Mary Wollstonecraft was born 27 April 1759. Companion to a lady, 1778–80. Kept school at Newington Green with her sister, 1783–85. Acquaintance with Dr. Johnson. Governess in Lord Kingsborough’s family, 1787–88. To London; worked as reader and translator for Dr. Johnson, 1788–92. Met William Godwin, Nov. 1791. To Paris, 1792. Lived with Gilbert Imlay, 1793–96. Attempted suicide, 1796. Intimacy with William Godwin begun, 1796; married to him, 29 March 1797. Died, in London, 10 Sept. 1797. Works: “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters,” 1787; “Original Stories” (anon.), 1788; “Vindication of the Rights of Men,” 1790; “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” vol. i., 1792 (no more pub.); “Historical and Moral View of … the French Revolution,” vol. i., 1794 (no more pub.); “Letters written in Norway,” 1796. Posthumous: “Posthumous Works,” ed. by Wm. Godwin (4 vols.), 1798; “Letters to Imlay,” ed. by C. Kegan Paul, 1879. She translated: Salzmann’s “Elements of Morality,” 1790.

Personal

  I never wanted but your heart—that gone, you have nothing more to give. Had I only poverty to fear, I should not shrink from life. Forgive me then, if I say, that I shall consider any direct or indirect attempt to supply my necessities, as an insult which I have not merited, and as rather done out of tenderness for your own reputation, than for me. My child may have to blush for her mother’s want of prudence, and may lament that the rectitude of my heart made me above vulgar precautions; but she shall not despise me for meanness. You are now perfectly free. God bless you!

  Adieu, thou excellent woman! thou reverse of that hyæna in petticoats, Mrs. Wolstoncroft, who to this day discharges her ink and gall on Maria Antoinette, whose unparalleled sufferings have not yet stanched that Alecto’s blazing ferocity.

  Of all the lions or literati I have seen here, Mary Imlay’s countenance is the best, infinitely the best: the only fault in it is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of Horne Tooke display—an expression indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not sarcasm, in Mary Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are the most meaning I ever saw.

  Mrs. Godwin died on Sunday, Sept. 10, about eight in the morning. I was with her at the time of her delivery, and with very little intermission until the moment of her death. Every skilful effort that medical knowledge of the highest class could make, was exerted to save her. It is not possible to describe the unremitting and devoted attentions of her husband. Nor is it easy to give you an adequate idea of the affectionate zeal of many of her friends, who were on the watch night and day to seize on an opportunity of contributing towards her recovery, and to lessen her sufferings…. I know of no consolations for myself, but in remembering how happy she had lately been, and how much she was admired, and almost idolized, by some of the most eminent and best of human beings.

  The loss of the world in this admirable woman, I leave to other men to collect; my own I well know, nor can it be improper to describe it. I do not here allude to the pleasures I enjoyed in her conversation: these increased every day, in proportion as we knew each other better, and as our mutual confidence increased. They can be measured only by the treasures of her mind, and the virtues of her heart. But this is a subject for meditation, not for words. What I purposed alluding to, was the improvement that I have forever lost.

  An Ariel imprisoned in a brickbat! It is a real tragedy and of the deepest. Sublimely virtuous endowment; in practice, misfortune, suffering, death … by destiny, and also by desert. An English Mignon; Godwin an honest boor that loves her, but cannot guide or save her.

  Fuseli found in her a philosophical sloven: her usual dress being a habit of coarse cloth, black worsted stockings, and a beaver hat, with her hair hanging lank about her shoulders. When the Prince Talleyrand was in this country, in a low condition with regard to his pecuniary affairs, and visited her, they drank their tea, and the little wine they took, indiscriminately from tea-cups.

  No woman (with the exception of the greatest woman, Madame de Staël) has made any impression on the public mind during the last fifty years, to be compared with Mrs. Godwin. This was perhaps more especially true in the provinces, where her new and startling doctrines were seized with avidity, and acted upon in some particulars to considerable extent, particularly by married women…. She was, I have been told by an intimate friend, very pretty and feminine in manners and person; much attached to those very observances she decries in her works; so that if any gentleman did not fly to open the door as she approached it, or take up the handkerchief she dropped, she showered on him the full weight of reproach and displeasure; an inconsistency she would have doubtless despised in a disciple. I have heard the late Miss Jewsbury express an intention of so remodelling the Rights of Women, that it would not fail to become attractive, and she thought useful.

  Mary Wollstonecraft was one of those beings who appear once perhaps in a generation, to gild humanity with a ray which no difference of opinion nor chance of circumstances can cloud. Her genius was undeniable. She had been bred in the hard school of adversity, and having experienced the sorrows entailed on the poor and the oppressed, an earnest desire was kindled within her to diminish these sorrows. Her sound understanding, her intrepidity, her sensibility and eager sympathy, stamped all her writings with force and truth, and endowed them with a tender charm that enchants while it enlightens. She was one whom all loved who had ever seen her. Many years are passed since that beating heart has been laid in the cold still grave, but no one who has ever seen her speaks of her without enthusiastic veneration. Did she witness an act of injustice, she boldly came forward to point it out, and induce its reparation. Was there discord among friends or relatives, she stood by the weaker party, and by her earnest appeals and kindliness awoke latent affection, and healed all wounds. “Open as day to melting charity,” with a heart brimful of generous affection, yearning for sympathy, she had fallen on evil days, and her life had been one course of hardship, poverty, lonely struggle, and bitter disappointment.

  Mary Wollstonecraft went to live with Imlay without going through any preliminary ceremony of marriage, because she believed that the enforced permanence of wedlock was inexpedient or immoral; and yet, curiously enough, those who are most eager to justify her in acting out one half of the theory are most severe upon Imlay for acting out the other half. The deserted woman, naturally enough, set the example of injustice, and it has been followed by all her admirers. Mrs. Pennell quotes Southey’s saying that “Mary Wollstonecraft was but beginning to reason when she died.” She had certainly not begun to reason when she blamed Imlay, and considered herself a wronged woman because he had acted as her disciple, and owned no obligation save to his own emotional instincts. He may have been worthy of blame; and for my part I, with probably the majority of my readers, must regard him as a heartless brute; but I do not think that any one who echoes my verdict with one breath, and justifies Mary Wollstonecraft’s theory and practice with another, can be credited with a severely logical mind.

  Who shall paint her as she was, without distortion, without idealization? This beautiful woman, with her “Titianesque” coloring, her careless dress, and habits frugal that she might be generous—with her quick temper, sensitiveness, pride, inconsistency, deep personal tenderness; with her melancholy, and her misunderstood religious enthusiasm; this daughter of the Revolution, her strong head crowded with theories—some of them, one would think, to be beaten out of it by all the waves and billows that went over her. But not so; the circumstances of her marriage with Godwin, the tendency of the work done during the brief remainder of her life, show us that we must add tenacity to her characteristics. This creature, now coarse, now fine, now harsh, and now all pity,—who shall explore her strength and weakness, her deeps and shallows? It is natural that in an age better calculated to understand her motives than that in which she lived, a vindicator should have arisen to call up out of the past, by the name of Mary Wollstonecraft, a spirit radiant and purified, like the soul of Ianthe in “Queen Mab,” from every stain of earthliness. But to make the woman herself live before us, as she lived in Paris, in London, in those strange days of the close of the eighteenth century—that would be a task for a pen that has dealt with character under somewhat similar conditions—the pen of Ivan Turgenef.

  Her books show some genuine eloquence, though occasionally injured by the stilted sentimentalism of the time. The letters are pathetic from the melancholy story which they reveal. Her faults were such as might be expected from a follower of Rousseau, and were consistent with much unselfishness and nobility of sentiment, though one could wish that her love-affairs had been more delicate.

  She was rather hardly treated in her own time; Horace Walpole calling her, it is said (I have not verified the quotation), a “hyena in petticoats:” it would be at least as just to call Lord Orford a baboon in breeches. And though of late years she has been made something of a heroine, it is to be feared that admiration has been directed rather to her crotchets than to her character. This last appears to have been as lovable as her hap was ill…. She had but ill luck in her life, and perhaps showed no very good judgment in letters, but she had neither bad brains nor bad blood; and the references to her, long after her death, by such men as Southey, show the charm which she exercised.

Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792

  I have seen Mary Woolstonecroft’s book, which is much run after here…. It has produced no other conviction in my mind, but that of the author’s possessing considerable abilities, and greatly misapplying them. To refute her arguments would be to write another and a larger book; for there is more pains and skill required to refute ill-founded assertions, than to make them. Nothing can be more specious and plausible, for nothing can delight Misses more than to tell them they are as wise as their masters. Though, after all, they will in every emergency be like Trinculo in the storm, when he crept under Caliban’s gaberdine for shelter. I consider this work as every way dangerous. First, because the author, to considerable powers adds feeling, and I dare say a degree of rectitude of intention. She speaks from conviction on her own part, and has completely imposed on herself before she attempts to mislead you. Then because she speaks in such a strain of seeming piety, and quotes Scripture in a manner so applicable and emphatic, that you are thrown off your guard, and surprised into partial acquiescence, before you observe that the deduction to be drawn from her position, is in direct contradiction, not only to Scripture, reason, the common-sense and universal custom of the world, but even to parts of her own system, and many of her own assertions.

  “The Vindication of the Rights of Woman” is a very unequal performance, and eminently deficient in method and arrangement. When tried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, it can scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the class of finished productions. But, when we consider the importance of its doctrines, and the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it will be read as long as the English language endures. The publication of this book forms an epocha in the subject to which it belongs; and Mary Wollstonecraft will perhaps hereafter be found to have performed more substantial service for the cause of her sex, than all the other writers, male or female, that ever felt themselves animated by the contemplation of their oppressed and injured state.

  The faults of the book are grave over and above those of the time; it is ill-considered, hasty, and rash, but its merits are great also; there is much that is valuable for these days also—it is fresh, vigorous, and eloquent, and most remarkable as the herald of the demand not even yet wholly conceded by all, that woman should be the equal and friend, not the slave and the toy of man…. Opposed as were her views to those of the majority of women in her own, and even in this day, yet they were those which now are, except on one point, held by very many cultivated women, without a shadow of blame attaching to them. Her opinions on the equality of the sexes, on the social and political position of women, might now be held without remark, and it would not be too much to say that she was simply in advance of her age in giving expression on those subjects to thoughts which are held increasingly by men and women of advanced political views, but of many shades of devout religion. On the question alone of the relation of the sexes, there is no indication of any approximation to her theories. Her view had now become that mutual affection was marriage, and that the marriage tie should not bind after the death of love, if love should die.

  To say that her drunken father was the reason why Mary Wollstonecraft wrote the “Rights of Women” would be too strong an accusation; but this circumstance evidently brought a painful struggle into her life. And one of her sisters, the pretty one, the beauty of the family, “poor Bess,” made an unhappy marriage, and had to be taken out of her husband’s clutches almost in a state of frenzy by Mary herself. Thus degraded by the besotted folly of one man, and driven into energetic action by the unkindness of another, she certainly was. And it was not till after nearly ten years’ experience of the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that she put forth the book which was the first word of a long controversy…. The woman who wrote this book was not an abstract personage, or one of the class which is called strong-minded…. Mary Wollstonecraft’s plea for women is of the mildest description. She vindicates their right to be considered as human creatures, bound by the general laws of truth and honour, and with a generous vehemence assails the sentimental teachings of Rousseau and of the more virtuous moralists—Gregory, Fordyce, and even Mrs. Chapone—who take it for granted that the highest mission of a woman is “to please,” and excuse in her, nay, recommend to her, those arts by which she can govern while appearing to obey. All that Mary Wollstonecraft asks is education for her clients and an exemption from that false and mawkish teaching specially addressed to “the fair,” in which the eighteenth century was so rich, and which has not quite died out, even among ourselves.

  A plainness of speech, amounting in some places to coarseness, and a deeply religious tone, are to many modern readers the most curious features of the book…. A century ago men and women were more straightforward in their speech than we are to-day. They were not squeamish…. Therefore, when it came to serious discussions for moral purposes, there was little reason for writers to be timid…. Hers is the plain speaking of the Jewish law-giver, who has for end the good of man; and not that of an Aretino, who rejoices in it for its own sake. Even more remarkable than this boldness of expression is the strong vein of piety running through her arguments. Religion was to her as important as it was to a Wesley or a Bishop Watts. The equality of man, in her eyes, would have been of small importance had it not been instituted by man’s Creator…. If women were without souls, they would, notwithstanding their intellects, have no rights to vindicate. If the Christian heaven were like the Mahometan paradise, then they might indeed be looked upon as slaves and playthings of beings who are worthy of a future life, and hence are infinitely their superiors. But, though sincerely pious, she despised the meaningless forms of religion as much as she did social conventionalities, and was as free in denouncing them.

  The “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” on which Mary Wollstonecraft’s fame as an author almost wholly rests, is in some ways a book nearly as faulty as it can be. It is not well-written; it is full of prejudices quite as wrong-headed as those it combats; it shows very little knowledge either of human nature or of good society; and its “niceness,” to use the word in what was then its proper sense, often goes near to the nasty. But its protest on the one hand against the “proper” sentimentality of such English guides of female youth as Drs. Fordyce and Gregory, on the other against the “improper” sentimentality of Rousseau, is genuine and generous. Many of its positions and contentions may be accepted unhesitatingly to-day by those who are by no means enamoured of advanced womanhood; and Mary, as contrasted with most of her rights-of-woman followers, is curiously free from bumptiousness and the general qualities of the virago.

  It was not an able book, and grave faults and frailties that clouded that later life of the authoress did much to discredit it, but in its general tendency it is far from extravagant or revolutionary. Mary Wollstonecraft indulges in none of those attacks on marriage which have sometimes been connected with the movement. She speaks of it with reverence, as “the foundation of almost every social virtue.” She dwells on the transcendent importance of chastity and morality, and on the essentially domestic character of the chief duties of women; and although she desires to assimilate in a great measure the tastes and studies of the two sexes, it is worthy of notice that she expresses a strong antipathy to women who are addicted to field sports…. These views would not now appear very startling, and it is difficult to realise the indignation they aroused. The political aspect of the case was only touched at rare intervals.

General

  The story that follows is an old one. Captain Imlay, whose name no generous mind who reads the following letters can ever hear mentioned without execration, took advantage of the ardent and tender heart which threw itself trustfully into his keeping. She considered herself his wife until death. He also addressed her, both by letters of affection and business, as his “beloved wife.” But when absence, and other attractions which came during absence, asserted themselves over the shallow and base nature of the man, his affection began to wane. It is touching to trace the heart of the woman in these letters, and to see how it asserts itself over all her theories. She pours out to him her love, her reproaches, her fears, in words that seem written in “heart’s blood turned to tears.” It is touching also to read her first vague consciousness of the distinction between such a love as she felt and that of which he was only capable…. There is nothing outside Hood’s “Bridge of Sighs” which can parallel in sadness the description of the poor wretch as she stood on Putney Bridge, in a soaking rain, waiting till her clothes should be so saturated that they would more quickly “drag her down to muddy death.” She was rescued, however, by a Thames boatman before life was gone, and was restored to her misery…. Like the letters of Vanessa to Swift, or of Keats to Fanny Brawne, they are too sacred for the vulgar eye, and ought to be read only by those who have hearts to feel for such suffering and such heart-break as is here made palpable upon the lifeless pages.

  Few women have worked so faithfully for the cause of humanity as Mary Wollstonecraft, and few have been the objects of such bitter censure. She devoted herself to the relief of her suffering fellow-beings with the ardor of a Saint Vincent de Paul, and in return she was considered by them a moral scourge of God. Because she had the courage to express opinions new to her generation, and the independence to live according to her own standard of right and wrong, she was denounced as another Messalina. The young were bidden not to read her books, and the more mature warned not to follow her example, the miseries she endured being declared the just retribution of her actions. Indeed, the infamy attached to her name is almost incredible in the present age, when new theories are more patiently criticised, and when purity of motive has been accepted as the vindication of at least one well-known breach of social laws…. The mere admiration of Southey and Shelley had little weight against popular prejudice. Year by year Mary’s books, like so many other literary productions, were less frequently read, and the prediction that in another generation her name would be unknown bade fair to be fulfilled. But the latest of her admirers, Mr. Kegan Paul, has, by his zealous efforts in her behalf, succeeded in vindicating her character and reviving interest in her writings. By his careful history of her life, and noble words in her defence, he has re-established her reputation…. She lived a century too soon.

  Some of the coarseness of this censor of her sex may, no doubt, be regarded as a mere affair of superficial style, and was referable to the tone of the coteries in which she had been living for several years:—the coteries of Philosophical Radicalism, where speech was even more free than thought. But some of Mary Wollstonecraft’s coarseness was due to natural want of refinement and a vein of vulgarity that, instead of playing only on the surface of her life, had its source in the depths of her soul. Her view of men and their feelings was as sordid as her view of women and their failings. Her conception of love as a force in human affairs would have discredited a chambermaid.

  The works of Mary Wollstonecraft display unusual versatility of mental powers. She was able to turn her mind to new tasks in a way that made her eminent in several directions. She may be classed among pedagogical writers, but she also wrote on historical subjects and took part in discussions in political principles. She wrote fiction, and her letters descriptive of experiences in travel, and letters personal, take a high rank even to this day, among productions of that kind. And more than all this, her genius furnished, in her “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” the motive power, derived from originality of conception, which helped to carry forward an historic movement.