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

by Jacob Bouten

In the course of the following August Imlay went to Paris, where Mary joined him in September, at the end of which month he proceeded to London on business. The extensive trade he was carrying on with Sweden and Norway at this time completely engrossed him. Mary's first letters after this fresh separation were cheerful and pleasant, although she was subject to occasional fits of depression. The conviction that Imlay was about to forsake her does not appear to have taken root until the closing month of the year. The days of the Terror were now over, and people once more breathed freely. Mary made an heroic effort to let the future take care of itself and to concentrate her attention upon her little girl, who developed an early fondness for scarlet coats and music, and on one occasion wore the red sash in honour of J. J. Rousseau, her mother confessing that "she had always been half in love with him."

Imlay's letters now became few and far between. His business-schemes were unsuccessful, and Mary took the opportunity to point out to him the absurdity of thus wasting life in preparing to live. The tone of her correspondence betrays a growing indignation at his treatment of her, which appeared in spite of herself and which repeated protestations of unalterable affection could not hide. "I do not consent to your taking any other journey," she writes, "or the little woman and I will be off the Lord knows where." She wants none of his cold kindness and distant civilities, but wishes to have him about her, enjoying life and love. The picture of sweet domesticity, of parents sharing the sacred duty of education, of pleasant evenings of homely tenderness spent at the fireside, recurred to her mind with a sense of aching regret. She would far sooner struggle with poverty than go on living this unnatural life of separation. Too proud to be under pecuniary obligations to a neglectful husband, she began to consider the possibility of having to provide for herself and her child.

When at last he allowed her to join him in England, she no longer cherished false hopes, but begged him to tell her frankly whether he had ceased to care. But Imlay wanted her support for his business-schemes. He asked her to go to Sweden and Norway for him to attend to his interests and Mary consented with a heavy heart, hoping that a complete change of surroundings might afford distraction, if not amusement, for she was feeling utterly worn out and ill.

Imlay kept up the melancholy farce a few months longer. Mary wrote him a series of long epistles from Scandinavia, into which, as a means of keeping her mind concentrated upon other matters, she inserted elaborate descriptions of the voyage, of the countries in which she was travelling, and of their inhabitants.

Of these letters, the descriptive portions of which were published in 1796, Godwin speaks highly. Their perusal caused him to change his opinion of the author of the Rights of Women. Their first, and so far only, meeting—in November 1791—had not prepossessed him in her favour. She seemed to him to monopolize the conversation, and prevented him from listening to Tom Paine, who never was a great talker, and whom she reduced to absolute silence. But he now learned to think highly of her literary talent. The passages dealing with personal affairs had of course been omitted, and afterwards found their way into Godwin's Posthumous Edition of the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, and also into Mr. Kegan Paul's collection of Letters to Imlay. The tone of despair has on the whole given way to one of resigned melancholy. In spite of the sadness which prevailed in Mary's heart, the change was doing her good, and her health was improving rapidly. Before her arrival at Tonsberg in Sweden, she had felt very ill, a slow fever preyed on her every night. One day she found "a fine rivulet filtered through the rocks and confined in a basin for the cattle." The water was pure, and she determined to turn her morning-walks towards it and seek for health from the nymph of the fountain. She also wished to bathe, and there being no convenience near, took to rowing as a pleasant and at the same time useful exercise.

While thus the flush of health was returning to her cheeks, she found it easier to arrive at a conclusion. She made up her mind that there should be an end to all uncertainty. Imlay was put before a dilemma. Either they must live together after her return, or part forever. Still he kept flattering her with the hope that he might join her at Hamburg, for a trip to Switzerland, the country of her dreams since the days of Neuilly. But he did not keep his word, and when Mary landed at Dover in October 1795, she realised that all was over and that Imlay had entered into a new connection with an actress.

Then it was that Mary made up her mind to die. The harrowing details of her fruitless attempt at suicide may be found in Godwin's Memoirs and also in Mr. Kegan Paul's work. After her rescue she learnt to live for her child's sake, and not to flinch from the sacred duties which tied her to life. Imlay passed out of her sphere, and she parted with him in peace. But the sufferings through which he had made her pass had stamped themselves indelibly upon her heart.

The "Letters written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark" met with a favourable reception. Being the narrative of foreign travel, they mark a new departure in her literary career. She held with Rousseau that travelling, as the completion of a liberal education, ought to be adopted on rational grounds.[51] The writing of a journal was to her a means of keeping the mind employed, and preventing it from dwelling overmuch on painful recollections of disappointed hopes. Her works of education and reform had been so full of the militant spirit, and her correspondence with Imlay so replete with the anguish of unrequited love, that she had not yet come to recognise the soothing effect upon the mind of a close communion with Nature. It is in the Scandinavian correspondence that the Nature-element is first met with. The contemplation of the grand coast-scenery gave her that peace and quiet for which her heart yearned. It did not bring her forgetfulness of present troubles, but it gave her the necessary strength to meet them without flinching. In her little boat, surrounded by the glorious works of Nature, she found herself for the first time capable of grappling with her problem, which the sense of human insignificance reduced to its true proportions. The nature of her worship stamps her as the true spiritual child of Jean-Jacques. The writers of an earlier period had been able to appreciate only what is congenial in nature. The forbidding austerity of the snow-clad mountains of Switzerland had produced no raptures in Goldsmith's breast, and Cowper's English landscape owed its attractiveness to its suggestion of peaceful harmony. Rousseau had been the first to love Nature also in her sterner moods and aspects; like Wordsworth, "the sounding cataract haunted him like a passion", and the Nouvelle Héloise contains the faithful record of the impressions produced upon him by the grandeur of the Valais mountains. Some of Mary's nature-descriptions—notably those of the Trolhaettan Falls, and of the rocky Norwegian coast—afford a parallel to these passages. She was deeply impressed by the wonders of Nature she witnessed, and by the exquisite loveliness of the short northern summer. "In the evening the western gales which prevail during the day, die away, the aspen leaves tremble into stillness, and reposing Nature seems to be warmed by the moon, which here assumes a genial aspect; and if a light shower has chanced to fall with the sun, the juniper, the underwood of forest, exhales a wild perfume, mixed with a thousand nameless sweets, that, soothing the heart, leave images in the memory which the imagination will ever hold dear."

There is an anticipation of Wordsworth in the last line of the above passage. Mary recognises in Nature "the nurse of sentiment", producing melancholy as well as rapture, as it touches the different chords of the human soul like the changing wind which agitates the aeolian harp.