Being thus together will take the edge off that unnatural restraint which too often marks the relations between children of a different sex. The position of the teachers—not ushers—should be such as to render them entirely independent of their pupils' parents. The usher's ambiguous position of mixed authority and submission frequently rendered him an object of ridicule to the children. Talleyrand, from whom Mary in all probability borrowed this suggestion, even wanted to make the children independent of their masters in respect of punishment, by having it inflicted only after the offender had been tried and found guilty by his peers.
It will be seen that the "Vindication of the Rights of Women" touches upon a great many points which at the present time have become foregone conclusions, but which, nevertheless, were in Mary's days daring speculations, which were received with anything but general approval.
If it should now appear to us that some of her conclusions were rather too sweeping, that the very physical inferiority of woman which she is willing to grant makes it impossible for her to combine in her person the wife, the mother and the social woman, and that a too ardent application of her theories of the social possibilities of her sex is responsible for some abominations of the public hustings, who, banging their fists on the table, "refuse to be the playthings of men any longer"—it should be remembered that she insisted with equal emphasis upon the cultivation of the female qualities, and that it was not granted her to be taught moderation by the repulsive spectacle of female extremism in later times! Moreover, in the introduction to the first edition of the Vindication, she expresses her disgust of "masculine women". And yet the type of a "masculine woman" in Mary's days, with her "ardour in hunting, shooting and gaming", was not nearly so objectionable as her modern sister.
It is, indeed, very difficult to find anything to praise in the Vindication when viewed as a literary effort. Mary Wollstonecraft herself clearly did not regard it as such. The importance of the object by which she was animated made her disdain to cull her phrases or polish her style, wishing rather to persuade by the force of her arguments than dazzle by the elegance of her language. Unfortunately the former is not inconsiderably weakened by a deplorable tendency to reiteration, and a general desultoriness and lack of system which cannot fail to strike the reader. The "flowery diction" which she professed herself anxious to avoid, but did not succeed in completely banishing, is responsible for a great deal of the turgidity and false rhetoric which disfigure certain passages.
Godwin, whose unemotional nature enabled him to judge of his wife's work without prejudice and whose Memoirs contain a most sincere and therefore valuable criticism, although admiring the courage of her convictions, the disinterestedness of her motives and the originality of her contentions, finds fault with what he calls "the stern and rugged nature" of certain passages which will probably impress the modern reader as coarse and indelicate. Her great devotion to the cause may account for the "amazonian" temper which fills some parts of her book, more especially the "animadversions" on the opinions of those of her opponents whose "backs demanded the scourge". Her disapproval of Lord Chesterfield's moral standpoint has already been referred to. Mary Wollstonecraft was not in the habit of mincing matters, and her sincerity and consequent frankness brought her the ill-will of many.
The publication of the Rights of Women at once brought Mary into prominence. Unfortunately, the scare of a French invasion and the trial of the reformers were most unfavourable to the spread of any new ideas in England. From her sisters she had little sympathy, and "poor Bess" rather spitefully alluded to information she had received to the effect that "Mrs. Wollstonecraft was grown quite handsome" and intended going to Paris. For this trip to France there were several causes. In the first place she felt intensely interested in the march of events there, which were hastening to a crisis, Louis XVI being a prisoner in the hands of the Convention. The second motive—perhaps the principal—was connected with her friendship for Mr. Fuseli, the celebrated Swiss painter; but whether she hoped to make the trip in company with the Fuselis and her friend Johnson, as Mr. Kegan Paul supposes[49], or wanted to get away from the influence of the artist, with whom Godwin informs us she was in love, is uncertain. The end was that she went to Paris alone in December 1792, and boarded at the house of Mme Filliettaz, a lady in whose school Eliza and Everina had been teachers, but who was absent from home, so that Mary's French was put to the severe test of conversation with the servants.
She now became a close spectator of the progress of that Revolution which upon the whole had her sympathy. Yet it was with mingled feelings that she saw the chariot pass her house in which the royal prisoner was conveyed to his trial a few days after her arrival. The sight of Louis going to meet death with more dignity than she expected from his character, brought before her mind the picture of his ancestor Louis XIV, entering his capital after a glorious victory, and pity, her ruling passion, interceded for the poor victim who had to pay for the crimes of his forefathers.
Economy prescribed her removal from the Filliettaz mansion to less pretentious quarters at Neuilly, where she was left a great deal to herself, save for an occasional visit to her English friends in Paris Miss Williams and Mrs. Christie. It was at the latter's house that a meeting took place which decided the next few years of her life.
Her days at Neuilly were thus spent in retirement. She had a devoted old gardener to wait upon her and generally went out for a walk in the evening, the hours of daylight being given up to the composition of a new work, combining history with philosophy and inspired by the stirring events to which she was such a close witness. Although not published until some years after, "An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and the Effect it has produced in Europe" was written in the first months of 1793 at Neuilly. The Advertisement with which it opens declares the author's intention of extending the work to two or three more volumes, a considerable part of which, it informs us, had already been written; but Godwin assures us that no part of the proposed continuation was found among her papers after her death. The only existing volume both in style and method shows a very decided advance upon the earlier Vindication. Mary's narrative powers were even greater than her capacity for philosophy, and her imagination had been fired by the thrilling accounts she had received from her Parisian friends of the march of events. The greater freedom and fluency of the style, the greater cogency of the reasoning and the dignity of the narrative render the volume very pleasant reading, the more so, as it shows great moderation and impartiality as far as actual facts are concerned. That the delineations of personal character are not always felicitous may be due to the fact that the author obtained all her information from witnesses who were not free from the prejudices which strong party-feelings awaken. On the whole, however, Mary succeeded in placing herself above her subject and in proving that time had taught her to modify her extreme views and made her readier to grant certain concessions. The book is a compromise between her former principles of abstract philosophy and those of gradual evolution. Although unwilling to abandon her original view that "Reason beaming on the grand theatre of political changes, can prove the only sure guide to direct us to a favourable or just conclusion", and that the erroneous inferences of sensibility should be carefully guarded against, yet she felt sufficient appreciation for her old enemy Burke's principle of growth to admit that the Revolution was the natural consequence of intellectual improvement, gradually proceeding to perfection.