Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was born in 1759 in Spitalfields, London. She was the second of the seven children of Edward John Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon.  Unfortunately her father would squander most of the family’s money and was prone to violent drunken rages where he would physically attack Mary’s mother.   After a brief career as a governess Mary devoted herself to the life of a writer.  She wrote reviews for newspapers, translated texts and began to attend literary salons meeting Thomas Paine and William Godwin for the first time.

She decided to react to Edmund Burke’s rejection of the events across the channel in his Reflections on the Revolution in France by writing her own work.  Her Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) rejected his analysis and became an overnight success in literary and radical circles.  Her work would reject Burke’s reliance on tradition and instead stated her belief in progress and the need for Republican government.   With her star in the ascendancy she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) which is her most influential work and is regarded as one of the first explorations of feminism.

After an affair with the married artist Henry Fuseli turned sour she decided to journey to France.  It was in France amongst expatriates such as Helen Maria Williams that she met an American Gilbert Imlay whom she had a child with.  Whilst raising her newborn daughter Fanny she wrote An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution, which was published in London in December 1794.

Imlay would eventually leave Wollstonecraft prompting her to descend into depression and several suicide attempts.  Eventually she would emerge from this dark period and met William Godwin an early anarchist thinker.  Soon they became close and Wollstonecraft became pregnant.  Godwin and Wollstonecraft were married despite the former’s earlier call for the institutions abolition.  Tragically Wollstonecraft would die after giving birth to a daughter called Mary (who would go on to be a successful novelist penning Frankenstein).

Wollstonecraft on the National Assembly and Edmund Burke’s reaction to it.  Taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Oxford University Press (2008) p40

Time will only show whether the general censure, which you afterwards qualify, if not contradict, and the unremitted contempt that you have ostentatiously displayed of the National Assembly, by founded on reason, the offspring of conviction, or the spawn of envy.  Time may shew, that this obscure throng knew more of the human heart and of legislation than the profligates of rank, emasculated by hereditary effeminacy.

Wollstonecraft on the clergy in France.  Taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Oxford University Press (2008) p49

And what is this mighty revolution in property? The present incumbents only are injured, or the hierarchy of the clergy, an ideal part of the constitution, which you have personified, to render your affection more tender.  How has posterity been injured by a distribution of the property snatched, perhaps from innocent hands, but accumulated by the most abominable violation of every sentiment of justice and piety? Was the monument of former ignorance and iniquity to be held sacred, to enable the present possessors of enormous benefices to dissolve in indolent pleasures?  Was not their convenience, for they have been turned adrift on the world, to give place to just partition of the land belonging to the state? And did not the respect due to the natural equality of man require this triumph over monkish rapacity?  Were these monsters to be reverenced on account of their antiquity, and their unjust claims perpetuated to their ideal children, the clergy, merely to preserve the sacred majesty of Property inviolate, and to enable the Church to retain her pristine splendour?  Can prosperity be injured by individuals losing the chance of obtaining wealth, without meriting it, by its being diverted from a narrow channel, and disembogued into the sea that affords clouds to water all the land?  Besides, the clergy not brought up with the expectation of great revenues will not feel the loss; and if bishops should happen to be chosen on account of their personal merit, religion may be benefited by the vulgar nomination.

Wollstonecraft on Marie Antoinette and her early days in France.  Taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Oxford University Press (2008)  p301

During this general depravation of manners, the young and beautiful dauphine arrived; and was received with a kind of idolatrous adoration, only to be seen in France; for the inhabitants of the metropolis, literally speaking, could think and talk of nothing else; and in their eagerness to pay homage, or gratify affectionate curiosity, an immense number were killed.

In such a voluptuous atmosphere, how could she escape contagion?   The profligacy of Louis XIV, when love and war were his amusements, was soberness compared with the capricious intemperance of the inebriated imagination at this period.  Madame du Barry was then in the zenith of her power, which quickly excited the jealousness of this princess, whose strongest passion was their intolerable family pride, which heated the blood of the whole house of Austria.

Wollstonecraft on Marie Antoinette and her early days in France.  Taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Oxford University Press (2008)  p323

The unfortunate queen of France, beside the advantage of birth and station, possessed a very fine person; and her lovely face, sparkling with vivacity, hid the want of intelligence.  Her complexion was dazzlingly clear; and, when she was pleased, her manners were bewitching; for she happily mingled the most insinuating voluptuous softness and affability, with an air of grandeur, bordering on pride, that rendered the contrast more striking.  Independence also, of whatever kind, always gives a degree of dignity to the mien; so that monarchs and nobles, with most ignoble souls, from believing themselves superior to others, have actually acquired a look of superiority.

But the opening faculties were poisoned in the bud; for before she came to Paris, she had already been prepared, by a corrupt, supple abbe, for the part she to play; and young as she was, became so firmly attached to the aggrandizement of her house, that, though plunged in deep pleasure, she never omitted sending immense sums to her brother, on every occasion.  The person of the king, in itself very disgusting, was rendered more so by gluttony, and a total disregard of delicacy, and even decency in his apartments: and, when jealous of the Queen, for whom he had a kind of devouring passion, he treated her with great brutality, till she acquired sufficient finesse to subjugate him.

Wollstonecraft on Louis XVI and his personality.  Taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Oxford University Press (2008)  p324-325

Had the hapless Louis possessed any decision of character, to support his glimmering sense of right, he would from this period have chosen a line of conduct,  that might have saved his life by regulating his future politics.  For this returning affection of the people alone was sufficient to prove to him, that was not easy to eradicate their love for royalty; because, whilst they were happy to receive them as acts of beneficence from the king.  But the education of the heir apparent of a crown must necessarily destroy the common sagacity and feelings of a man; and the education of this monarch, like that of Louis XV, only tended to make him a sensual bigot……..

It has been the policy of the court of France, to throw an odium on the understanding of the king, when it was lavishing praises on the goodness of his heart.  Now it is certain, that he possessed a considerable portion of sense, and discernment; though he wanted that firmness of mind, which constitutes character; or, in more precise words, the power of acting according to the dictates of a man’s own reason.  He was a tolerable scholar; had sufficient patience to learn the English language; and was an ingenious mechanic.  It is also well known, that the council, when he followed only the light of his own reason, he often fixed on the sage measures, which he was afterwards persuaded to abandon.

Wollstonecraft on the events of the 5th and 6th October 1789.  Taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Oxford University Press (2008) p340

On the first of October in consequence of these fresh machinations, a magnificent entertainment was given in the name of the kings body guards………….

When their heads were heated by a sumptuous banquet, by the tumult of an immense crowd, and the great profusion of delicious wines and liqueurs, the conversation, purposely turned into one channel became unrestrained, and a chivalrous scene completed the folly.  The queen, to testify her satisfaction for the homage paid to her, and the wishes expressed in her favour, exhibited herself to this half drunken multitude; carrying the dauphin in her arms, whom she regarded with a mixture of sorrow and tenderness, and seeming to implore in his favour the affection and zeal of the soldiers.

This acting for it is clear that the whole was a preconcerted business, was still more intoxicating than the wine.  The exclamation vive la roi, viva la reine, resounded from all sides, and the royal health's were drunk over drawn swords, whilst that of the nation was rejected with contempt by the body guards……………… The king, who is always represented as innocent, though always giving proofs that he more than connived at the attempts to recover his power, was likewise prevailed on to show himself at this entertainment.  And some of the same soldiery who had refused to second the former project of the cabal, was now induced to utter insults and menaces against the very authority, they then supported.  “The national cockade,” exclaimed Mirabeau, “that emblem of the defenders of liberty has been torn in pieces, and stamped under foot; and another ensign put in it’s place.- Yes- even under the eye of the monarch, who allowed himself to be styled-Restorer of the rights of his people, they then dared to hoist a signal of faction.”

Wollstonecraft on the Declaration of the Rights of Man.  Taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Man, Oxford University Press (2008) p355

The declaration of rights contains an aggregate of principles the most beneficial; yet so simple, that the most ordinary capacity cannot fail to comprehend their import.  It begins by asserting, that the rights of men are equal, and that no distinctions can exist in a wholesome government, but what are founded on public utility.  Then showing that political associations are intended only for the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man, which are his liberty, security of property, and resistance against oppression; and asserting also, that the nation is the source of all sovereignty; it delineates, in a plain and perspicuous manner, in what these rights, and this sovereignty, consist.  In this delineation men may learn, that, in the exercise of their natural rights, they have the power of doing whatever does not injure another; and that this power has no limits, which are not determined by law-the laws being at the same time an expression of the will of the community, because all the citizens of the state, either personally, or by their representatives, have a right to concur in the formation.