Archiv der Kategorie: Wollstonecraft, Mary

Wollstonecraft, Mary. English miscellaneous writer, was born at Hoxton, on the 27th of April 1759. Her family was of Irish extraction, and Mary’s grandfather, who was a respectable manufacturer in Spitalfields, realized the property which his son squandered. Her mother, Elizabeth Dixon, was Irish, and of good family. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, after dissipating the greater part of his patrimony, tried to earn a living by farming, which only plunged him into deeper difficulties, and he led a wandering, shifty life. The family roamed from Hoxton to Edmonton, to Essex, to Beverley in Yorkshire, to Laugharne, Pembrokeshire, and back to London again.

After Mrs Wollstonecraft’s death in 1780, soon followed by her husband’s second marriage, the three daughters, Mary, Everina and Eliza, sought to earn their own livelihood. The sisters were all clever women—Mary and Eliza far above the average—but their opportunities of culture had been few. Mary, the eldest, went in the first instance to live with her friend Fanny Blood, a girl of her own age, whose father, like Wollstonecraft, was addicted to drink and dissipation. As long as she lived with the Bloods, Mary helped Mrs Blood to earn money by taking in needlework, while Fanny painted in watercolours. Everina went to live with her brother Edward, and Eliza made a hasty and, as it proved, unhappy marriage with a Mr Bishop. A legal separation was afterwards obtained, and the sisters, together with Fanny Blood, took a house, first at Islington, afterwards at Newington Green, and opened a school, which was carried on with indifferent success for nearly two years. During their residence at Newington Green, Mary was introduced to Dr Johnson, who, as Godwin tells us, “treated her with particular kindness and attention.”

In 1785 Fanny Blood married Hugh Skeys, a merchant, and went with him to Lisbon, where she died in childbed after sending for Mary to nurse her. “The loss of Fanny,” as she said in a letter to Mrs Skeys’s brother, George Blood, “was sufficient of itself to have cast a cloud over my brightest days. . . . I have lost all relish for pleasure, and life seems a burden almost too heavy to be endured.” Her first novel, Mary, a Fiction (1788), was intended to commemorate her friendship with Fanny. After closing the school at Newington Green, Mary became governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough, in Ireland. Her pupils were much attached to her, especially Margaret King, afterwards Lady Mountcashel; and indeed, Lady Kingsborough gave the reason for dismissing her after one year’s service that the children loved their governess better than their mother. Mary now resolved to devote herself to literary work, and she was encouraged by Johnson, the publisher in St Paul’s churchyard, for whom she acted as literary adviser. She also undertook translations, chiefly from the French. The Elements of Morality (1790) from the German of Salzmann, illustrated by Blake, an old-fashioned book for children, and Lavater’s Physiognomy were among her translations. Her Original Stories from Real Life were published in 1791, and, with illustrations by Blake, in 1796. In 1792 appeared A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the work with which her name is always associated.

It is not among the least oddities of this book that it is dedicated to M. Talleyrand Périgord, late bishop of Autun. Mary Wollstonecraft still believed him to be sincere, and working in the same direction as herself. In the dedication she states the “main argument” of the work, “built on this simple principle that, if woman be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence or general practice.” In carrying out this argument she used great plainness of speech, and it was this that caused all, or nearly all, the outcry. For she did not attack the institution of marriage, nor assail orthodox religion; her book was really a plea for equality of education, passing into one for state education and for the joint education of the sexes. It was a protest against the assumption that woman was only the plaything of man, and she asserted that intellectual companionship was the chief, as it is the lasting, happiness of marriage. She thus directly opposed the teaching of Rousseau, of whom she was in other respects an ardent disciple.

Mrs Wollstonecraft, as she now styled herself, desired to watch the progress of the Revolution in France, and went to Paris in 1792. Godwin, in his memoir of his wife, considers that the change of residence may have been prompted by the discovery that she was becoming attached to Henry Fuseli, but there is little to confirm this surmise; indeed, it was first proposed that she should go to Paris in company with him and his wife, nor was there any subsequent breach in their friendship. She remained in Paris during the Reign of Terror, when communication with England was difficult or almost impossible. Some time in the spring or summer of 1793 Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American, became acquainted with Mary—an acquaintance which ended in a more intimate connexion. There was no legal ceremony of marriage, and it is doubtful whether such a marriage would have been valid at the time; but she passed as Imlay’s wife, and Imlay himself terms her in a legal document, “Mary Imlay, my best friend and wife.” In August 1793 Imlay was called to Havre on business, and was absent for some months, during which time most of the letters published after her death by Godwin were written. Towards the end of the year she joined Imlay at Havre, and there in the spring of 1794 she gave birth to a girl, who received the name of Fanny, in memory of the dear friend of her youth. In this year she published the first volume of a never completed Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution. Imlay became involved in a multitude of speculations, and his affection for Mary and their child was already waning. He left Mary for some months at Havre. In June 1795, after joining him in England, Mary left for Norway on business for Imlay. Her letters from Norway, divested of all personal details, were afterwards published. She returned to England late in 1795, and found letters awaiting her from Imlay, intimating his intention to separate from her, and offering to settle an annuity on her and her child. For herself she rejected this offer with scorn: “From you,” she wrote, “I will not receive anything more. I am not sufficiently humbled to depend on your beneficence.” They met again, and for a short time lived together, until the discovery that he was carrying on an intrigue under her own roof drove her to despair, and she attempted to drown herself by leaping from Putney bridge, but was rescued by watermen. Imlay now completely deserted her, although she continued to bear his name.

In 1796, when Mary Wollstonecraft was living in London, supporting herself and her child by working, as before, for Mr Johnson, she met William Godwin. A friendship sprang up between them,—a friendship, as he himself says, which “melted into love.” Godwin states that “ideas which he is now willing to denominate prejudices made him by no means willing to conform to the ceremony of marriage”; but these prejudices were overcome, and they were married at St Pancras church on the 29th of March 1797. And now Mary had a season of real calm in her stormy existence. Godwin, for once only in his life, was stirred by passion, and his admiration for his wife equalled his affection. But their happiness was of short duration. The birth of her daughter Mary, afterwards the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, on the 30th of August 1797, proved fatal, and Mrs Godwin died on the 10th of September following. She was buried in the churchyard of Old St Pancras, but her remains were afterwards removed by Sir Percy Shelley to the churchyard of St Peter’s, Bournemouth.

Maria or the Wrongs of Woman

Maria or the Wrongs of Woman – Mary Wollstonecraft

“Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman” is an unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”. The book is widely considered to be her most radical feminist work. “Maria” is a philosophical as well as a gothic novel that revolves around the story of a woman imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband.

Maria or the Wrongs of Woman

Maria or the Wrongs of Woman

Format: Paperback

Maria or the Wrongs of Woman.

ISBN: 9783849680886

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

 

Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft (from Wikipedia):

Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. During her … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

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Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark

Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark – Mary Wollstonecraft

Like every word she wrote, Wollstonecraft’s letters are full of personal revelations and wise thoughts. They are doubly interesting because can trace the intimate thought which lay beneath the public statement. One could pick out of this book enough epigrams to make a motto calendar. “Men with common minds seldom break through general rules. Prudence is ever the resort of weakness.” “There is always a mixture of sentiment and imagination in voluptuousness ” might have been written as a partial apology for the wayward Imlay. She relates her interview with the Prime Minister of Denmark, and sums him up as being “more anxious not to do Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – Mary Wollstonecraft

No feminism or feminist philosophy without “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”. Wollstonecraft argues not only that women ought to have the education of a woman should fit her position and role in society, but also that they are human beings and thus deserve the same fundamental rights as men.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Format: Paperback

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

ISBN: 9783849681050

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

 

Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft (from Wikipedia):

Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

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A Vindication of the Rights of Men

A Vindication of the Rights of Men – Mary Wollstonecraft

In 1790 came that “extraordinary outburst of passionate intelligence,” Mary Wollstonecraft’s reply to Edmund Burke’s attack on the principles of the French Revolution entitled a “Vindication of the Rights of Men.” In this pamphlet she held up to scorn Burke’s defence of monarch and nobility, his merciless sentimentality. “It is one of the most dashing political polemics in the language,” Mr. Taylor writes enthusiastically, “and has not had the attention it deserves. . . . For sheer virility and grip of her verbal instruments it is probably the finest of her works. Some of her sentences have the quality of a sword-edge, and they flash with the rapidity of a Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

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Original Stories from Real Life

Original Stories from Real Life – Mary Wollstonecraft

This book was written while Wollstonecraft’s experience as school-mistress and governess was still fresh in her memory. As she explained in the preface, her object was to make up, in some measure, for the defective education or moral training which, as a rule, children in those days received from their parents. In addressing a youthful audience, Mary was as deeply inspired by her love of goodness, per se, and her detestation of conventional conceptions of virtue, as she was afterwards in appealing to older readers. She represents, in her book, two little girls, aged respectively twelve and fourteen, who have been sadly neglected during their early years, but fall, fortunately, at this Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

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Mary, a Fiction

Mary, a Fiction – Mary Wollstonecraft

“Mary, A Fiction” is the only complete novel that Mary Wollstonecraft has ever written. She tells the tragic story of a heroine’s successive “romantic friendships” with a woman and a man. “Emile”, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophical treatise on education, was one of the major literary influences on this book.

Mary, a Fiction

Mary, a Fiction

Format: Paperback

Mary, a Fiction.

ISBN: 9783849681029

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

 

Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft (from Wikipedia):

Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children’s book. … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

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Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters – Mary Wollstonecraft

The pamphlet consists of a number of short treatises, indicating certain laws and principles which Mary thought needed to be more generally understood and more firmly established. Many passages show that as early as 1787 she had seriously considered the problems which, in 1791, she attempted to solve. She was even then perplexed by the unfortunate situation of women of the upper classes who, having received but the pretence of an education, eventually become dependent on their own exertions. Her sad experience probably led her to these thoughts. Reflection upon them made her the champion of her sex.

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

Format: Paperback

Thoughts on the Education of … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

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