Study Hall: Mary Wollstonecraft
May. 14th, 2016 11:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineWe all know Wollstonecraft around these parts! But nevertheless:
Mary Wollstonecraft was born to a miserable marriage—her father was a shiftless, abusive drunk, and after her mother died, she went to live with her beloved friend, Fanny Blood, and worked to support her sisters. She took a job as a companion, wrote about education, started a school (it failed when she rushed to Portugal to support her beloved friend Fanny during a difficult pregnancy, which killed both mother and child), became a governess (inadvertently becoming a role model to one of her difficult charges), and wrote essays, a novel, reviews, philosophical tracts, political journalism, and translations from French as she settled more and more firmly into the life of a professional writer.
Her publisher, Joseph Johnson, promoted and hosted the radical Enlightenment literary scene in London, which Wollstonecraft fully joined. There she met Thomas Paine, William Wordsworth, William Blake, William Godwin. So many Williams, and she particularly didn't care for the latter, who thought she was a show-off. But they all tended to agree about the important things, like human dignity, the awfulness of marriage as an institution, and hating Edmund Burke. They were all champing at the bit to respond to his diatribe against the revolution in France (and did), but Wollstonecraft got there fastest with the first of her two great Vindications, Vindication of the Rights of Man. But given her long-standing criticisms of girls' education and marriage, theorizing about human rights quickly led to advocating for women's rights in particular—the famous Vindication of the Rights of Woman of 1792.
It wasn't quite as SHOCKING! AHEAD OF ITS TIME! as I think is sometimes suggested, though most of it holds up very well. It was absolutely of its time, rooted in Enlightenment thought and in conversation with Enlightenment thought. It was generally praised and well-regarded, with criticism growing first with the revelation that the author was a woman, and that woman was also one of Johnson's reviewers (a woman!!!! levelling judgment at the work of men??) and translators, but much more after her death.
She went to Paris during the Revolution as essentially a sympathetic wartime reporter, and witnessed the Terror, which shook her—though without shattering her beliefs, unlike many other people who wrangled with it. She wrote her article about what was happening there, and intended to write more, but the Jacobins weren't exactly friendly to the English. Her American lover, Gilbert Imlay, passed her off as his wife, and she and her equally kickass maid Marguerite ended up going to Scandinavia to help him with his business problems. Wollstonecraft had given birth to their daughter Fanny in the meanwhile, and took Fanny along with her. Naturally she wrote a travelogue about Sweden etc, but in the meanwhile, Imlay dumped her. He was willing to provide support for her and Fanny, but without love Wollstonecraft considered it little better than prostitution. Personally, she was devastated, attempting suicide twice.
Upon meeting William Godwin (the shy anarchist who thought she was ~showy) again, they hit it off, and fell in love. Though both opposed marriage as an institution, they decided to legally marry after she became pregnant, for the sake of their child's legitimacy—he also adopted Fanny. They set up distinct but tightly linked lives and he seems to have adored her, so things might have finally been on the way up, but though Wollstonecraft managed to deliver a healthy daughter, she contracted placental infection and spent a horrific eleven days fighting the fever until she finally died.
Godwin, who appears to have been stunningly clueless, thought that a knowledge of her amazing life history would really give people an appreciation for her great work, so he wrote and published a biography. Unfortunately, it did exactly the reverse—many people were appalled at Wollstonecraft, with critics given all the ammunition they needed, and many more appalled at him for exposing her to the public.
The baby, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, obviously never knew her mother, but grew up hero-worshipping her, her work, and her ethos. She and Percy Shelley declared their love on Wollstonecraft's grave (...Romantics >_>), and she carted Wollstonecraft's works around with her on her travels.
Mary Wollstonecraft was born to a miserable marriage—her father was a shiftless, abusive drunk, and after her mother died, she went to live with her beloved friend, Fanny Blood, and worked to support her sisters. She took a job as a companion, wrote about education, started a school (it failed when she rushed to Portugal to support her beloved friend Fanny during a difficult pregnancy, which killed both mother and child), became a governess (inadvertently becoming a role model to one of her difficult charges), and wrote essays, a novel, reviews, philosophical tracts, political journalism, and translations from French as she settled more and more firmly into the life of a professional writer.
Her publisher, Joseph Johnson, promoted and hosted the radical Enlightenment literary scene in London, which Wollstonecraft fully joined. There she met Thomas Paine, William Wordsworth, William Blake, William Godwin. So many Williams, and she particularly didn't care for the latter, who thought she was a show-off. But they all tended to agree about the important things, like human dignity, the awfulness of marriage as an institution, and hating Edmund Burke. They were all champing at the bit to respond to his diatribe against the revolution in France (and did), but Wollstonecraft got there fastest with the first of her two great Vindications, Vindication of the Rights of Man. But given her long-standing criticisms of girls' education and marriage, theorizing about human rights quickly led to advocating for women's rights in particular—the famous Vindication of the Rights of Woman of 1792.
It wasn't quite as SHOCKING! AHEAD OF ITS TIME! as I think is sometimes suggested, though most of it holds up very well. It was absolutely of its time, rooted in Enlightenment thought and in conversation with Enlightenment thought. It was generally praised and well-regarded, with criticism growing first with the revelation that the author was a woman, and that woman was also one of Johnson's reviewers (a woman!!!! levelling judgment at the work of men??) and translators, but much more after her death.
She went to Paris during the Revolution as essentially a sympathetic wartime reporter, and witnessed the Terror, which shook her—though without shattering her beliefs, unlike many other people who wrangled with it. She wrote her article about what was happening there, and intended to write more, but the Jacobins weren't exactly friendly to the English. Her American lover, Gilbert Imlay, passed her off as his wife, and she and her equally kickass maid Marguerite ended up going to Scandinavia to help him with his business problems. Wollstonecraft had given birth to their daughter Fanny in the meanwhile, and took Fanny along with her. Naturally she wrote a travelogue about Sweden etc, but in the meanwhile, Imlay dumped her. He was willing to provide support for her and Fanny, but without love Wollstonecraft considered it little better than prostitution. Personally, she was devastated, attempting suicide twice.
Upon meeting William Godwin (the shy anarchist who thought she was ~showy) again, they hit it off, and fell in love. Though both opposed marriage as an institution, they decided to legally marry after she became pregnant, for the sake of their child's legitimacy—he also adopted Fanny. They set up distinct but tightly linked lives and he seems to have adored her, so things might have finally been on the way up, but though Wollstonecraft managed to deliver a healthy daughter, she contracted placental infection and spent a horrific eleven days fighting the fever until she finally died.
Godwin, who appears to have been stunningly clueless, thought that a knowledge of her amazing life history would really give people an appreciation for her great work, so he wrote and published a biography. Unfortunately, it did exactly the reverse—many people were appalled at Wollstonecraft, with critics given all the ammunition they needed, and many more appalled at him for exposing her to the public.
The baby, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, obviously never knew her mother, but grew up hero-worshipping her, her work, and her ethos. She and Percy Shelley declared their love on Wollstonecraft's grave (...Romantics >_>), and she carted Wollstonecraft's works around with her on her travels.
