Mary Wollstonecraft and the beginnings of female emancipation in France and England

by Jacob Bouten

Dr. Price, in his sermon of 1789, "in commemoration of the Revolution of 1688", had given vent to the feelings of approbation with which he had greeted the outbreak of the French Revolution, and among others expressed the view that the king owes his crown to the choice of his people and "may be cashiered for misconduct", thus openly declaring himself a follower of the theories of the Social Contract, which are based upon the sovereignty of the people.

Burke in his "Reflections on the Revolution in France", takes his stand upon the British constitution—once the object of the admiration of a Montesquieu—to oppose what he regards as nothing less than a direct attempt at sowing the seeds of revolution in Great Britain. His pamphlet called forth no fewer than thirty-eight replies, of which that written by Thomas Paine was the most successful amongst the partisans of the new movement in consequence of its radical tendencies. Mary Wollstonecraft was in the van of the revolutionary army, and shared with Dr. Priestley the honour of being the first to enter the field. To account for her indignation it should be remembered that Burke had until then been regarded as one of the principal Whig advocates of reform, in connection with his attitude towards the American problem. No one had anticipated this sudden change of tactics, so welcome, though unlooked-for, to King George and to Pitt, and it fairly maddened the champions of reform.

Buckle, in his "History of Civilisation in England", deeply regrets Burke's conduct, which he calls the consequence of an unfortunate hallucination, due to his feelings having temporarily got the better of his Reason. The vehemence of the controversy in question between opponents who were equally sincere and convinced of the soundness of their views, is due to an essential difference in standpoint, leading to opinions which in either case, though containing an element of truth, must be termed one-sided. The thoroughly practical Burke, whose political ideas were the fruit of an experience of nearly half a century, placed himself upon the purely empirical standpoint, resting his arguments upon a basis of sound historical experience, and asserting that the legislator's first aim should be expediency, taught by experience, and not abstract, speculative truth. He points to the difference between political and social principles, which are the outcome of reason; and political practice, which is the product of human nature, and of which reason is but a part. The reformers of the opposing camp took their stand upon a basis of abstract, geometrical reasoning, and persistently refused to consider the argument of expediency. They only regarded the theoretical aspect of the social problem. Both parties recognised the doctrines of human rights and of the popular sovereignty, which were of British growth, having been put forward long before Rousseau by John Locke; but they differ in their application of them. With Burke, rights are of an hereditary nature. To him, the constitution is the embodiment both of the rights of the free British citizen, and of the duties of the British subject, an inheritance they derived from their ancestors of 1688, together with the duty of keeping the legacy intact in its general tendencies. It was Burke's firm conviction that a statesman should steer clear of philosophical principles, which an absolute want of adaptability to the exigencies of a special case renders unfit for practice.

It must be granted that this line of argument in Burke's case led to a fatal blindness to obvious injustice and to a curious inability to appreciate what was good, noble and disinterested in the leaders of the revolutionary movement. Mary Wollstonecraft and her friends failed to see that reforms which are to affect the roots of existing conditions—however desirable and even necessary—must of necessity be slow and gradual, lest our gain should prove but a poor substitute for our certain loss. There are none more dangerous to society than the abstract idealist, whose very inexperience confirms him in the belief that he is in possession of absolute Truth, for which he is willing to lay down his own life, and, en passant, the lives of others. Of such a nature was the "amiable defect"—to use her own terminology—developed in Mary Wollstonecraft's nature by too impulsive a zeal in the cause of mankind.

She felt intensely on the subject. The furious onslaught which she makes upon Burke in the Rights of Man—without that respect for grey hairs which she would have Burke observe in his dealings with Dr. Price—was prompted by a far deeper feeling for mankind than Burke was capable of. The two vulnerable points in Burke's pamphlet were his unreasonable vehemence and the personal character of his attacks on the one hand, and his want of real sympathy with the "swinish multitude" on the other. The submerged portions of humanity have little to hope for in a statesman who coolly advises them "by labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained and to be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice". The hopeless conservatism of this view aroused the indignation of Mary Wollstonecraft. "It is possible," she exclaims, "to render the poor happier in this world without depriving them of the consolation which you gratuitously grant them in the next!"

Nor has Mr. Burke's "immaculate constitution" her undivided sympathy. She agrees with Rousseau that property, while one of the pillars of the monarchical system, is a deadly enemy to that equality of men before the law without which there can be no real liberty. The preservation of the intact family-estate for the purpose of perpetuating a time-honoured name and tradition, much as it appeals to Burke, was a phrase the force of which did not strike Mary Wollstonecraft, whose indifference to opinion we have already referred to. It would be far better for society if each large estate were divided into a number of small farms, so that each might have a competent portion and all amassing of property cease.

In the same passage she boldly asserts the rights of man, as laid down by Rousseau in his famous Social Compact, which give him a title to as much liberty, both civil and religious, as is compatible with the rights of every other individual. As it is, the first rule of the doctrine of equality, which says that all men are equal before the law, is utterly disregarded, for does not the law shield the rich and oppress the poor? Property in England is a great deal more secure than liberty.

The views expressed in the above passage to a great extent anticipate those of Godwin's "Caleb Williams", published in 1794, which, according to the author's preface, comprehended "a general view of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man", and in which a social system was denounced which enabled the rich man to use the power of a law which seemed to regard only the interests of one single class of society for the most nefarious purposes[43]. A parallel to this sociological novel is afforded by Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished "Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman", to which, if we replace the last word by "woman", the sentence just quoted applies literally.

It is but fair to state that Mary Wollstonecraft did not persist in her extreme views as to the necessity of a sudden and radical change which at one time made her overlook the principle of slow evolution. She was willing to recognise this principle in her "Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution", of which the first and only volume was written some three years later. At Paris, before her intimacy with Imlay and the birth of her daughter Fanny brought about a temporary relaxation in her social zeal, her time was spent in watching the development of events with eager and sympathetic interest. Her optimistic faith in the perfectibility of mankind helped her—as it did Wordsworth—to look beyond the horrors and bloodshed by which her heart was moved to intense pity and indignation. She was convinced that out of the chaotic mass "a fairer government was rising than ever shed the sweets of social life on the world." But, she adds, "things must have time to find their level."

The "Vindication of the Rights of Man"—although quite overshadowed by Paine's pamphlet—met with so much success that very soon after its publication a second edition was called for. There is no doubt that this circumstance gave Mary a great deal of encouragement. It became an incentive to further efforts on a larger scale in the direction in which she now realised lay the mission of her life. In spite of her theories she was sufficiently sensitive to praise to feel gratified by it and to derive from it the moral courage necessary to defy public opinion and constitute herself the champion of the Cause of Woman.