With the sisters' flight from Mr. Bishop's house began the long struggle against adverse circumstances in which Mary did most of the fighting. One wonders what would have become of Eliza and the boys—who had soon left their father's home—but for Mary's resourcefulness. Everina found a home with Edward, the eldest brother, who obviously thought that in sheltering her he had done all that could be expected of him. The girls met with little or no sympathy from friends, the general opinion finding fault with Eliza's conduct and judging that "women should accept without a murmur whatever it suits their husbands to give them, whether it be kindness or blows". This represents the general belief of those days with regard to the position of married women. The possibility of girls of the better middle class having at any time of their lives to earn their own living had never been seriously considered, and the sisters were indeed in great distress. Again Mary had the utter incapacity of even the bravest of her sex to support themselves brought home to her in a way that left no doubt. And yet the two or three years of the little boarding-school at Newington Green were not wholly devoid of enjoyment. Mary made the acquaintance of the famous Dr. Price, the dissenting preacher who was soon to rouse the fire of Burke's indignation, and who strongly influenced her religious views.
It seems the right place here to say something of Mary's attitude towards religion. In a life like hers, bringing her face to face with the evils of existing society, and with her degree of sensitiveness it is but natural that religious feelings should have played a prominent part. Her mother had bred her in the principles of the Church of England, but Mary was far too independent to allow her mother any real influence. But at least the circumstances of her youth saved her from sophistic teachings, which may form hypocrites or awaken an altogether disproportionate hatred of whatever smacks of Christianity, under the impression that Christianity and the dogmatism of narrow-minded orthodoxy are at bottom one and the same thing. Such was Godwin's case, and it proved a deathblow to his faith. Mary, however, was a great deal left to herself and, as Godwin informs us in the Memoirs, her religion was mostly of her own creation, and little allied to any system of forms. The many Biblical quotations in her works suggest diligent reading of the Bible and point to a state of mind very far removed from indifference or antipathy. She rather felt a natural leaning towards religion, a craving for mental peace to be satisfied only by firm religious convictions. As Godwin puts it, the tenets of her system were the growth of her own moral taste, and her religion therefore was always a gratification, never a terror to her. The same almost feminine yearning for the moral support of a religion that warms the heart, distinguished Rousseau from the robust and self-reliant philosophers of the rational school, and possibly caused Mary Wollstonecraft to feel attracted towards him and at the same time to pity him, when first reading his "Emile"[37]. Up to the time of her first meeting with Dr. Price her attitude had been that of simple faith, with constant appeals to the Divine interference. She had been a regular church-goer, and it is quite possible that the public and regular routine of sermons and prayers and the implicit subjection it demands, had already begun to pall upon her, and predisposed her for the adoption of the less dogmatic views of Deism. It may also be safely assumed that her experiences in Ireland as a governess and the subsequent period of close intimacy with some of the leading revolutionists lessened her interest in religion, which points to the future, and proportionately increased that in Man, who is the present. As the years advanced, the rapid growth of her considerable intellectual powers, the tendencies of the times in which she lived, and the society which she frequented made her drift unconsciously towards rationalism. Then it was that a conflict arose between Sentiment and Intellect. She set about "repressing her natural ardour and granting a more considerable influence to the dictates of Reason", or, as Professor Dowden puts it, "she set her brain as a sentinel over her heart, trying to put a curb on her natural impulsiveness"[38].
This change in her views of life, dating from her intimacy with Price, was hastened by circumstances. The death of her friend Fanny—who died in her arms at Lisbon,—and the want of success of her first educational efforts—due chiefly to Mrs. Bishop's mismanagement of the school in Mary's absence—had made her feel low-spirited and ill. It was only the sale of the manuscript of the "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters" to Mr. Johnson, the publisher of Fleet Street, for ten guineas—part of which sum she sent to the Bloods whose straits were worse than her own—that staved off utter ruin. She relinquished her work as a schoolmistress, and through her friend Mr. Prior, assistant master at Eton, obtained the situation of governess to the children of Lord Kingsborough at a salary of forty pounds a year. Before leaving for Mitchelstown in Ireland, she spent some time with the Priors at Eton, where she had an opportunity to study the life in an English public-school. It did not impress her favourably and gave rise to some severe criticism in the Rights of Women on the subject of false religion and undue attachment to outward things. "I could not live the life they lead at Eton", she says in a letter to her sister Everina, "nothing but dress and ridicule going forward, and I really believe their fondness for ridicule tends to make them affected, the women in their manners, and the men in their conversation, for witlings abound and puns fly about like crackers, though you would scarcely guess they had any meaning in them, if you did not hear the noise they create". This was her first glimpse of society. In the same letter she finds comfort in the reflection that the time will come when "the God of love will wipe away all tears from our eyes, and neither death nor accidents of any kind will interpose to separate us from those we love". No wonder she was horrified at the boy who only consented to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to avoid forfeiting half a guinea!
She was now, indeed, entering upon a new phase of her life. She had witnessed the horrors of a domestic life in which drunkenness and other moral vices reigned supreme; she was now to behold the utter worthlessness of the pleasure-seeking, irresponsible upper classes, whose religion was all sham, and who tried to make up in dogmatic narrowness what they lacked in true piety. It was the conduct of her own sex that most of all disgusted her. It taught her that the absurd distinctions of rank corrupted not merely the oppressed dependents, but also their tyrants, whose only claim to respectability was in the titles they held. In short, it turned her from a mere educator into a social reformer, and from a devout Christian into a Deist.
What struck her most forcibly about the women of the Kingsborough household was their unfitness for their chief task in life: that of educating their own children. They represented a varied catalogue of female errors. Lady Kingsborough was too much occupied with her dogs to care for her children, whom she left to the care of their governess. When afterwards that governess came to stand first in the children's affections, she promptly dismissed her. Mary Wollstonecraft's revilers have tried to substantiate the charge of irreligiousness against her by pointing out that her favourite pupil Margaret—afterwards Lady Mount Cashel—was not wholly without blame in her later life; thus ignoring the degrading influence of a mother like Lady Kingsborough, and overlooking the fact that Mary's stay in Ireland lasted only one year. In her correspondence with Mrs. Bishop there is a description of Lady Kingsborough's stepmother and her three daughters, "fine girls, just going to market, as their brother says". This short sentence shows the state of revolt she was in against the frivolity of women in making a wealthy marriage the sole aim of life. If, therefore, her religious principles were of a sternness hardly suited to the practice of those days, it need not necessarily be the former that were at fault. The imputation of insincerity, however, merits absolute contempt. Here, indeed, "to doubt her goodness were to want a heart". It is impossible to read any portion of her works without being struck by the earnest tone of sincere piety which pervades them all. It was a great pity that what she saw of Christianity prevented her from going to the source of that religion, which might have given her that peace "which passeth understanding" for which her heart yearned and which the vagueness of her deistic views, although better suited to satisfy her Reason, could not supply.
While at Bristol Hot Wells in the summer of 1788 she wrote a little book entitled "Mary, A Fiction", relating the incidents of her friendship with Fanny Blood. But it is not the incidents that make the charm of this composition. Godwin, who could admire in another those qualities which he knew he himself lacked, says that in it "the feelings are of the truest and most exquisite class; every circumstance is adorned with that species of imagination which enlists itself under the banners of delicacy and sentiment"[39].
Mary's dismissal as a governess fortunately did not leave her unprovided for. The generous Mr. Johnson found her lodgings in George Street, near Blackfriar's Bridge, and made her his reader. She criticised the manuscripts sent to him, and the kindness and sincerity of her criticisms brought her a few real friends, among whom was Miss Hayes, who afterwards became the means of bringing her and Godwin together. Mr. Johnson had just started the Analytical Review, in which Mary took a considerable share. The many translations she did at this period were suggested by Johnson, and as such throw no light on her personal taste, but in the case of Salzmann's "Moralisches Elementarbuch" he certainly gave her a congenial subject. She had by this time read Rousseau's Emile, with the main tendencies of which she agreed as far as the boy Emile was concerned, but whose ideal of womanhood, embodied in Sophie, was very far removed from her own, and also Thomas Day's "Sandford and Merton," in which the influence of Rousseau is very marked. The ideas expressed by Day, corroborated and added to by her own experience and by Salzmann's theories, form the basis of her "Original Stories from Real Life, with Conversations calculated to regulate the Affections and form the Mind to Truth and Goodness". (1788). The idea of a private tutor (or preceptor) had been Rousseau's, and Day makes a kind-hearted clergyman, Mr. Barlow, who had attained excellent results in the training of young Harry Sandford, a farmer's son, undertake the instruction of Tommy Merton, the son of a rich planter of Jamaica. Day obviously cannot refrain from introducing the theme of class-distinctions, making the farmer's child appear to great advantage by the side of the gentleman's son, who has been utterly spoiled by an over-indulgent mother and has had the whole catalogue of prejudices of birth and station inculcated into him. The story consists of a string of incidents, partly arising from natural causes and partly due to Mr. Barlow's "coups de théâtre pédagogiques", in which Rousseau also was fond of indulging. They all contribute towards the formation of Tommy's mind and heart, in conjunction with a number of stories, told at the psychological moment by their preceptor, which it appears do not fail to produce their effect, for Tommy is promptly changed from an insufferable little despot into a paragon of virtue. Nor is he slow himself to adopt the oracular tone of self-sufficiency which Harry exhibits from the first. Where Day's book differs from Rousseau,—which is only in two respects,—the deviation is due to the fact that Rousseau was essentially a theorist, whose aim was to provide an educational scheme, whilst Day in combination with Mr. Edgeworth meant to, and did carry his theories into practice, in doing which he had to make a good many concessions to outward circumstances. Rousseau seldom indulges in story-telling, in his scheme the work of instructing the child under twelve (Tommy and Harry are only six) is left to Nature, and the preceptor keeps his precepts to himself and merely mounts the most jealous guard over his pupil to ward off undesirable influences and to leave Nature undisturbed in accomplishing her task. Thus Rousseau advises the negative education for young children. In Day, however, the preceptor takes a decidedly active part, and both by precept and example directs his pupils' thoughts towards certain conclusions they are meant to draw. A natural consequence of Rousseau's radical Nature-scheme is that the pleasure of reading books—beyond a few of great practical value to the Man of Nature, such as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe—is withheld from the young pupil, who is only taught to read at his own request, and at a much later age. Instead, he should be content to read the book of Nature, which is in a language every human creature can understand. Here again the more practical Day disagrees, and in Sandford and Merton books play a prominent part. Again, Rousseau wants to separate his pupil not only from the family to which he belongs, but from all other children, thus overlooking the important factor of inter-education. Day educates the two boys together and occasionally brings them in contact with other children also, mostly of the peasant-class.
For the rest, however, there is a close parallelism between the two systems. Stress is laid on simplicity being the mother of all virtues, the boys are taught to regard manual labour as an honest occupation of which no so-called "gentleman" need be ashamed, and which may stand him in good stead should circumstances make it necessary for him to earn his own living. They have their physical strength developed by manly exercise, and the advantages accruing from a life in accordance with the dictates of Nature are pointed out to them in a most suggestive way. They learn to regard class-privileges with scorn; to them a "man" is a being superior to a "gentleman"; are taught that the only property a man is entitled to is the result of his own labour; and acquire some knowledge of botany, zoology, cosmography, geography and in general of such subjects as may render the child more fit for a life in accordance with Nature such as Day himself practised.
It need hardly be said that Mary Wollstonecraft's educational ideas did not go the entire length of Day's somewhat eccentric radicalism. She sympathised with Rousseau's Nature-scheme only inasmuch as it asserted the advantages of country-life and did away with conventionality. Although accustomed to the most rigid simplicity, she never approached the utter disregard of appearances which Day professed to feel. She utterly disagreed with Rousseau where he asserted the necessity of giving girls an education "relative to men", it being one of the chief aims of her later works to show that there should be no difference of principles in the education of the two sexes; but she applied a great many of Rousseau's suggestions, which he intended for boys, to her own sex. Far from wishing to furnish a complete scheme for the education of young girls upon a basis of abstract reasoning, she follows Day in attacking the defects most common to childhood and in trying to establish a standard of virtue which may be attained by following Reason. She entirely relies upon the force of a moral lesson contained in a well-told story, or, better still, illustrated by personal example. In one point of difference the contrast in character between her and Rousseau becomes most obvious. The latter's lack of moral firmness makes him, while shielding his pupil from the evil influence of his surroundings, rather unaccountably overlook the necessity of inculcating a sense of duty. His scheme has no ethical background. In Mary Wollstonecraft, however, this ethical background is the essential thing. Her parting advice to her pupils (voiced by Mrs. Mason) is: "Recollect, that from religion your chief comfort must spring, and never neglect the duty of prayer. Learn from experience the comfort that arises from making known your wants and sorrows to the wisest and best of Beings not only of this life, but of that which is to come." Rousseau's pupil was not likely to become a "striver", Mary Wollstonecraft's had had high ethical principles instilled into her.
The lack of incentives to virtue which characterises Rousseau's scheme may be the consequence of his theory of original innocence. He does not believe in the existence of evil in connection with the Divine Will, but holds that evil is merely the consequence of wrong opinions. Here he was Godwin's teacher. A radical change in individual opinion will cause evil to disappear. How original sin and evil could find their way into the world, mankind being in a state of perfect innocence, he does not explain. Godwin, and with him Mary Wollstonecraft, were of opinion that there is in mankind no natural bias towards either good or evil, and that everything depends on the forming of the mind, hence the all-importance of education.