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| (Left excerpt is from a panel from Wollstonecraft's Original stories painted by William Blake. Right image is a portrait of Wollstonecraft by John Opie.) |
Alert attentive
eyes and a sanguine expression. The eyes of an optimistic observer.
John Opie painted a very comely portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft, acknowledging her elevated social status by having her engaged in the act of reading, her right hand turning the page of some unknown book. A scene typically reserved for men of intellect since it was popularly assumed that intellect was a thing reserved for men.1
John Opie painted a very comely portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft, acknowledging her elevated social status by having her engaged in the act of reading, her right hand turning the page of some unknown book. A scene typically reserved for men of intellect since it was popularly assumed that intellect was a thing reserved for men.1
Perhaps more
powerful though, is the gaze, which is not averted to the side but rather fixed
towards the viewer, suggesting the power to counter-gaze. Hers were eyes that
defied.
Wary eyes that have gazed into the dark night as she lay in front of her mother's door, ready for her father's alcohol soaked rage. Worried eyes that witnessed her sister Eliza driven mad by that cold Mr. Bishop.2 Drowned eyes that saw the tumultuous sea thrash on her voyage to Portugal while she was en route to take care of her terminally ill friend. Sad eyes that looked upon her daughter, Fanny, as the pair travelled across the country alone to find the man who abandoned them.3 Opie paints a very agreeable portrait of Mary, and one that conveys her beauty, but it is a description of her life that will convey the sublime, what life had carved into her mind and her observations.
Perhaps Opie’s
painting was a retrospective of a younger Mary. One spared of some of life’s
deeper blows. When her expression would have been much more relaxed.
Her future husband William Godwin described the event,
Her future husband William Godwin described the event,
“The situation in which Mary was introduced to
her, bore a resemblance to the first interview of Werter with Charlotte. She
was conducted to the door of a small house, but furnished with peculiar
neatness and propriety. The first object that caught her sight, was a young
woman of a slender and elegant form, and eighteen years of age, busily employed
in feeding and managing some children, born of the same parents, but
considerably inferior to her in age. The impression Mary received from this
spectacle was indelible; and, before the interview was concluded, she had
taken, in her heart, the vows of an eternal friendship."5
Their friendship
nourished Mary’s life and inspired her to learn and grow, recognizing the
shortcomings of her own education. Godwin says,
“Mary found Fanny's letters better spelt and
better indited than her own, and felt herself abashed. She had hitherto paid
but a superficial attention to literature. She had read, to gratify the ardour
of an inextinguishable thirst of knowledge; but she had not thought of writing
as an art. Her ambition to excel was now awakened, and she applied herself with
passion and earnestness. Fanny undertook to be her instructor; and, so far as
related to accuracy and method, her lessons were given with considerable
skill.”6
They were separated though for some time after Mary’s wanderlust father dragged them across England once again, seeing another home shrink into the distance, her eyes adjusting to the sight of new surroundings.
To earn a living, she would live with and attend to the needs of the thorny Mrs. Dawson from age nineteen to twenty, before having to come home to be close to her dying mother.7
Elizabeth Dixon Wollstonecraft took a tyrannical approach to her mothering in fear of what the world had in store. She thought educating her daughters using methods of fear would cow them into their roles as women. Mary got the worst of it, though after subsequent children, Elizabeth softened her approach.8
But it must be admitted that despite her style, she did raise many children from infancy into adulthood, in a time when many complications could arise in between pregnancy and those crucial infant years. Now though, she had served her role as mother and endured her role as victim so here was her time to pass. Before her final breath she spoke to her family, “A little Patience, and all will be Over.’ and these words are repeatedly referred to by Mary in the course of her writings."9
Shortly after her mother passed, her father would worsen until the whole household dissolved scattering the children to the wind, leaving Mary afloat and unbound till she drifted toward the door of dear Fanny Blood.
The most sensitive of the Wollstonecraft sisters Eliza, who inherited her mother’s name, would like her mother marry a quick-tempered hypocrite, Mr. Bishop. After Eliza’s health started deteriorating Mary employed herself as her sister’s nurse only to learn of the extent of Mr. Bishop’s cruelty. She would cast him in her book The Wrongs of Woman addressing him in the preface to her book, “I should despise, or rather call her an ordinary woman, who could endure such a husband as I have sketched.” 11
And almost as if
fated, her third deprivation of a friend was of Fanny, when her husband found
opportunity in Lisbon, Portugal. Fanny was ill at the time but was assured that
the southern climate would help her condition, though she got worse and sent
word to Mary of her dire straits. She had asked if Mary might visit her in her
hour of need. A call Mary would always heed. And though it would mean dooming
the school she had labored so long to establish, she spent coin to trek alone
across the sea to see what her friend had become,
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| From Wollstonecraft's Original Stories. A panel painted by the poet William Blake. |
Ten years later she
would reflect on the death of Fanny in her Letters from Sweden, Norway and
Denmark,
“The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth. Still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. Fate has separated me from another, the fire of whose eyes, tempered by infantine tenderness, still warms my breast; even when gazing on these tremendous cliffs sublime emotions absorb my soul.”13
“The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth. Still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath. Fate has separated me from another, the fire of whose eyes, tempered by infantine tenderness, still warms my breast; even when gazing on these tremendous cliffs sublime emotions absorb my soul.”13
She came back to England from Portugal after Fanny's death to
find the school financially unwieldy, so she dropped it to pick up a lighter pen.
Equipped with experience, she sought to teach young women to Reason for
themselves,. She wrote her Thoughts on
the Education of Daughters (1787) and continued to write as much as she
read: letters, memorandums, educational treatises, the news, novels and her
seminal work A Vindication of the Rights
of Woman (1792.)
Below are a couple excerpts selected and performed from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and more may be posted. The song's descriptions have the script if you would like to read along. And I'll leave this link right here [o=o].
Below are a couple excerpts selected and performed from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and more may be posted. The song's descriptions have the script if you would like to read along. And I'll leave this link right here [o=o].
Throughout her
life, Mary had been subject to impatient patriarchs and seen her mother, sister
and closest friend all withered from maladies of the body and mind. As an
outsider, she not only noticed how man oppressed woman, but also the ways in
which that woman oppressed herself. She argued that women were given an
inferior education and that because of this failed to strive for higher
understanding, preferring more immediate distractions that tended to consist of
luxuries or sentimental romance fictions written by men with superficial
opinions of women.
So here’s where she stood, staring at a world full of foolish girls succumbing to the hubris of their husbands. And while she recognized the exceptional people to this rule; there was no unseeing the patriarch’s patterns. Mary’s opinions would evolve to contrast her parents, her peers, and by extension, society at whole. Her refuge would be among the literary circles where she would meet with Joseph Johnson who would publish so many of her works. And though she had already met William Godwin, it wasn’t until later in life a romance would bloom, one borne of intellect and respect.
So here’s where she stood, staring at a world full of foolish girls succumbing to the hubris of their husbands. And while she recognized the exceptional people to this rule; there was no unseeing the patriarch’s patterns. Mary’s opinions would evolve to contrast her parents, her peers, and by extension, society at whole. Her refuge would be among the literary circles where she would meet with Joseph Johnson who would publish so many of her works. And though she had already met William Godwin, it wasn’t until later in life a romance would bloom, one borne of intellect and respect.
Her writings gave
her status and the new society she associated herself with, “nourished her understanding, and enlarged her
mind. The French revolution, while it gave a fundamental shock to the human
intellect through every region of the globe, did not fail to produce a
conspicuous effect in the progress of Mary's reflections,” says Godwin.15
This is what tended
to happen, her world around her would fall apart and Mary would watch how it
broke apart. She was able to endure by having
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| William Blake's Newton and John Opie's Portrait of Wollstone craft. The hand holds the tools of reason. |
Enjoy the rest of
the exhibit and follow the citations if you want to go down the rabbit hole and
learn more. Every quote is an excerpt from a larger piece that tells a story
greater in scope. My selections leave out ambiguous sentiments that I was
afraid would distract from her overall points. And I left out many crucial
events in the latter part of her life.
I left out details
about her failed suicide attempts and both children born out of wedlock and a perilous incident involving her being on a sinking ship, and so I brought them up
briefly now to spark your interest. And then there’s the things we’ll never
know. What did Fanny Blood look like, and her namesake Fanny Imlay, first
daughter of Mary. But be most wary of the things you think you know. Recognize that there is a frame to this portrait and
that outside of it; there is more to see.
Letters to and from Mary with the people in her life
Below is an album that won the 1998 Grammy for Best Album of the Year. It explores many of the themes of motherhood, love and opportunity that Mary Wollstonecraft touched on in her works. Fun fact, they have the same birthday. Go figure.
Footnotes
Chapter 1 in Pennell’s Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Kindle
Location 262. Because many of the sources are typed transcriptions of printed
text with no reference to page number or paragraph number, the footnotes referring
to electronic sources will often use Kindle Location referring to the
approximate location within the file that the quote may be found, assuming that
file was downloaded from the same source, via Gutenberg Project. However, by
using the search function to find key words, it should be easy enough to find
the referred information within the electronic document, even when downloaded
from a different source unless it is a physical scan of a printed text. 2
Chapter 2 in Pennell’s Life
of Mary Wollstonecraft. About half way in the chapter.3
Chapter 1 in Pennell’s Life
of Mary Wollstonecraft.4
Chapter 2 “1775-1783” in William Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication ofthe Rights of Woman. Kindle Location 123.5
Chapter 2 in Godwin’s Memoirs. Kindle Location 135.6
Chapter 2 in Pennell’s Life
of Mary Wollstonecraft. Kindle Location 400.7
Chapter 1 in Pennell’s Life
of Mary Wollstonecraft. Kindle Location 201.8
Chapter 2 in Godwin’s Memoirs. Kindle Location 165.9
Chapter 2 in Pennell’s Life
of Mary Wollstonecraft. Kindle Location 447.10
Introduction of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria. Kindle Location 71.11
Chapter 2 in Pennell’s Life
of Mary Wollstonecraft. Kindle Location 739.12
Letter VI in Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
Kindle Location 665.13
Chapter 6 in Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Kindle Location 2125.14
Chapter 6 in Godwin’s Memoir.
Kindle Location 396.15
Chapter 3 in Godwin’s Memoir.
Kindle Location 218.16
Works Cited
Anonymous Admirer. Letter to Godwin from an Admirer. Ed. William Godwin. Liverpool:, Nov 1800. Print.
Blake, William. "Newton." (1804)Print.
Elizabeth Robins Pennell. The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Kindle Edition ed. https://archive.org/details/lifeofmarywollst00pennrich: Roberts Brothers, 1884. Print.
Godwin, William. Letter from William Godwin to Shelley. Ed. Percy Shelley. A letter urging Shelley to keep Fanny Imlay's suicide discreet. Vol. , 13 Oct 1816. Print.
---. Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Kindle ed. Johnson, Joseph, 1798. Print.
Imlay, Fanny. Letter to the Shelleys from Mary's Sister Fanny. Eds. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley. Photographic Scan Vol. London:, May 29, 1816. Print.
---. Letter to the Shelleys from Mary's Sister Fanny. Eds. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley. Written Text Vol. London:, May 29, 1816. Print.
Northcote, James. "Portrait of William Godwin." (1802)Print.
Opie, John. Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft. 1790-1. , Wikimedia.org.
"Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft (Mrs. William Godwin)." http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/opie-mary-wollstonecraft-mrs-william-godwin-n01167. 2004. Web.
Rothwell, Richard. Portrait of Mary Shelley. 1899. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Sharp, William after Haughton the Elder, Moses. Portrait of Joseph Johnson.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Kindle ed., 1795. Print.
---. "Maria; Or the Wrongs of Woman." (1798)Print.
---. Mary Wollstonecraft's Last Three Notes to Godwin. Ed. William Godwin. "In her final note, Mary Wollstonecraft half-quotes her mother's last words: ‘Have a little patience, and all will be over'. Her own daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Mary Shelley), was born a few hours afterwards. (TRUNCATED) Vol. London:, August 30, 1797. Print.
---. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. Kindle Edition ed. Gutenberg.org: Project Gutenberg, 1792. Web.
