"A taste of the fine arts requires great cultivation, but not more than a taste for the virtuous affections, and both suppose that enlargement of mind which opens so many sources of mental pleasure. Why do people hurry to noisy scenes and crowded circles? I should answer, because they want activity of mind, because they have not cherished the virtues of the heart. They only therefore see and feel in the gross, and continually pine after variety, finding everything that is simple insipid."
From Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 - 1797)
Going back in time: we're in the 18th century, the century of the French and American Revolution, the age of Enlightment, the height of the Quing Dynasty and the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, the mentioned citation seems contemporary in its appeal. Time to get to know this extraordinary author...
Mary Wollstonecraft was born the second of six children in London, UK. Not much is known from her early childhood, besides that from an early age on she was frustrated by the career options imposed on women with a confined financial background. Also that she imagined living in a female utopia, of living together with other women and supporting each other emotionally and financially. She almost reached her goal with her closest friend Fanny Blood. They succeeded at least in establishing a school together. Unfortunately, Fanny's health declined rapidly and Mary taking care of her friend abandoned the school which led to its failure. After Fanny's death, Mary wrote her first novel Mary, A Fiction (1788).
With the help of friends, Mary became a governess to a wealthy family in Ireland. But only one year later did she decide to quit her position and to become an author. Another radical decision since there were few female authors able to support themselves let alone authors in general. Nevertheless, Mary was a headstrong woman and with the assistance of the liberal publisher Joseph Johnson, who supported women writers in a time when women were still met with scepticism, she moved to London. She learned French and German, consequently translated various socio-political texts and wrote numerous reviews for Johnson's periodical, the Analytical Review. Johnson supported her and advanced payment to her first book Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787). In 1790, Mary, becoming more and more a fierce advocate of progress and rationality opposing aristocratic and ancestral traditions, wrote her pamphlet A Vindication of the Rights of Men in response to the conservative critique on the French Revolution by Edmund Burke. With it, she became instantly famous. Two years later her most famous and still available work was published: A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), arguing that women are not naturally inferior to men but generally lack education.
During that time, Mary also attended Johnson's dinners where artists and radical thinkers met and exchanged their inventive ideas. It was at one of these dinners that Mary met her later husband, the political philosopher William Godwin. But Mary was more attracted by the artist Henry Fuseli/Johann Heinrich Füssli who was already married. At Mary's suggestion to form a living triangle, Henry immediately severed their friendship and Mary, humiliated, fled to France where she planned to participate in the French Revolution. While she indulged in the historical events, she met the American adventurer Gilbert Imlay who aroused her sexual interest. She fell passionately in love and gave birth to her fist daughter, Fanny Imlay in 1794. Though Gilbert protected Mary by registering her as his wife, he nevertheless left her as soon as they returned to England. Desperately trying to win Gilbert back, Mary went on a trip to Scandinavia with her baby daughter. In her travelogue Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), Mary describes her impressions as well as her emotional despair. But all attempts to gain Gilbert back failed and Mary returned to her literary life, becoming involved with Johnson's circle again.
Attracted by her Letters, William Godwin courted Mary and by the time she became pregnant a second time they decided to get married, revealing Mary's unmarried status with Gilbert. Godwin, himself, was criticised getting married at all since he had earlier advocated against marriage. Both lost many friends cause to their conduct. Nevertheless, they remained radical retaining their independence by moving into adjoining houses. Unfortunately, their happy and stable relationship would not last. After giving birth to her second daughter, Mary became infected with childbed fever and died 10 days later (Dr. Semmelweis' book on basic disinfection was only published 50 years later). William was devastated. Only six months later did he publish his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, wanting to portray Mary with love and compassion, revealing her unconventional life. The book, though, had an opposite effect and distorted Mary's reputation for decades. It's been the suffragettes and feminists who rediscovered her ambitious ideas and appreciated her fight for the rights of women and her influence on the equality of women at an early stage. To feminists worldwide, Mary Wollstonecraft is no unknown author and her ideas and thoughts still reverberate though her life's story is less known. And if you always thought the idea of "living apart together" (LAT) is something new...
Yet another interesting detail:
Mary's and William's daughter took over the literary legacy and became the author of THE classic gothic novel still know today: Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin or better known as Mary Shelley. But that is a different story itself again...
Mary's and William's daughter took over the literary legacy and became the author of THE classic gothic novel still know today: Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin or better known as Mary Shelley. But that is a different story itself again...
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