Women then, even the cleverest and most liberal, bowed to the decrees of custom with a submission as servile as that of the Hindu to the laws of caste. Like the latter, they were contented with their lot and had no desire to change it. They dreaded the increase of knowledge which would bring with it greater sorrow. Mrs. Barbauld, eloquent in her defence of men’s rights, could conceive no higher aim for women than the attainment of sufficient knowledge to make them agreeable companions to their husbands and brothers. Should there be any deviation from the methods of education which insured this end, they would, she feared, become like the Précieuses or Femmes Savantes of Molière. Mary’s vigorous appeal for improvement could, therefore, have no meaning for her. Hannah More, enthusiastic in her denunciations of slavery, but unconscious that her liberty was in the least restricted, did not hesitate to form an opinion of the “Rights of Women” without examining it, thus necessarily missing its true significance. In this she doubtless represented a large majority of her sex. She wrote to Horace Walpole in 1793:—
“I have been much pestered to read the ‘Rights of Women,’ but am invincibly resolved not to do it. Of all jargon, I hate metaphysical jargon; beside, there is something fantastic and absurd in the very title. How many ways there are of being ridiculous! I am sure I have as much liberty as I can make a good use of, now I am an old maid; and when I was a young one I had, I dare say, more than was good for me. If I were still young, perhaps I should not make this confession; but so many women are fond of government, I suppose, because they are not fit for it. To be unstable and capricious, I really think, is but too characteristic of our sex; and there is, perhaps, no animal so much indebted to subordination for its good behavior as woman. I have soberly and uniformly maintained this doctrine ever since I have been capable of observation, and I used horridly to provoke some of my female friends—maîtresses femmes—by it, especially such heroic spirits as poor Mrs. Walsingham.”
Men, on the other hand, thought Mary was unsexing herself by her arguments, which seemed to interfere with their rights,—an interference they could not brook. To the Tories the fact that she sympathized with the Reformers was enough to damn her. Walpole, when he answered the letter from which the above extract is taken, wrote with warmth:—
“... It is better to thank Providence for the tranquillity and happiness we enjoy in this country, in spite of the philosophizing serpents we have in our bosom, the Paines, the Tookes, and the Wollstonecrafts. I am glad you have not read the tract of the last-mentioned writer. I would not look at it, though assured it contains neither metaphysics nor politics; but as she entered the lists of the latter, and borrowed her title from the demon’s book which aimed at spreading the wrongs of men, she is excommunicated from the pale of my library. We have had enough of new systems, and the world a great deal too much already.”
Walpole may be accepted as the typical Tory, and to all his party Mary probably appeared as the “philosophizing serpent.” She seems always to have incurred his deepest scorn and wrath. He could not speak of her without calling her names. A year or two later, when she had published her book on the French Revolution, writing again to Hannah More, he thus concludes his letter:—
“Adieu, thou excellent woman! thou reverse of that hyena in petticoats, Mrs. Wollstonecraft, who to this day discharges her ink and gall on Marie Antoinette, whose unparalleled sufferings have not yet stanched that Alecto’s blazing ferocity.”
There was at least one man in London whose opinion was worth having who, it is known, treated the book with indifference, and he, by a strange caprice of fate, was William Godwin. It was at this time, when she was in the fulness of her fame, that Mary first met him. She was dining at Johnson’s with Paine and Shovet, and Godwin had come purposely to meet the American philosopher and to hear him talk. But Paine was at best a silent man; and Mary, it seems, monopolized the conversation. Godwin was disappointed, and consequently the impression she made upon him was not pleasing. He afterwards wrote an account of this first meeting, which is interesting because of the closer relationship to which an acquaintance so unpropitiously begun was to lead.
“The interview was not fortunate,” he says. “Mary and myself parted mutually displeased with each other. I had not read her ‘Rights of Women.’ I had barely looked into her answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literary men are apt to be, with a few offences against grammar and other minute points of composition. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs. Wollstonecraft, and a very great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine, in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw in occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks, the conversation lay principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her very frequently when I wished to hear Paine.
“We touched on a considerable variety of topics and particularly on the character and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been observed, had acquired, in a very blamable degree, the practice of seeing everything on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any degree doubtful. I, on the contrary, had a strong propensity to favorable construction, and, particularly where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly to incline to the supposition of generous and manly virtue. We ventilated in this way the character of Voltaire and others, who have obtained from some individuals an ardent admiration, while the greater number have treated them with extreme moral severity. Mary was at last provoked to tell me that praise, lavished in the way that I lavished it, could do no credit either to the commended or the commender. We discussed some questions on the subject of religion, in which her opinions approached much nearer to the received ones than mine. As the conversation proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my own share in it. We touched upon all topics without treating forcibly and connectedly upon any. Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving an account of the conversation to a party in which I supped, though I was not sparing of my blame, to yield her the praise of a person of active and independent thinking. On her side, she did me no part of what perhaps I considered as justice.
“We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but made a very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance.”