MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, 1759-1797
Early life
Wollstonecraft
was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London.
Although her family had a comfortable income when she was a child, her father
gradually squandered it on speculative projects. Consequently, the family
became financially unstable and they were frequently forced to move during
Wollstonecraft's youth. The family's financial situation eventually became so
dire that Wollstonecraft's father compelled her to turn over money that she
would have inherited at her maturity. Moreover, he was apparently a violent man
who would beat his wife in drunken rages. As a teenager, Wollstonecraft used to
lie outside the door of her mother's bedroom to protect her. Wollstonecraft
played a similar maternal role for her sisters, Everina and Eliza, throughout
her life. For example, in a defining moment in 1784, she convinced Eliza, who
was suffering from what was probably postpartum depression, to leave her
husband and infant; Wollstonecraft made all of the arrangements for Eliza to
flee, demonstrating her willingness to challenge social norms. The human costs,
however, were severe: her sister suffered social condemnation and, because she
could not remarry, was doomed to a life of poverty and hard work.
Two
friendships shaped Wollstonecraft's early life. The first was with Jane Arden
in Beverley.
The two frequently read books together and attended lectures presented by
Arden's father, a self-styled philosopher and scientist. Wollstonecraft reveled
in the intellectual atmosphere of the Arden household and valued her friendship
with Arden greatly, sometimes to the point of being emotionally possessive.
Wollstonecraft wrote to her: "I have formed romantic notions of friendship…I
am a little singular in my thoughts of love and friendship; I must have the
first place or none." In some of Wollstonecraft's letters to Arden, she
reveals the volatile and depressive emotions that would haunt her throughout
her life.
The second
and more important friendship was with Fanny Blood, introduced to
Wollstonecraft by the Clares, a couple in Hoxton who
became parental figures to her; Wollstonecraft credited Blood with opening her
mind. Unhappy with her home life, Wollstonecraft struck out on her own in 1778
and accepted a job as a lady's companion to Sarah Dawson, a widow living in Bath.
However, Wollstonecraft had trouble getting along with the irascible woman (an
experience she drew on when describing the drawbacks of such a position in Thoughts on the Education of
Daughters (1787)). In 1780 she returned home, called to care for
her dying mother. Rather than return to Mrs. Dawson's employ after the death of
her mother, Wollstonecraft moved in with the Bloods. She realized during the
two years she spent with the family that she had idealized Blood, who was more
invested in traditional feminine values than was Wollstonecraft. But
Wollstonecraft remained dedicated to her and her family throughout her life
(she frequently gave pecuniary assistance to Blood's brother, for example).
Wollstonecraft
had envisioned living in a female utopia with Blood; they made plans to rent
rooms together and support each other emotionally and financially, but this
dream collapsed under economic realities. In order to make a living,
Wollstonecraft, her sisters, and Blood set up a school together in Newington
Green, a Dissenting community. Blood soon became engaged
and after their marriage her husband, Hugh Skeys, took her to Europe to improve
her health, which had always been precarious. Despite the change of
surroundings Blood's health further deteriorated when she became pregnant, and
in 1785 Wollstonecraft left the school and followed Blood to nurse her, but to
no avail. Moreover, her abandonment of the school led to its failure. Blood's
death devastated Wollstonecraft and was part of the inspiration for her first
novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788).
"The
first of a new genus"
After
Blood's death, Wollstonecraft's friends helped her obtain a position as governess to the
daughters of the Anglo-Irish Kingsborough
family in Ireland. Although she could not get along with Lady Kingsborough, the
children found her an inspiring instructor; Margaret King would later say she
"had freed her mind from all superstitions". Some of Wollstonecraft's
experiences during this year would make their way into her only children's
book, Original
Stories from Real Life (1788).
Frustrated
by the limited career options open to respectable yet poor women—an impediment
which Wollstonecraft eloquently describes in the chapter of Thoughts on the Education of Daughters entitled "Unfortunate Situation of Females, Fashionably Educated, and
Left Without a Fortune"—she decided, after only a year as a governess, to
embark upon a career as an author. This was a radical choice, since, at the
time, few women could support themselves by writing. As she wrote to her sister
Everina in 1787, she was trying to become "the first of a new genus".
She moved to London and, assisted by the liberal publisher Joseph
Johnson, found a place to live and work to support
herself. She learned French and German and translated texts, most notably Of
the Importance of Religious Opinions by Jacques Necker and Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children by Christian
Gotthilf Salzmann. She also wrote reviews,
primarily of novels, for Johnson's periodical, the Analytical Review. Wollstonecraft's intellectual universe expanded during this time, not
only from the reading that she did for her reviews but also from the company
she kept: she attended Johnson's famous dinners and met such luminaries as the
radical pamphleteer Thomas Paine and the
philosopher William Godwin. The first
time Godwin and Wollstonecraft met, they were both disappointed in each other.
Godwin had come to hear Paine, but Wollstonecraft assailed him all night long,
disagreeing with him on nearly every subject. Johnson himself, however, became
much more than a friend; she described him in her letters as a father and a
brother.
While in
London, Wollstonecraft pursued a relationship with the artist Henry Fuseli, even
though he was already married. She was, she wrote, enraptured by his genius,
"the grandeur of his soul, that quickness of comprehension, and lovely sympathy".
She proposed a platonic living arrangement with Fuseli and his wife, but
Fuseli's wife was appalled, and he broke off the relationship with
Wollstonecraft. After Fuseli's rejection, Wollstonecraft decided to travel to
France to escape the humiliation of the incident, and to participate in the
revolutionary events that she had just celebrated in her recent Vindication
of the Rights of Men (1790). She had written the Rights
of Men in response to Edmund Burke's
conservative critique of the French Revolution in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and it made her famous overnight. She was compared with such
leading lights as the theologian and controversialist Joseph Priestley and Paine,
whose Rights of Man (1791)
would prove to be the most popular of the responses to Burke. She pursued the
ideas she had outlined in Rights of Men in A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), her
most famous and influential work.
Wollstonecraft
left for Paris in December 1792 and arrived
about a month before Louis XVI was guillotined. The country was in turmoil. She sought out other British
visitors such as Helen Maria
Williams and joined the circle of expatriates then in
the city. Having just written the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft was
determined to put her ideas to the test, and in the stimulating intellectual
atmosphere of the French revolution she attempted her most experimental romantic attachment yet: she met and
fell passionately in love with Gilbert Imlay, an
American adventurer. Whether or not Wollstonecraft was interested in marriage,
Imlay was not, and Wollstonecraft appears to have fallen in love with an
idealized portrait of the man. While Wollstonecraft had rejected the sexual
component of relationships in the Rights of Woman, Imlay awakened her
passions and her interest in sex. Wollstonecraft soon became pregnant, and on
14 May 1794 she gave birth to her first child, Fanny, naming her after perhaps her closest friend. Wollstonecraft was
overjoyed; she wrote to a friend: "My little Girl begins to suck so
MANFULLY that her father reckons saucily on her writing the second part of the
Rights of Woman" (emphasis Wollstonecraft's). Wollstonecraft continued to
write avidly despite not only her pregnancy and the burdens of being a new
mother alone in a foreign country but also the growing tumult of the French
revolution. While at Le Havre in northern
France, she wrote a history of the early revolution, An Historical and Moral
View of the French Revolution, which was published in London in December
1794.
As the
political situation worsened, Britain declared war on France, placing all British citizens in France in considerable danger.
To protect Wollstonecraft, Imlay registered her as his wife in 1793, even
though they were not married. Some of Wollstonecraft's friends were not so
lucky; many, like Thomas Paine, were arrested, and some were even guillotined.
(Wollstonecraft's sisters believed she had been imprisoned.) After
Wollstonecraft left France, she continued to refer to herself as Mrs. Imlay,
even to her sisters, in order to bestow legitimacy upon her child.
Imlay,
unhappy with the domestic-minded and maternal Wollstonecraft, eventually left
her. He promised that he would return to Le Havre where she went to give birth
to her child, but his delays in writing to her and his long absences convinced
Wollstonecraft that he had found another woman. Her letters to him are full of
needy expostulations, explained by most critics as the expressions of a deeply
depressed woman but by some as a result of her circumstances—alone with an
infant in the middle of a revolution.
Seeking
Imlay, Wollstonecraft returned to London in April 1795, but he rejected her. In
May 1795 she attempted to commit suicide, probably with laudanum, but Imlay
saved her life (although it is unclear how). In a last attempt to win back
Imlay, she embarked upon some business negotiations for him in Scandinavia, trying to
recoup some of his losses. Wollstonecraft undertook this hazardous trip with
only her young daughter and a maid. She recounted her travels and thoughts in
letters to Imlay, many of which were eventually published as Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden,
Norway, and Denmark in 1796. When she returned to
England and came to the full realization that her relationship with Imlay was
over, she attempted suicide for the second time, leaving a note for Imlay:
Let my
wrongs sleep with me! Soon, very soon, I shall be at peace. When you receive
this, my burning head will be cold. . . . I shall plunge into the Thames where
there is least chance of my being snatched from the death I seek. God bless
you! May you never know by experience what you have made me endure. Should your
sensibility ever awake, remorse will find its way to your heart; and, in the
midst of business and sensual pleasure, I shall appear before you, the victim
of your deviation from rectitude.
She then
went out on a rainy night and "to make her clothes heavy with water, she
walked up and down about half an hour" before jumping into the River Thames, but a
stranger saw her jump and rescued her. Wollstonecraft considered her suicide
attempt deeply rational, writing after her rescue, "I have only to lament,
that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to
life and misery. But a fixed determination is not to be baffled by
disappointment; nor will I allow that to be a frantic attempt, which was one of
the calmest acts of reason. In this respect, I am only accountable to myself.
Did I care for what is termed reputation, it is by other circumstances that I
should be dishonoured."
Gradually,
Wollstonecraft returned to her literary life, becoming involved with Joseph
Johnson's circle again, in particular with Mary Hays, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Sarah Siddons through William Godwin. Godwin and
Wollstonecraft's unique courtship began slowly, but it eventually became a
passionate love affair. Godwin had read her Letters Written in Sweden,
Norway, and Denmark and later wrote that "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." Once Wollstonecraft became pregnant, they decided to
marry so that their child would be legitimate. Their marriage revealed the fact
that Wollstonecraft had never been married to Imlay, and as a result she and
Godwin lost many friends. Godwin received further criticism because he had
advocated the abolition of marriage in his philosophical treatise Political Justice. After their marriage on 29 March 1797, they moved into two adjoining
houses, known as The Polygon, so that they could both still retain their
independence; they often communicated by letter. By all accounts, theirs was a
happy and stable, though tragically brief, relationship.
On 30 August
1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second daughter, Mary. Although
the delivery seemed to go well initially, the placenta broke apart during the birth and became infected, a common occurrence in
the eighteenth century. After several days of agony, Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia on 10
September. Godwin was devastated: he wrote to his friend Thomas Holcroft, "I
firmly believe there does not exist her equal in the world. I know from
experience we were formed to make each other happy. I have not the least
expectation that I can now ever know happiness again." She was buried at Old Saint
Pancras Churchyard, and a memorial to her was
constructed there, though both her and Godwin's remains were later moved to Bournemouth. Her
tombstone reads, "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A Vindication
of the Rights of Woman: Born 27 April 1759: Died 10 September 1797."
In January
1798 Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights
of Woman. Although Godwin felt that he
was portraying his wife with love, compassion, and sincerity, many readers were
shocked that he would reveal Wollstonecraft's illegitimate children, love
affairs, and suicide attempts. The Romantic poet Robert Southey accused him
of "the want of all feeling in stripping his dead wife naked" and
vicious satires such as The Unsex'd
Females were published. Godwin's Memoirs
portrays Wollstonecraft as a woman deeply invested in feeling who was balanced
by his reason and as more of a religious skeptic than her own writings suggest.
Godwin's views of Wollstonecraft were perpetuated throughout the nineteenth
century and resulted in poems such as "Wollstonecraft and Fuseli" by
British poet Robert Browning and that by
William Roscoe which
includes the lines:
Hard was thy
fate in all the scenes of life
As daughter,
sister, mother, friend, and wife;
But harder
still, thy fate in death we own,
Thus mourn'd
by Godwin with a heart of stone.
Legacy
Wollstonecraft
has had what scholar Cora Kaplan labels a "curious" legacy: "for
an author-activist adept in many genres… up until the last quarter-century
Wollstonecraft's life has been read much more closely than her writing".
After the devastating effect of Godwin's Memoirs, Wollstonecraft's
reputation lay in tatters for a century; she was pilloried by such writers as Maria Edgeworth, who
patterned the "freakish" Harriet Freke in Belinda (1801) after Wollstonecraft. Other novelists such as Mary Hays, Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, and Jane West created
similar figures, all to teach a "moral lesson" to their readers. As
Wollstonecraft scholar Virginia Sapiro makes clear, few read Wollstonecraft's
works during the nineteenth century as "her attackers implied or stated
that no self-respecting woman would read her work". Only Lucretia Mott, an early
American feminist, seems to have been influenced by Wollstonecraft's works.
According to Sapiro, "there is little indication that anyone who played a
key role in women's history or feminism, other than Lucretia Mott, read
Wollstonecraft's work seriously after her death until the twentieth
century." With the advent of the modern feminist movement, however,
women as politically dissimilar from each other as Virginia Woolf and Emma Goldman embraced
Wollstonecraft's life story and celebrated her "experiments in
living", as Woolf termed them in a famous essay. Many, however, continued
to decry Wollstonecraft's lifestyle and her works were still ignored.
With the
emergence of feminist criticism in academia in the 1960s and 1970s,
Wollstonecraft's works returned to prominence. Their fortunes reflected that of
the feminist movement itself; for example, in the early 1970s, six major
biographies of Wollstonecraft were published that presented her
"passionate life in apposition to [her]
radical and rationalist agenda". Wollstonecraft was seen as a paradoxical
yet intriguing figure who did not adhere to the 1970s version of
feminism—"the personal is the political". In the 1980s and 1990s, yet
another image of Wollstonecraft emerged, one which described her as much more a
creature of her time; scholars such as Claudia Johnson, Gary Kelly, and
Virginia Sapiro demonstrated the continuity between Wollstonecraft's thought
and other important eighteenth-century ideas regarding topics such as sensibility, economics,
and political theory.
Wollstonecraft's
work has also had an effect on feminism outside the academy in recent years. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a feminist
who is critical of Islam's dictates regarding
women, cited the Rights of Woman in her
autobiography and wrote that she was "inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft, the
pioneering feminist thinker who told women they had the same ability to reason
as men did and deserved the same rights".
URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft
OTHER INTERESTING BIOGRAPHIES:
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] NEXT →