Mary Wollstonecraft

by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

As has been said in the previous chapter, Mary often spent her free hours with Mrs. Christie, and at her house she met Captain Gilbert Imlay. He was one of the many Americans then living in Paris. He was an attractive man personally, and his position and abilities entitled him to respect. He had taken an active part in the American rebellion, having then risen to the rank of captain, and, after the war, had been sent as commissioner to survey still unsettled districts of the western States. On his return from this work he wrote a monograph, called “A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America,” which is remarkable for its thoroughness and its clear, condensed style, appropriate to such a treatise. It passed through several editions and increased his reputation. His business in France is not very explicitly explained. His headquarters seem to have been at Havre, while he had certain commercial relations with Norway and Sweden. He was most probably in the timber business, and was, at least at this period, successful. Godwin says that he had no property whatever, but his speculations apparently brought him plenty of ready money.

Foreigners in Paris, especially Americans and English, were naturally drawn together. Mary and Imlay had mutual acquaintances, and they saw much of each other. His republican sentiments alone would have appealed to her. But the better she learned to know him, the more she liked him personally. He, on his side, was equally attracted, and his kindness and consideration for her were greatly in his favor. Their affection in the end developed into a feeling stronger than mere friendship. Its consequence, since both were free, would under ordinary circumstances have been marriage.

But her circumstances just then were extraordinary. Godwin says that she objected to a marriage with Imlay because she did not wish to “involve him in certain family embarrassments to which she conceived herself exposed, or make him answerable for the pecuniary demands that existed against her.” There were, however, more formidable objections, not of her own making. The English who remained in Paris ran the chance from day to day of being arrested with the priests and aristocrats, and even of being carried to the guillotine. Their only safeguard lay in obscurity. They had above all else to evade the notice of government officers. Mary, if she married Imlay, would be obliged to proclaim herself a British subject, and would thus be risking imprisonment and perhaps death. Besides, it was very doubtful whether a marriage ceremony performed by the French authorities would be recognized in England as valid. Had she been willing to pass through this perilous ordeal she would have gained nothing. Love’s labor would indeed have been lost. Marriage was thus out of the question.

To Mary, however, this did not seem an insurmountable obstacle to their union. “Her view had now become,” Kegan Paul says, “that mutual affection was marriage, and that the marriage tie should not bind after the death of love, if love should die.” In her “Vindication,” she had upheld the sanctity of marriage because she believed that the welfare of society depends upon the order maintained in family relations. But her belief also was that the form the law demands is nothing, the feeling which leads those concerned to desire it, everything. What she had hitherto seen of married life, as at present instituted, was not calculated to make her think highly of it. Her mother and her friend’s mother had led the veriest dogs’ lives because the law would not permit them to leave brutal and sensual husbands, whom they had ceased to honor or love. Her sister had been driven mad by the ill-treatment of a man to whom she was bound by legal, but not by natural ties. Lady Kingsborough, giving to dogs the love which neither her coarse husband nor her children by him could evoke, was not a brilliant example of conjugal pleasure. Probably in London other cases had come within her notice. Marriage vows, it seemed, were with the majority but the convenient cloak of vice. Women lived with their husbands that they might be more free to entertain their lovers. Men lived with their wives that they might keep establishments elsewhere for their mistresses. Love was the one unimportant element in the marriage compact. The artificial tone of society had disgusted all the more earnest thinkers of the day. The very extreme to which existing evils were carried drove reformers to the other. Rousseau and Helvetius clamored for a relapse into a state of nature without exactly knowing what the realization of their theories would produce. Mary reasoned in the same spirit as they did, and from no desire to uphold the doctrine of free love. Fearless in her practice as in her theories, she did not hesitate in this emergency to act in a way that seemed to her conscience right. She loved Imlay honestly and sincerely. Because she loved him she could not think evil of him, nor suppose for a moment that his passion was not as pure and true as hers. Therefore she consented to live with him as his wife, though no religious nor civil ceremony could sanction their union.

That this, according to the world’s standard, was wrong, is a fact beyond dispute. But before the first stones are thrown, the pros as well as the cons must be remembered. If Mary had held the conventional beliefs as to the relations of the sexes, she would be judged by them. Had she thought her connection with Imlay criminal, then she would be condemned by her own conviction. But she did not think so. Moreover, her opinions to the contrary were very decided. When she gave herself to Imlay without waiting for a minister’s blessing or a legal permit, she acted in strict adherence to her moral ideals; and this at once places her in a far different rank from that of the Mrs. Robinsons and Mrs. Jordans, with whom men have been too ready to class her. Neither can she be compared to a woman like George Sand, who also believed that love was a more sacred bond of union than the marriage tie, and who acted accordingly. But to George Sand, as masculine by nature as by dress, love was of her life a thing apart, and a change of lovers a matter of secondary importance. To Mary love was literally her whole existence, and fidelity a virtue to be cultivated above all others. Since she in her conduct in this instance stands alone, she can be justly judged by no other standard than her own.

Whether marriage does or does not represent the ideal relation which can exist between a man and woman is without the compass of the present work. But since it is and has been for ages held to be so, the woman who bids defiance to this law must abide by the consequences. Custom has inconsistently pardoned freedom in such matters to men, but never to women. Mary Wollstonecraft might rely upon her friends and acquaintances for recognition of her virtue, but she should have remembered that to the world at large her conduct would appear immoral; that by it she would become a pariah in society, and her work lose much of its efficacy; while she would be giving to her children, if she had any, an inheritance of shame that would cling to them forever.

She may probably have realized this drawback and determined to avoid the evil consequences of her defiance to social usages. For the first few months it seems that she kept her intimacy with Imlay secret, and she may have intended concealing it until such time as she could make it legal in the eyes of the world. Godwin dates its beginning in April, 1793. The only information in this respect is to be had from her published letters to Imlay, the first of which was written in June of the same year, though, it must be added, Kegan Paul queries the date. This and the following note, dated August, prove the secrecy she for a time maintained. The latter seems to have been written after she had determined to live openly with Imlay in Paris, but just before she carried her determination into practice:—

Past Twelve o’clock, Monday night.

I obey an emotion of my heart which made me think of wishing thee, my love, good-night! before I go to rest, with more tenderness than I can to-morrow, when writing a hasty line or two under Colonel ——’s eye. You can scarcely imagine with what pleasure I anticipate the day when we are to begin almost to live together; and you would smile to hear how many plans of employment I have in my head, now that I am confident my heart has found peace in your bosom. Cherish me with that dignified tenderness which I have only found in you, and your own dear girl will try to keep under a quickness of feeling that has sometimes given you pain. Yes, I will be good, that I may deserve to be happy; and whilst you love me, I cannot again fall into the miserable state which rendered life a burden almost too heavy to be borne.

But good-night! God bless you! Sterne says that is equal to a kiss, yet I would rather give you the kiss into the bargain, glowing with gratitude to Heaven and affection to you. I like the word affection, because it signifies something habitual; and we are soon to meet, to try whether we have mind enough to keep our hearts warm.