Mary Wollstonecraft

27 April 1759 (London) - 10 September 1797 (London). 18th–century British feminist writer whose best known work Vindication of the Rights of Women stands up for the equality of men and women and criticizes the inferior position of women in 18th–century society.1

Early Life:

Mary Wollstonecraft's father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, was a farmer and her mother, Elizabeth Dixon, was the daughter of middle-class Irish Protestants. Wollstonecraft was the second child and had six siblings of whom one (Henry) died in infancy: Ned, Henry, Eliza, Everina, James and Charles.2

Wollstonecraft gives herself an account about her father’s violence against his wife, wherefore Wollstonecraft slept in front of her door during her childhood in order to protect her.3 Wollstonecraft describes her own childhood in her work Mary that no one really had interest in her and no one appreciated her as being beautiful or docile. Her young life was dominated by violence, hate and fear, wherefore she had to deal with depressions4:

"Her sensibility prompted her to search for an object to love; on earth it was not fund […]." 5

In 1775 Wollstonecraft met for the first time Frances Blood (Fanny Blood) who became her best friend. Due to Fanny’s talents, education and beauty Wollstonecraft started to admire her as an angel-like person. Three years later at the age of 19 Wollstonecraft left her unhappy home and became a paid companion to Mrs Dawson until 1780 when her mother became ill and Wollstonecraft came back to care for her. After her mother’s death on the 19 April 1782 she did surprinsingly not return to Mrs Dawson but instead moved to the Blood family, where she spent two wonderful years.6

Wollstonecraft’s sister Eliza married (in the same year when their mother died) Meredith Bishop with whom she got a daughter one year later called Mary Frances Bishop. It is generally suggested that Eliza suffered from post-natal depression and while Wollstonecraft cared for her she was able to convince Eliza to leave her husband and child. According to Wollstonecraft Bishop was the stereotype of a negative husband who did not care for his wife and suppressed her. This was a tremendous step for a woman during the 18th century, because from now on Eliza had to deal with consequences: social marginalisation, no chance of remarriage and further children, no financial security.7

Together with Fanny Blood and her sisters Everina and Eliza Wollstonecraft established a school at Newington Green but due to Fanny’s marriage with Hugh Skeys, she left together with him to Lisbon. In November 1785 Wollstonecraft travelled to Lisbon to find her friend Fanny dying in childbirth. When Wollstonecraft came back to London she had to deal with the next setback – she discovered that her sisters had financially ruined the school due to lack of knowledge. Further the parents of Fanny asked her now for financial support. Because of all these burdens her depressions, which she first experienced during youth, came back and she wished herself dead again.8

Early Writing

Through her friends she found a post in Ireland where she worked from 1786–1787 as a governess for the children of the Kingsborough family. During her stay she started to write her first work Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life which was published in 1787 by John Johnson, a liberal publisher. Right after she starts Mary: A Fiction.9

In 1788 Johnson offered her a job as a translator and editorial assistant writer for his new magazine the Analytical Review, wherefore Wollstonecraft came to the courageous decision to make her living only by writing. She labels herself as “the first of a new genus” in a letter to her sister Everina, because only a few women during these times could make a living from their writing and Wollstonecraft’s ideal was a financial self-reliance, independence and free life:

"Mr Johnson, whose uncommon kindness, I believe, has saved me from despair, and vexations I shrink back from – and feared to encounter; assures me that if I exert my talents in writing I may support myself in a comfortable way. I am then going to be the first of a new genus – I tremble at the attempt yet if I fail – I only suffer – and should I succeed, my dear Girls will ever in sickness have a home […]."10

In the same year Mary: A Fiction and Original Stories from Real Life were published by Johnson as well.11

In 1790 Wollstonecraft met the Swiss painter Fuseli who she fell in love with not knowing about his wife. Three years later she asks him to stay with her and is consequently rejected: "[…] by flirting with Mary he [Fuseli] simultaneously reassured himself and teased Sophia [his wife]."12 She feels so badly treated by Fuseli that she leaves off immediately to Paris.13

Gilbert Imlay and William Godwin

During her time with Fuseli she felt determined to react on Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke, because she saw his argumentation as too conservative. She published A Vindication of the Rights of Men anonymously and only 29 days after his publication and dedicated it to Burke. Not only three weeks later the second edition had to appear – but this time under her real name.14 In 1791 Wollstonecraft started her famous Vindication of the Rights of Woman and in November she met the first time William Godwin, her later husband and father of her second child. Amusingly, his first impression was not favourable: "Godwin records in his Memoirs that Wollstonecraft annoyed him by hogging the conversation from the guest of honour, Thomas Paine. ´I, of consequence,´he writes, ´heard her, very frequently when I wished to hear Paine´."15

In January 1792 Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published, because of the great success the second edition appeared in the same year. She met Gilbert Imlay in 1793 and becomes his lover. In August she is registered at the American Embassy as his wife, because Imlay considered an American citizenship as more secure during these times. Wollstonecraft used her stay in Paris to work on the research for her next book An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution which was published only one year later in 1793.16

Both (Wollstonecraft and Imlay) left at different times to Le Havre where their first child, Fanny Imlay, was born on the 14 May 1794. Due to Imlay´s work Wollstonecraft spent with her daughter the winter alone in Le Havre, whereas Imlay traveled to Paris and London. Wollstonecraft followed him in April 1795 to London, where she carried out her first of two suicide attempts, because of her assumptions that Imlay could be unfaithful. There are no sources about her first suicide attempt, however, it is mainly suggested that she tried to poison herself with laudanum. Nevertheless she followed his request to travel for him to Scandinavia with her little daughter in order to locate a lost ship. When she returned half a year later to London she started a “series of books for the instruction of children” which were later published under the titel Lessons in Posthumous Works (edited after her death by William Godwin). She also had to discover that Imlay kept another mistress beside her. In October she was so depressed and devastated that she tried again to commit suicide by jumping from Putney Bridge into the Thames. This suicide attempt again ended unsuccessfully, because of the courageous acting of some fishermen who pulled her out of the water.17 Wollstonecraft recovered from her depressions and published in 1796 Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark with great success. She decided to stay for a while in Berkshire, away from Imlay with some female friends. When she came back to London she broke up the relationship to Imlay and visited William Godwin only one month later. She started The Wrong of Woman: or, Maria which she was never able to finish due to her sudden death.18 Godwin and Wollstonecraft started a love relationship, they married in 1797, moved together in London and on 30 August Wollstonecraft conceived her second child by him, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (who was later to become Mary Shelley).19

Wollstonecraft died on the 10 September 1797 due to a supposedly puerperal fever only 9 days after giving birth to her second child.20

Posthumous Works and Criticism'

Godwin expressed his grief by researching the complete life of his wife and filling Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by it. This volume does not only include an all-encompassing biography but further all her unfinished writings and notes, for example, The Wrongs of Woman: or Maria. A Fragment, some Letters to Imlay, the so-called Lessons, Fragment of Letters on the Management of Infants, Hints and the essay On Poetry, and Our Relish for the Beauties of Nature.21

The biography by Godwin shows the complex character and life of Wollstonecraft – with its positive sides and also with its negative sides. Especially the negative aspects about Wollstonecraft´s character and life had consequences: "At this time, however, there was no precedent for frank ad intimate biography of this kind, and the Memoirs were received, almost without exception, as the work of an unfeeling husband, who foolishly revealed family secrets."22

Mainly her affairs, her illegitimate child and her suicide attempts revolted the public. Therefore her contemporaries started to reject Wollstonecraft and her works, her name became unmentionable and her work unreadable for everyone who laid claim to respectability.23 One poem by Roscoe includes the following line, which he wrote down after reading the Memoirs:

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. 24

Interestingly a few admirers stayed, who wrote about her, for example, poets like: Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth. This common trend of antipathy against Mary Wollstonecraft existed until the end of the 19th century where intellectual circles started to discuss her works finally again.25

Wollstonecraft’s Works:'

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life. London: John Johnson 1787.

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. Original Stories from Real Life: With Conversations, Calculated to Regulate the Affections and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness. London: John Johnson 1788.

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. Mary: A Fiction. London: John Johnson 1788.

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Honourable Edmund Burke. London: John Johnson 1790.

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. London: John Johnson 1792.

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of The French Revolution and the Effect It Has Produced in Europe. London: John Johnson 1794.

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. London: John Johnson 1796.  Godwin, William. Posthumous Works of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Contains: Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman; Letters to Gilbert Imlay. London: John Johnson 1798.

Sources:'

 Ferguson, Moira; Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft. Boston: Twayne Publishers 1984.

 Godwin, William. Erinnerungen an Mary Wollstonecraft. Das Unrecht an den Frauen oder: Maria, ein Fragment. Aus dem Englischen übertragen und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Ingrid von Rosenberg. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1993. [English edition would be nice]

 Moore, Jane. Mary Wollstonecraft. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers, 1999.

 Nixon, Edna. Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Life and Times. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1971.

 Pennell, Elizabeth Robins. „Mary Wollstonecraft.“ 1890. John Wilson and Son Press: Cambridge. 9 November 2009 <http://www.docstoc.com/docs/14214731/Elizabeth-Robins-Pennell---Mary-Wollstonecraft_10162>.

 Simon, Helene. William Godwin und Mary Wollstonecraft. Eine biographisch-soziologische Studie. München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1909.

 Taylor, G. R. Stirling. Mary Wollstonecraft. A Study in Economics and Romance. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969.

 Todd, Janet M. Mary Wollstonecraft: A ´Speculative and Dissenting Spirit. 2009. BBC: 9 November 2009 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/wollstonecraft_01.shtml>.

 Todd, Janet M. Mary Wollstonecraft: An Annotated Bibliography. 36 vols. London: Garland Publishing, 1976.

 Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, 1983.

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. Mary, A Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman. Ed. by Gary Kelly. London: Oxford University Press, 1976.

 Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. by Janet Todd. London: Penguin, 2003.

Notes:

1 Moore, Jane. Mary Wollstonecraft. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd 1999: 1.
2 Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 1 – 11.
3 Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 3, 6 – 7; 
      Nixon, Edna. Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Life and Times. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd 1971: 5.
4 Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 6; Simon, Helene.
      William Godwin und Mary Wollstonecraft. Eine biographisch-soziologische Studie. München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung 
      1909: 47 – 48.
5 Wollstonecraft, Mary. Mary, A Fiction and The Wrongs of Woman. Ed. by Gary Kelly. London: Oxford University Press 1976: 5.
6 Taylor, G. R. Stirling. Mary Wollstonecraft. A Study in Economics and Romance. New York: Greenwood Press, Publishers 1969:
      44 – 45; Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 12 – 16; 
      19 – 21. 
7 Nixon, Edna. Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Life and Times. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd 1971: 21 – 24; Tomalin, Claire. The Life
      and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 21 – 26.
8 Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 36 – 37; Nixon, Edna.
      Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Life and Times. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd 1971: 32.
9 Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 43 – 45; Ferguson,
      Moira; Todd, Janet. Mary Wollstonecraft. Boston: Twayne Publishers 1984: 17 – 23; 31 – 38.
10 Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. by Janet Todd. London: The Penguin Press 2003: 139.
11 Todd, Janet M. Mary Wollstonecraft: A ´Speculative and Dissenting Spirit´. 2009. BBC: 9 November 2009 <http://www.bbc.co.uk
       /history/british/empire_seapower/wollstonecraft_01.shtml>; 
12 Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 84.
13 Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 81 – 84; 87 – 89.
14 Moore, Jane. Mary Wollstonecraft. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd 1999: 32 – 36.
15 Moore, Jane. Mary Wollstonecraft. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd 1999: 3.
16 Tomalin, Claire. The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: New American Library, Inc. 1983: 141 – 146; Simon,
       Helene. William Godwin und Mary Wollstonecraft. Eine biographisch-soziologische Studie. München: C. H. Beck’sche 
       Verlagsbuchhandlung 1909: 67 – 69.
17 Simon, Helene. William Godwin und Mary Wollstonecraft. Eine biographisch-soziologische Studie. München: C. H. Beck’sche
       Verlagsbuchhandlung 1909: 69; Moore, Jane. Mary Wollstonecraft. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd 1999: 2 – 3.
18 Nixon, Edna. Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Life and Times. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd 1971: 190 – 200; Simon, Helene. William
       Godwin und Mary Wollstonecraft. Eine biographisch-soziologische Studie. München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung 1909: 69.
19 Nixon, Edna. Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Life and Times. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd 1971: 204 – 212, 222 – 231, 242.
20 Nixon, Edna. Mary Wollstonecraft. Her Life and Times. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd 1971: 242 – 249.
21 See: Godwin, William. Erinnerungen an Mary Wollstonecraft. Das Unrecht an den Frauen oder: Maria, ein Fragment. Aus dem 
       Englischen übertragen und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Ingrid von Rosenberg. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein 1993.
22 Moore, Jane. Mary Wollstonecraft. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd 1999: 4 – 5.
23 
24 Pennell, Elizabeth Robins. „Mary Wollstonecraft.“ 1890. John Wilson and Son Press: Cambridge. 9 November 2009
       <http://www.docstoc.com/docs/14214731/Elizabeth-Robins-Pennell---Mary-Wollstonecraft_10162>.
25 Moore, Jane. Mary Wollstonecraft. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd 1999: 3 – 6.