[33] p. 2.
[34] Strictures, p. 29.
[35] Strictures, p. 32.
CHAPTER VI. Radical Feminism: Mary Wollstonecraft.
Around the name of Mary Wollstonecraft a storm of adverse criticism raged for years after her death, prompting Godwin to the publication of his "Memoirs of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman", and calling forth the somewhat half-hearted defence of her actions and writings by an anonymous author in 1803. Both failed to attract any degree of notice. Shelley, whose meetings with young Mary Godwin over her mother's grave in St. Pancras cemetery are described in Mrs. Marshall's biography, offered her the sincere tribute of his verse in "The Revolt of Islam", where the heroine resembles her in her character.
The champion of the Cause of Woman was herself an essentially loveable, thoroughly feminine representative of her sex, whose many troubles arose from an extremely sensitive heart, a pure, refined sensibility, without any of the alloy which she was the first to regret in so many other women, and from the circumstance that, being born a century before her time, her striving was only moderately successful and brought her the ill-will of many who were unable to appreciate the sincerity of her motives. Nothing could be more undeserved, or bespeak a more glaring ignorance of the character it reviled than Horace Walpole's mention of Mary Wollstonecraft in his letter to Miss Hannah More—in her rigid respectability the direct opposite of the author of the "Vindication"—as "a hyena in petticoats, whose books were excommunicated from the pale of his library". Few books and their authors have been the object of such unsparing censure as the Rights of Women and Mary Wollstonecraft, and it may be added that seldom was the imputation of meddling spitefulness and even of gross immorality more utterly undeserved. There speaks from the entire work a spirit of absolute sincerity, of disinterested eagerness for necessary reforms and of that fervent enthusiasm in the pursuit of aims which will not shrink at martyrdom, which endear the author to the unbiased reader, and which only the narrowest conservatism could overlook. Nor would it have met with the bitter antagonism it encountered had not the public mind, harassed by the constant menace of the French Revolution, been overmuch inclined to cry down all works of reform. As it was, Mary Wollstonecraft's reputation passed through three distinctly marked phases; in the first, the work and its author were violently attacked by the many, and enthusiastically defended by the few; in the second, they were consigned to temporary oblivion; in the third, Mr. Kegan Paul in 1876, and after him Miss Mathilde Blind in "The New Quarterly Review", Miss H. Zimmern in the "Deutsche Rundschau", and E. R. Pennell in the "Eminent Women Series" tried with a fair amount of success to awaken a new interest in both and to vindicate the author's memory by clearing her personal character from the monstrous imputations of immorality. The fact has now been definitely established that she was prompted by the noblest love of humanity, and is entitled to rank among those champions of the new faith who suffered martyrdom for the cause. She was one of those predestined by that innate character she was so fain to deny to a life of the bitterest anguish, brightened by spells of almost perfect happiness. Both the joys and the sorrows of humanity were abundantly hers. With her, character was indeed fate, and the outward circumstances of her life only emphasized the convictions to which a woman of her stamp was bound to come in the world of inequality and cruel injustice in which she moved. She combined in her person the rarest gifts of both head and heart; as a quick perception, enabling her to grasp a situation very rapidly; a never-flinching determination to use the divine gift of Reason in the pursuit of useful knowledge, and a boundless devotion to what she considered the obvious task of her life. Once she had discovered her vocation she flung herself into her work with indomitable zeal, trying to do herself violence in asserting the superiority of reason over sentiment, and to put a restraint on the passions that threatened to overpower her. In this attempt she did not always succeed, and while it makes her appear to us thoroughly human, yet her imperfect self-control was not without influence on her works of reform, leading her to exaggeration and wearisome reiterations. In the chapter of the Vindication which deals with national education she insists that only that man makes a good citizen, who has in his youth "exercised the affections of a son and a brother," for public affections grow out of private, and it is in youth that the fondest friendships are formed. This sounds like a confession, for if Mary Wollstonecraft had not been in earlier years such a devoted friend to her dear ones as to utterly disregard her own comfort in her desire to befriend them, she could never have loved humanity with such intensity. It is difficult to say what would have become of the Wollstonecraft household if Mary had not strained every faculty to assist them. When her drunken father beat his wife, the latter used to appeal to Mary for protection. When at last the poor soul felt death approach, it was again Mary who without a second's hesitation flung up her situation as a lady's companion at Bath to return to her mother's sickbed and to ease her last moments. Not only her sisters Everina and Eliza, but also her younger brothers Charles and James received from her both moral and financial support, to be able to give which she cramped herself to such an extent that the room in George Street in which she wrote was furnished only with the barest necessaries, and her gowns were so extremely shabby that Knowles in his "Life of Fuseli" describes her as "a philosophical sloven". In thus reducing her wants, however, she was merely acting in accordance with the view—held by all the friends of reform and derived from Rousseau—that only he can be happy whose desires are so few that he can afford to gratify them, an offshoot of the famous Nature-theory. Nevertheless, the description of Mary as a "sloven" seems exaggerated, judging from the two portraits by Opie which have been preserved, of which the one may be spurious, but the other, now in the National Portrait Gallery, is beyond any doubt genuine. It shows the face ("physiognomy" Mary Wollstonecraft herself would have preferred to call it) of a strikingly pretty, refined-looking woman, with a profusion of auburn hair, a clear complexion and a pleading look in her brown eyes which reminded Mr. Kegan Paul of Beatrice Cenci.
The grim realities of Mary's youth left little space for the development of any sense of humour, but they bred in her a fighting spirit which afterwards stood her in good stead. Her next championship was that of Fanny Blood, whom she shielded from domestic misery very much like that she had herself experienced, and whose brother George, who became involved in a nasty scandal[36], also experienced Mary's all-embracing kindness of heart. From her correspondence with him in the years of his forced absence from England it indeed appears that she was not by any means a "fair-weather friend".
The extremely serious cast of her character—which circumstances afterwards developed into melancholy—also found expression in a strong sense of duty. Unlike those champions of humanity who clamour for the rights of Man without reference to the corresponding obligations, Mary Wollstonecraft in later years always insisted not only that every right of necessity involves a duty, but also that we should insist upon those rights chiefly to be enabled to perform the moral duties which life imposes. Add to this an absolute "incapability of disguise", as her friend and publisher Johnson expressed it, and a frankness which made her "fling whate'er she felt, not fearing, into words"—often uncovering the worst sores of society in all their hideousness with a determination bordering upon indelicacy—and the portrait of Mary's character, as far as elementary traits go, is complete.
The strong natural bent of her character was further emphasized by incidents which presented to her mind the problem of the subjugation of women urgently demanding a champion. On three different occasions did she see the lives of women ruined by cruel, dissipated husbands. The third of these was by far the worst. It concerned the marriage of her sister Eliza ("Poor Bess", as Mary calls her in her correspondence with Everina and Fanny), to a Mr. Bishop, who, although he was probably a clergyman, appears to have been a most hypocritically sensual brute. No doubt the wife also was to blame; indeed, all the Wollstonecraft girls were inclined to be suspicious, irritable, and over-ready to take offence. Shortly after the birth of a child matters came to a crisis, and Mary, having come over to nurse her sister, who after her confinement had had an attack of insanity, proposed that they should leave Mr. Bishop's house together, a plan actually carried into execution, after which Mary, Eliza and Fanny Blood started teaching as a profession. The daily bickerings of the Bishop household impressed upon Mary's mind the state of utter defencelessness and abject slavery in which many women were kept. It afterwards made her decide to supplement her "Rights of Women" with a novel, dealing with the Wrongs of Women, in which some of the incidents she had witnessed found a place. The work was unfortunately interrupted by her unexpected death, and in its unfinished state was included by Godwin in the posthumous edition of some of Mary Wollstonecraft's works in 1798. Thus death claimed her while making a last effort to succour the oppressed.