Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

“ It is instructive to observe how William Godwin fell away from his philosophical theories as soon as he was required to put them in practice. It is one thing for a scholar to theorize in his arm-chair for the guidance of individuals, who are unknown to him; another thing for him to act on his precepts, in the education of persons to whom he is drawn by parental affection. In theory an enemy to marriage, when Mary Wollstonecraft gave him her wounded heart, he had lived with her in Free Love for only a few months, when he discovered that he had better marry her. ”

“ Godwin had talked about marriage in a philosophic calmness soon after coming to London; but a match proposed by his sister came to nothing. He had some tenderness for Amelia Alderson, afterwards Mrs. Opie, and for Mrs. Inchbald. In 1796 he formed an attachment to Mary Wollstonecraft [see Godwin, Mary] , who was now living as Mrs. Imlay in the literary circle frequented by Godwin. Although he objected to marriage on principle, he admitted that it had advantages when he expected to become a father, and he appears to have been as sincerely in love as his nature admitted. ”

“ That she fully deserved this disapprobation and contempt seemed to many confirmed by the fact that her daughter, Mary Godwin, consented to live with Shelley before their union could be legalized. The independence of mother and daughter excited private as well as public animosity. During all these years Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was not without defenders, but their number was small. Southey was always enthusiastic in his admiration, and his letters are full of her praises. Shelley, too, offered her the tribute of his praise in verse. ”

“ Godwin for once only in his life was stirred by a real passion, and his admiration for his wife equalled his affection. The very slight clouds which arose now and then were of a transient character, and sprang from Mary [Pg 105] Wollstonecraft’s excessive sensitiveness and eager quickness of temper. These were, perhaps, occasionally tried by Godwin’s confirmed bachelor habits, and also by the fact that he took au pied de la lettre all that she had said about the independence of women, when in truth she leant a good deal on the aid of others. ”

“ The face was pale as marble: the features almost feminine in their delicacy: thin lips, straight nose, good teeth, abundant, curling hair, and eyes so dreamy and sorrowful that women on the street would often turn and follow the "angel soul garbed in human form."
This man Shelley was sick at heart, bereft, perplexed, in sore straits, and to whom should he turn for advice in this time of undoing but to Godwin, the philosopher! Besides, Godwin had been the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, and the splendid precepts of these two had nourished into being all the latent excellence of the youth. ”

“ Godwin was by no means so violent and outrageous in wrath as Mary Wollstonecraft. In other respects Mary Jane had the advantage of Mary Wollstonecraft. In social reputation she was far superior to Mary Godwin’s mother. Having never produced so scandalous a book as the Rights of Women, she had not lived in Free Love with two men or any man; she had never given birth to an illegitimate child; her name had never been discreditably associated with another woman’s husband; nor had she ever thrown herself in a fit of white rage off Putney Bridge. ”

“ But, in addition to this, Godwin had certain theories upon the subject. Because his love was the outcome of strong feeling, and not of calm discussion, his reliance upon reason, as the regulator of his actions, did not cease. The habits of a life-time could not be so easily broken. If he had not governed love in its growth, he at least ruled its expression. It was necessary to decide upon a course of conduct for the two lives now made one. Since he and Mary were to be really, if not legally, man and wife, the time had come to test the truth of these ideas. ”

“ The very same day, Godwin himself wrote to announce his wife's death to several of his friends. It was characteristic of the man to be systematic even in his grief, which was sincere. He recorded in his diary the details of each day during Mary's illness, and it was not until the last that he shrank from coldly stating events to him so truly tragic. The only dashes which occur in his diary follow the date of Sunday, Sept. 10, 1797. Mr. Kegan Paul says that writing to his friends "was probably an attempt to be stoical, but a real indulgence in the luxury of woe." ”

“ Moreover, life, just as she lost it, promised to be brighter than it had ever been before. Godwin's after career shows that he would not have proved unworthy of her love. Domestic pleasures were as dear to her as intellectual pursuits. In her own house, surrounded by husband and children, she would have been not only a great but a happy woman. It is at least a satisfaction to know that her last year was content and peaceful. Few have needed happiness more than she did, for to few has it been given to suffer the hardships that fell to her share. ”

“ It is true that in her Rights of Women she had shown that passion must inevitably lose its first ardour, and that love between man and wife must in the course of time become either friendship or indifference. But while she had reasoned dispassionately in an abstract treatise, she had not been equally temperate in the direction of her own affairs. Her love for Imlay had not passed into the second stage, but his had deteriorated into indifference very quickly. Godwin was, as she well knew, in every way unlike Imlay. ”

“ She revolutionized not only his life, but his social doctrines. Through her he discovered the flaw in his arguments, and then honestly confessed his mistake to the world.
When Godwin met Mary, after her desertion by Imlay, he was forty years of age, in the full prime and vigour of his intellect, and in the height of his fame. She was thirty-seven, only three years his junior, and deemed the cleverest woman in England. Her talents had matured, and grief had made her strong. ”

“ Language is not vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward elongation.”
Godwin describes his courtship with Mary as “friendship melting into love.” They agreed to [Pg xxv] live together, but Godwin took rooms about twenty doors from their home in the Polygon, Somers Town, as it was one of his theories that living together under the same roof is destructive of family happiness. Godwin went to his rooms as soon as he rose in the morning, generally without taking breakfast with Mary, and he sometimes slept at his lodgings. ”

“ There are no circumstance of her life, that, in the judgment of honour and reason, could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, that needed, with less fear, expose all their actions, and call upon the universe to judge them. An event of the most deplorable sort, his awfully imposed silence upon the gabble of frivolity.
We renewed our acquaintance in January 1796, but with no particular effect, except so far as sympathy in her anguish, added in my mind to the respect I had always entertained for her talents. ”

“ Have we not in our own time heard the ladies who first joined the Primrose League described by an excited politician as "filthy witches"? The epithet of course was as totally removed from any relation to the facts as that which Horace Walpole applied to Mary Wollstonecraft. William Godwin's touching memoir of his wife, Mr. Kegan Paul's William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries, and Mrs. Pennell's Biography show Mary Wollstonecraft as a woman of exceptionally pure and exalted character. [6] Her sharp wits had been sharpened by every sort of personal misfortune ”

“ Godwin and Mary did not at once marry. The former, in his Political Justice, had frankly confessed to the world that he thought the existing institution of marriage an evil. Mary had by her conduct avowed her agreement with him. But their views in this connection having already been fully stated need not be repeated. In omitting to seek legal sanction to their union both were acting in perfect accord with their standard of morality. Judged according to their motives, neither can be accused of wrong-doing. Pure in their own eyes, they deserve to be so in the world's esteem. ”

“ He must always measure their respective worth, and not the strength of his affection for them, even if the individuals concerned be his near relations. Supposing, for example, he had to choose between saving the life of a Fénelon and that of a chambermaid, he must select the former because of his superior talents, even though the latter should be his mother or his wife. Affections are to be forgotten in the calculations of reason. Godwin's faith in the supremacy of the intellect was not lessened because he was forced to admit that men often do not act reasonably. ”

“ But the principal work, in which she was engaged for more than twelve months before her decease, was a novel, entitled, The Wrongs of Woman. I shall not stop here to explain the nature of the work, as so much of it as was already written, is now given to the public. I shall only observe that, impressed as she could not fail to be, with the consciousness of her talents, she was desirous, in this instance, that they should effect what they were capable of effecting. She was sensible how arduous a task it is to produce a truly excellent novel ”

“ Godwin, while stimulated by the love of intellectual distinction, was painfully aware of his lack of what he calls "an intuitive sense of the pleasures of the imagination." Women, he says, who are more delicate and susceptible of impression [Pg 182] than men, in proportion as they receive a less intellectual education, are more unreservedly under the empire of feeling."
If this estimate of women is correct, it proves the superiority of Mary Wollstonecraft over the other members of her sex. ”

“ To read them is like listening to some one talking. They show how ready Mary was to enlist Godwin's sympathy on all occasions, small as well as great, and how equally ready he was to be interested. It is strange to hear these two apostles of reform talking much in the same strain as ordinary mortals, making engagements to dine on beef, groaning over petty ailments and miseries, and greeting each other in true bon compagnon style. Mary's notes, like her letters to Imlay, are essentially feminine. Short as they are, they are full of womanly tenderness and weakness. ”

“ Mary was incapable of sustaining her equanimity in this pressing emergency. “Love, dear, delusive!” as she expressed herself to a friend 74some time afterwards, “rigorous reason had forced her to resign; and now her rational prospects were blasted, just as she had learned to be contented with rational enjoyments.” Thus situated, life became an intolerable burthen. While she was absent from Mr. Imlay, she could talk of purposes of separation and independence. But, now that they were in the same house, she could not withhold herself from endeavours to revive their mutual cordiality ”

“ Godwin died on Sunday, September 10, about eight in the morning. I was with her at the time of her delivery, and with very little intermission until the moment of her death. Every skilful effort that medical knowledge of the highest class could make was exerted to save her. It is not possible to describe the unremitting and devoted attentions of her husband. Nor is it easy to give you an adequate idea of the affectionate zeal of many of her friends, who were on the watch night and day to seize on an opportunity of contributing towards her recovery, and to lessen her sufferings. ”

“ While Mary seconded Godwin in his domestic theories, there were times when less independence would have pleased her better. She had been obliged to fight the battle of life alone, and, when the occasion required it, she was equal to meeting single-handed whatever difficulties might arise. But instinctively she preferred to lean upon others for protection and help. Godwin would never wittingly have been selfish or cruel in withholding his assistance. ”

“ Mary was what Dr. Johnson would have called, “a very good hater.” In some instance of passion exercised by her father to one of his dogs, she was accustomed to speak of her emotions of abhorrence, as having risen to agony. In a word, her conduct during her girlish years, was such, as to extort some portion of affection from her mother, and to hold her father in considerable awe.
In one respect, the system of education of the mother appears to have had merit. All her children were vigorous and healthy. This seems very much to depend upon the management of our infant years. ”

“ Mary accordingly proceeded, in a short time after, to the composition of her most celebrated production, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Never did any author enter into a cause, with a more ardent desire to be found, not a flourishing and empty declaimer, but an effectual champion. She considered herself as standing forth in defence of one half of the human species, labouring under a yoke which, through all the records of time, had degraded them from the station of rational beings, and almost sunk them to the level of the brutes. ”

“ While he was reading law he constantly exercised his pen in the composition of essays, some of which were published under the title of the “Rhapsodist;” but it was not until 1797 that his career as an author began, by the publication of “Alcuin: a Dialogue on the Rights of Women.” This and the romances which followed it show the powerful influence upon him of the school of fiction of William Godwin, and the movement of emancipation of which Mary Wollstonecraft was the leader. ”