Mary Wollstonecraft
(A brief biographical note)
Ish Mishra
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) is
rightly credited as the first feminist philosopher, though the term feminism
was not available in the discourse of that era, by the Enlightenment-inspired
passion for reason, she dared to rationally think, a philosophical taboo for
women at the time. By defying and challenging the prevalent social role models
and stereotyped notions of feminine virtues in words and deeds, she set the agenda
for future feminist discourse. Though she stops short of absolute equality and
is ambiguous on the notion of masculine superiority, she inaugurated a new
paradigm of analysis in social theory that looks at a woman not as a woman but
as a human at par with men. Till the late 20th century marked by
resurgence feminist assertion and scholarship, people talked more about her
short life than her writings, written in the midst of tumultuous events of the
French revolution and counter revolution (1789-99) in the difficult personal
circumstances[1].
As women were not allowed education beyond basic level, she had to satisfy her
passion for reading and rational thinking by self-education like her
near-contemporary JJ Rousseau, who becomes the first target of her intellectual
rage. She concludes the first chapter of the Vindication of Right of Woman with
“… had Rousseau mounted one step higher in his investigation, or could his eye
have pierced through the foggy atmosphere, which he almost disdained to
breathe, his active mind would have darted forward to contemplate the
perfection of man in the establishment of true civilization, instead of taking
his ferocious flight back to the night of sensual ignorance.”[2] When people were talking
about reform in women’s education so they can fit into the role of a civilized
companion, Mary wrote, “I attribute [these
problems] to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on
this subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human
creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than
affectionate wives and rational mothers … the civilized women of this present
century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they
ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact
respect.”[3]
The second of seven children,
Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759. Her paternal grandfather was a successful
master weaver who left a sizeable legacy, but her father, Edward John,
mismanaged his share of the inheritance. Her somewhat haphazard education was, however, not entirely
unusual for someone of her sex and position, nor was it particularly deficient.
As her works substantiate, she had good knowledge of the works of several of
famous Ancient philosophers. The latter is partly explained through her
personal acquaintance with Thomas Taylor, famed for his translations of Plato.
She also drew on a variety of early modern sources, such as Shakespeare and
Milton's works. Through her own writing for the Analytical Review she
was to become widely read in the literature of her period. In a relatively
rapid succession, for earning the livelihood, she was to enter the most likely
occupations for someone of her sex and circumstances: a lady's companion, a
schoolteacher, and a governess.
By February 1784 along
with her sister and her best friend Fanny Blood Mary started a school at Newington
Green, where Mary met the moral and political thinker, the Reverend Richard
Price, head of Newington's thriving Dissenting community, and heard him preach.
This was a crucial encounter for Mary. Several years later, she was to rise to
his defense in a Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790),
and it was through her connections to members of this community that she was to
gain an introduction to her future publisher, friend, and one might even say,
patron, Joseph Johnson, the publisher of the Analytical review, that
became the source of her income and platform for developing her intellectual
ability as the first feminist philosopher.
In November 1785,
Wollstonecraft set off on a trip to Lisbon, where her friend Fanny, who had
married that February, was expecting her first child. On board the ship, Mary
met a man suffering from consumption; she nursed him for a fortnight, the
length of the journey. This experience is related in her first novel, Mary,
a Fiction (1788).
On her return to
England, Wollstonecraft found her school in a dire state. Far from providing
her with a reliable income and some stability, it was to be a source of endless
worries and a financial drain. Only Joseph Johnson's advance on her first
book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: with Reflections on
Female Conduct in the more important Duties of Life (1787) helped ease
her considerable financial difficulties. It consists of brief discussions on
such topics as ‘Moral Discipline’, ‘Artificial Manners’, ‘Boardings-Schools’,
‘The Benefits Which Arise From Disappointments’, ‘The Observance of Sunday’,
and ‘On the Treatment of Servants’.
Following the collapse
of her school, Wollstonecraft became a governess to the family of Lord
Kingsborough for a brief and unsatisfactory period. The position took her to
Ireland, where she completed Mary, A Fiction. On her return to
London, Joseph Johnson came to the rescue once again by giving her some
literary employment. In 1787, she also began, but never completed, The
Cave of Fancy. A Tale. The same year, she wrote Original Stories
from Real Life; with Conversations, calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form
the Mind to Truth and Goodness (1788); it appeared in two other London
editions in her life time (1791 and 1796), the last of which illustrated by
William Blake. Wollstonecraft's anthology, The Female Reader;
Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Verse; Selected from the Best Writers and
Disposed under Proper Heads; for the Improvement of Young Women (1789),
was compiled in the same period and published under the name of ‘Mr. Cresswick,
teacher of Elocution’; it pursues themes to be found in her previous works and
contains excerpts mostly from the Bible and Shakespeare's plays, as well as
many by various eighteenth-century authors, such as Voltaire, Hume, Steele,
Charlotte Smith, and Madame de Genlis.
To understand the
extent to which Wollstonecraft made up for the lack of a formal education, it
is essential to appreciate fully that her talents were to extend to translating
and reviewing, and that these two activities, quite apart from her own
intellectual curiosity, acquainted her with a great many authors, including
Leibniz and Kant. She translated into English Jacques Necker's Of the
Importance of Religious Opinions (1788) from French, Rev. C. G.
Salzmann's Elements of Morality, for the Use of Children; with an
Introductory Address to Parents (1790) from German, and Madame de
Cambon's Young Grandison (1790) from Dutch. In each case, the
texts she produced were almost as if her own, not just because she was in
agreement with their original authors, but because she more or less re-wrote
them. The Reverend Salzmann is unlikely to have resented her for this, as he
was to translate into German both A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and
William Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights
of Woman (1798).
Throughout the period
covered by these translations Wollstonecraft wrote for the Analytical
Review, which her publisher, Joseph Johnson, together with Thomas Christie,
started in May 1788. She was involved with this publication either as a
reviewer or as editorial assistant for most of its relatively short life.
Despite her own practice of the genre, her many reviews reveal the degree to
which, she, like many other moralists in the eighteenth century, feared the
moral consequences of reading novels. She believed that even those of a
relatively superior quality encouraged vanity and selfishness. She was to
concede, however, that reading such works might nonetheless be better than not
reading at all. Besides novels, Wollstonecraft reviewed poetry, travel
accounts, educational works, collected sermons, biographies, natural histories,
and essays and treatises on subjects such as Shakespeare, happiness, theology,
music, architecture and the awfulness of solitary confinement; the authors
whose works she commented on, included Madame de Staël, Emanuel Swedenborg,
Lord Kames, Rousseau, and William Smellie. Until the end of 1789, her articles
were mostly of a moral and aesthetic nature. However in December 1789, she
reviewed a speech by her old friend, Richard Price, entitled A
Discourse on the Love of our Country, delivered on Nov. 4, 1789, at the
Meeting-House in the Old Jewry, to the Society for Commemorating the Revolution
of Great Britain. With an Appendix, containing the report of the Committee of
the Society; and Account of the Population of France; and the Declarations of
the Rights by the National Assembly of France(1789). This address to the
Revolution Society in commemoration of the events of 1688 partly prompted Burke
to compose his very famous Reflections on the Revolution in France, and
on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event (1790).
Burke's attack on
Price in that work in turn led Wollstonecraft, egged on by her publisher,
Johnson, to take up her pen in the aged Reverend's defence. A
Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) was almost certainly the first
of many responses Burke's Reflections elicited. Initially
published anonymously at the end of November, the second edition that quickly
followed in mid-December bore its author's name and marked a turning point in
her career; it established her political writer. In September 1791,
Wollstonecraft began A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with
Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, which elaborated a number
of points made in the previousVindication, namely, that in most cases,
marriage was nothing but a property relation, and that the education women
received ensured that they could not meet the expectations society had of them
and almost certainly guaranteed them an unhappy life.
Following the
publication of her second Vindication, Wollstonecraft was
introduced to the French statesman and diplomat, Charles Talleyrand, on his
mission to London on the part of the Constituent Assembly in February 1792. She
dedicated the second edition of the A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman to him. In December 1792, she travelled to France where she met
Gilbert Imlay, an American merchant and author of A Topographical
Descriptions of the Western Territory of North America (1792)
and The Emigrants (1793). As British subjects were
increasingly at risk under the Terror, Wollstonecraft passed as Imlay's wife so
as to benefit from the security enjoyed at the time by American citizens. They
never married. Imlay was probably the source of Wollstonecraft's greatest
unhappiness, first through his lack of ardor-passion for her, then because of
his infidelity, and finally because of his complete rejection of her. Most of
all, her love of Imlay brought Wollstonecraft to the realization that the
passions are not so easily brought to heel by reason. After a tense period of
relationship, she broke with Imlay finally in March 1796. In April of the same
year, she renewed her acquaintance with William Godwin and they became lovers
that summer. They were married at St Pancras church in March 1797. On the 30th August,
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, future author of Frankenstein and
wife of Shelley, was born and soon she died of child birth complication. With no economic opportunities
open for women to live independently, she chose to be a writer for income
generation that coincided with her ambition of being a philosopher in her own
right. A woman being a writer was unheard.
[1]
Mary Wollstonecraft (Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wollstonecraft/
[2]
Pramila Frankau
[3]
Ibid
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