Her struggles with work wearied her less than her struggles with the follies of men, of which the foregoing is an example. Indeed, while she was eminently fitted to enjoy society, she was also peculiarly susceptible to the many slings and arrows from which those who live in the world cannot escape. The very tenderness of her feelings for humanity, which was a blessing in one way, was almost a curse in another. For, just as the conferring of a benefit on one in need gave her intense pleasure, so, if she was the chance cause of pain to friend or foe, she suffered acutely. Intentionally she could not have injured any man. But often a word or action, said or done in good faith, will involve others in serious difficulties. The misery she endured under such circumstances was greater than that aroused by her own individual troubles. The thought that she had added to a fellow-sufferer’s life-burden cut her to the quick, and she was unsparing in her self-reproaches. She then reached the very acme of mental torture, as is seen by this letter to Mr. Johnson:—
“I am sick with vexation, and wish I could knock my foolish head against the wall, that bodily pain might make me feel less anguish from self-reproach! To say the truth, I was never more displeased with myself, and I will tell you the cause. You may recollect that I did not mention to you the circumstance of —— having a fortune left to him; nor did a hint of it drop from me when I conversed with my sister, because I knew he had a sufficient motive for concealing it. Last Sunday, when his character was aspersed, as I thought unjustly, in the heat of vindication I informed —— that he was now independent; but, at the same time, desired him not to repeat my information to B——; yet last Tuesday he told him all, and the boy at B——’s gave Mrs. —— an account of it. As Mr. —— knew he had only made a confidant of me (I blush to think of it!) he guessed the channel of intelligence, and this morning came, not to reproach me,—I wish he had,—but to point out the injury I have done him. Let what will be the consequence, I will reimburse him, if I deny myself the necessaries of life, and even then my folly will sting me. Perhaps you can scarcely conceive the misery I at this moment endure. That I, whose power of doing good is so limited, should do harm, galls my very soul. —— may laugh at these qualms, but, supposing Mr. —— to be unworthy, I am not the less to blame. Surely it is hell to despise one’s self! I did not want this additional vexation. At this time I have many that hang heavily on my spirits. I shall not call on you this month, nor stir out. My stomach has been so suddenly and violently affected, I am unable to lean over the desk.”
The sequel of the affair is not known, but this letter, because it is so characteristic, is interesting.
The advantages social intercourse procured for her were, however, more than sufficient compensation for the heart-beats it caused her. If there is nothing so deteriorating as association with one’s intellectual inferiors, there is, on the other hand, nothing so improving as the society of one’s equals or superiors. Stimulated into mental activity by her associates in the world in which she now moved, Mary’s genius expanded, and ideas but half formed developed into fixed principles. As Swinburne says of Blake, she was born into the church of rebels. Her present experience was her baptism. The times were exciting. The effect of the work of Voltaire and the French philosophers was social upheaval in France. The rebellion of the colonies and the agitation for reform at home had encouraged the liberal party into new action. Men had fully awakened to a realization of individual rights, and in their first excitement could think and talk of nothing else. The interest then taken in politics was general and wide-spread to a degree now unknown. Every one, advocates and opponents alike, discussed the great social problems of the day.
As a rule, the most regular frequenters of Mr. Johnson’s house, and the leaders of conversation during his evenings, were Reformers. Men like Paine and Fuseli and Dr. Priestley were, each in his own fashion, seeking to discover the true nature of human rights. As the Reformation in the sixteenth century had aimed at freeing the religion of Christ from the abuses and errors of centuries, and thus restoring it to its original purity, so the political movement of the latter half of the eighteenth century had for object the destruction of arbitrary laws and the re-establishment of government on primary principles. The French Revolution and the American Rebellion were but means to the greater end. Philosophers, who systematized the dissatisfaction which the people felt without being able to trace it to its true source, preached the necessity of distinguishing between right and wrong per se, and right and wrong as defined by custom. This was the doctrine which Mary heard most frequently discussed, and it was but the embodiment of the motives which had invariably governed her actions from the time she had urged her sister to leave her husband. She had never, even in her most religious days, been orthodox in her beliefs, nor conservative in her conduct. As she said in a letter just quoted, she considered right and wrong in the abstract, and never shielded herself by words or local opinions. Hitherto, owing chiefly to her circumstances, she had been content to accept her theory as a guide for herself in her relations to the world and her fellow-beings. But now that her scope of influence was extended, she felt compelled to communicate to others her moral creed, which had assumed definite shape.
Her first public profession of her political and social faith was her answer to Burke’s “Reflections on the French Revolution,” which had summoned all the Liberals and Reformers in England to arms. Many came forward boldly and refuted his arguments in print. Mary was among the foremost, her pamphlet in reply to his being the first published. Later authorities have given precedence to Dr. Priestley’s, but this fact is asserted by Godwin in his Memoirs, and he would hardly have made the statement at a time when there were many living to deny it, had it not been true. These answers naturally were received with abuse and sneers by the Tories. Burke denounced his female opponents as “viragoes and English poissardes;” and Horace Walpole wrote of them as “Amazonian allies,” who “spit their rage at eighteen-pence a head, and will return to Fleet-ditch, more fortunate in being forgotten than their predecessors, immortalized in the ‘Dunciad.’” Peter Burke, in his “Life of Burke,” says that the replies made by Dr. Price, Mrs. Macaulay, and Mary Wollstonecraft were merely attempts and nothing more. Yet all three were writers of too much force to be ignored. They were thrown into the shade because Paine’s “Rights of Man,” written for the same purpose, was so much more startling in its wholesale condemnation of government that the principal attention of the public was drawn to it.
Mary’s pamphlet, however, added considerably to her reputation, especially among the Liberals. It was her first really important work. Her success encouraged her greatly. It increased her confidence in her powers and possibilities to influence the reading public. It therefore proved an incentive to fresh exertions in the same field. Much as she was interested in the rights of men, she was even more concerned with the rights of women. The former had obtained many able defenders, but no one had as yet thought of saying a word for the latter. Her own experience had been so bitter that she realized the disadvantages of her sex as others, whose path had been easier, never could. She saw that women were hindered and hampered in a thousand and one ways by obstacles created not by nature, but by man. And she also saw that long suffering had blinded them to their, in her estimation, humiliating and too often painful condition. A change for the better must originate with them, and yet how was this possible, if they did not see their degradation?
“Can the sower sow by night,
Or the ploughman in darkness plough?”
Clearly, since she had found the light, it was her duty to illuminate with it those who were groping in darkness. She could not with a word revolutionize womankind, but she could at least be the herald to proclaim the dawn of the day during which the good seed was to be sown. She had discovered her life’s mission, and, in her enthusiasm, she wrote the “Vindication of the Rights of Women.”