft is a tragic, sweet, and heroic person and I truly admire her - what man did not? could not? I know what it is like to come from a dysfunctional family; what it is to struggle to survive in spirit and sanity. It's a life that usually breaks a person, but for some, like Mary Wollstonecraft, the experience first strengthens and then makes one fiercely independent - too independent. The distrust you learn for your family elders then extends to the community and then beyond. The feeling is made mutual, in part by the reputation of your family and, in part, by your own extravagant behavior. There is no opportunity to learn the basic social graces and you become cynical and uncooperative - and you want to have it your own way. There is no escape and you become locked in a struggle with society. There must have been many times that Mary tried to surrender her struggle, but it would only have taken a single remark or even a certain kind of glance and she would have been ready to resume the fight.

There are those among us who know that one cannot attempt to completely re-invent society and then expect a good result - or even a passable result. They know that innovations must be made carefully and incrementally, and that the "proprieties" are the encoding of vast experience and painfully won knowledge, and must ever be referenced. Honor and grace come from a life well lived and can never be acquired by the mere arm-chair invention of a whole new set of philosophical rules for society. But then, the individual who can remember using his body to shield his mother is not the same person who can compose such a calm, wise philosophy. Individuals in Mary Wollstoncraft's situation become convinced that they can - must - re-invent the world and that they will be absolved in this way; however, they are doomed to become the sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, but always charismatic figures of history.

Mary Wollstonecraft may have expressed these things best when she was writing about one of her personal tragic heroines, Princess Matilda.

"Disgusted with many customs which pass for virtues, though they are nothing more than observances of forms, often at the expense of truth, she probably ran into an error common to innovators, in wishing to do immediately what can only be done by time."
 
 
 

(Mary Wollstonecraft and
Other Contemporaries of Jane Austen:
A Male Voices Web Page)