As many of you know, I am an avid fan of Mary Shelley. However, I’m going to go further back in time.
Back to the time before Mary Shelley became Mary Shelley.
Back to when she was a mere girl and went by the name of Mary Godwin-Wollstonecraft, Godwin having been inherited from her father and Wollstonecraft from her mother.
And it is this mother I am going to focus on today.
Because without her, we wouldn't have had Mary Shelley.
Because without her, Mary Shelley wouldn't have had the desire to rebel, write and travel.
Because without her, we wouldn't be able to enjoy the most beautiful book ever written.
Heck, because, without her, feminism as we know it would not look the way it does now.
I am talking, of course, about the incredibly bold, fearless and intelligent Mary Wollstonecraft!
The legend behind the legend.
Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie.
Oh, where to begin with this daring creature?
As ever, at the beginning.
So, here we go:
Born on 27th April, 1759, Mary’s childhood was a miserable one. Both of her parents struggled with serious mental health problems which ranged from depression to alcoholism, leading the large family to struggle financially and live in perpetual poverty.
The oldest daughter of six children, it often fell to Mary to look after her siblings, her mother often retreating into her own world, barely eating and sleeping for hours on end, and her father screaming in a drunken rage.
It is from these challenging beginnings that Mary developed her attitude towards life. Which was, in a nutshell: I'm going to live it my way so I don't end up like my mother.
Now, don't forget, this was the 1700s, an utterly miserable time for women in general. They were considered the property of their husbands, couldn't own their own money or have careers. In fact, the only way a woman could find any security in life was to marry a good husband. However, Mary, having seen how her mother was treated (and, indeed, how many girls aspired to be married), Mary decided that marriage was simply not an option for her.
So, instead, she made her own way. And this journey began where every journey for a girl should begin: with education.
Outraged that girls' schools did not offer lessons in grammar, History, Geography, Latin, French (you know, all the useful subjects), instead teaching girls things like sewing, Mary decided that she would set things straight. Why should only boys get to attend lessons where they learnt something useful? Didn't society understand the damage they were doing by making half the population stay in the home raising children, whilst the other half got to pursue careers in Law, Medicine and Politics?
This is because women were believed to be fragile, delicate little things. Things that should stay in the home and not seek to concern themselves with anything outside of the home because their sweet little sensibilities couldn't handle it. Things that were incapable of critical thinking (and must therefore be prevented from doing so at all costs!). Things which should have their lives dictated to by their husband's because it was, after all, a woman's job to look after him, bear his children and raise them.
See what I did there?
Things.
Women were things.
Pretty dolls in pretty dresses looking vacant and sweet and ready to be played with at a moment's notice.
Well, Mary Wollstonecraft was having none of that.
It is this conviction that led Mary Wollstonecraft to open her very own girls' school in 1784. Tragically, her best friend, Fanny Blood, died soon after giving birth to her son. This was a tremendous blow to Mary, who loved her friend dearly. One thing to know about Mary Wollstonecraft is that she found it hard to make friends. Like anyone who wishes for their lives to be different by going against the status quo, Mary was pushed out of most social circles. Add onto this a few blossoming mental health problems of her own, Mary often found herself isolated and shunned. But for one other friend, Jane Arden, Fanny Blood was really the only strong friendship Mary had.
It was the kind of relationship that Mary felt secure enough to be herself in. She communicated her beliefs in women's rights and girls' education to Fanny and together, they dreamt of living together and paying for their own board without the assistance of any men.
So you can imagine how devastating the news of Fanny's death was.
So hard was the blow Mary became severely depressed. It was an episode which resulted in her becoming detached from the school, growing distant from the teachers (two of whom were her own sisters Eliza and Everina), and failing to communicate with the school's founder. It didn't take long for things to fall apart. Before Mary knew what was happening, parents were pulling their daughters from the school, causing it to close completely.
As ever, though, Mary fought on.
In an attempt to earn her own money and achieve her dream of self-sufficiency, Mary took up several positions in rich ladies' households, including the position of a governess in an affluent household in Ireland. She was in charge of tutoring three girls, one of whom was so taken with Mary that when she grew up, she ran away from home, disguised herself as a man and studied medicine in Germany. Nice.
Unfortunately, the girls' mother didn't think too much of Mary's beliefs in women's rights and so sent her packing. This royally ticked Mary off, but there was another concern on her shoulders: how was she going to provide for her sisters, Everina and Eliza?
Remember how Mary looked after her siblings, and how she gave her sisters jobs in her school? Well, this expectation of Mary continued long after her sisters reached adulthood.
Tragically, her sisters did not share Mary's enthusiasm for not getting married. As such, Eliza got married.
It wasn't long before Mary was called to her sister's bedside, however. Mere months after giving birth to her daughter, Eliza began experiencing health problems and her husband called for Mary to come and see her. Despite the tension between the two sisters, Mary set straight out, arriving at her sister's home ready to jump in and help out. It didn't take Mary long to see exactly what was going on: her sister wasn't ill or crazy, as her husband had claimed. She was being abused. This had left her psychologically mutilated and so depressed she couldn't even talk properly. Well, once again, Mary was having none of it. She packed up her sister and got her out of that house and as far away from her beast of a husband as she could.
Even more tragically, her sister was not able to take her little girl with her. Remember: women didn't have any rights in those days, not even to their own babies. Just like wives, children were considered the property of their fathers. As such, when Eliza left her husband, she had to leave behind her baby, too. Just to make things worse, the little girl was neglected at the hands of her a-hole father and sadly died.
Shew as only one year old. . .
So we go from young Mary who was determined to forge her own way in the world to Mary the rescuer and influencer. . . And now we're going to step into the next part of Mary's life: Mary, the Unmarried Single Mother.
And I'm going to start by doing something unusual: I'm going to thank the French.
Yep.
You heard me.
Thank. The. French.
Because what happened next in Mary's life was equal parts fascinating and tragic. And it all began with the French people in a little town known as Paris. A little bit of background: way back in 1789, the French people grew sick and tired of being poor whilst their rich counterparts held lavish parties and feasted on the finest foods money could buy. So, they came up with this really neat little idea of overthrowing the entire establishment which resulted in the King and all of his men having their heads lopped off.
Effective.
Not too ethical, I will say, but effective nonetheless.
Now, at the very beginning of the Revolution, people in England were fascinated. Look at how audacious their European cousins were! Look how daring! How different. And, to Mary and her social circle: look how brave and RADICAL they're being. They've made the leap from discussing social inequalities to actually DOING something about it!
So, of course, Mary had to be there. Without stopping, she hopped on a boat and made her way to France, where she stayed in Paris with friends. Unfortunately, the Revolution wasn't what she expected it to be. To be fair, though, it wasn't what anyone thought it was going to be. . . The French people simply wanted change. What they got were years and years of tumult, executions and violence - a part of history now known as 'The Terror'. Mary put this down to the French making one disastrous mistake: they didn't think their plans through. Sure, they wanted to overthrow their rules and establish a more fair society, but they didn't plan farther ahead than the overthrowing part.
This was what left Mary, once so keen and fascinated by the Revolution, in a bit of a tight spot. Now, suddenly, she (and many of her friends) were at risk of being assigned the same fate as the bourgeoisie.
This is because Mary and Co. would regularly throw parties, discuss radical politics and ideas and promote scandalous ideas, such as free love. The French, now without any form of leadership, spent the next year or two lunging from one disastrous leader to the next. The foreigners were too afraid to speak their native languages, lest the radical revolutionists declared them pompous and therefore part of the system they were fighting against.
Mary was no exception. Tragically, many of her friends had to flee Paris because the radicals eventually came for them. Some were thrown in jail. Others were executed. The rest fled. And those would couldn't. . . Who knows?
It was amongst this chaotic background that Mary found herself in the company of a one G. Imlay.
You may have noticed a distinct lack of romance in Mary's life so far. Well, reader, that is true. It's even believed that Mary was a virgin before she met Imlay (not that it matters, I mean, the woman was focusing on educating girls and influencing them to be badasses and achieving financial independence for goodness sake!).
Dashing, intelligent and full of the good ol' ideals of Liberty and Justice, Mary couldn't help but fall in love.
Before long, she and Imlay were an item, going so far as to call each other Mr and Mrs Imlay. Not believing in marriage, Mary refused to take the vows with him, instead enjoying the confused looks on people's faces as she explained that she was, indeed, Mr Imaly's wife but not his wife. Love was, after all, a pleasure all should indulge in: why should someone impose barriers on that? Ergo, she and Imlay were free to love each other and other's. . . This all changed one day when Mary realised that her period hadn't come and she was, in fact, pregnant.
And what happened next? Why. . . Imlay did the honourable thing and set Mary up in a house far away from Paris. Great. Only, he then took off. At first, he claimed he had a lot of business to attend to (and was rather peeved about one ship in particular having gone missing). But the days and weeks rolled by. Then, the months. Mary, utterly fed up with his crap, told him she was coming to see him in London and to get ready for her and their daughter, Fanny Wollstonecraft.
It took Mary a long time to understand what was really happening - that Imlay had deserted her. So, there she was. A single mother in the 1700s, now living in disgrace in London with no-one else to turn to. What was really cruel is that Imlay kept acting hot-and-cold. One moment he was interested and visiting her, the next, he was vanishing for weeks at a time.
Ever the devoted partner, however, Mary tried her best to win him back by undertaking a journey to Norway to see what had happened to a precious cargo that belonged to Imlay. Strangely, this valuable cargo had gone missing and Imlay was not happy. Mary, knowing that it was this cargo that would pay for their journey to America, set out to find it. She single-handedly tracked down the captain of the ship and interrogated him. Unfortunately, she didn't get anywhere with it. However, Mary did achieve one thing on her trip to Scandinavia - and that was making the connection between Nature and Inspiration. Remember a little poet called Wordsworth? "I wandered as lonely as a cloud"? The fella everyone thinks made the link between humans and nature, and nature being a wonderful source of inspiration thereof?
Yeah. Mary Wollstonecraft had already done all of that at least five years before him. Though, of course, nobody would ever admit to it at the time.
Anyways, back to the French.
As the Revolution continued, the glamour and fascination for it in British society wore off. Reports of the mass executions spilled out of the capital and made their way across the Channel to the concerned British. The Brits, in turn, started looking down their noses at their European cousins, shaking their heads and loudly declaring their disgust at the occurrences.
Once such disgust-declarer was a man by the name of Edmund Burke, who thought it would be a really smart idea to claim that "citizens do not have the right to revolt against their government" because "a civilised society derives from social and political consensus". In other words, England was a civilised country, thank you very much and it had its government to thank for that! Unlike The French, no good Englishman should dare even think about overthrowing his government.
(Seriously, he actually said that!)
You can almost SEE the English gentlemen listening to Burke's declarations, nodding and looking Very Serious Indeed.
Once again, Mary Wollstonecraft was having NONE of that!
Her first instinct, however, was not to walk around shouting about what an idiot Burke was. Instead, Mary chose a different tactic: she decided to voice her criticism of Burke's words by writing them down and publishing them! Yup. This amazing lass heard Burke's nonsense, picked up her pen and decided to show him and everyone else what-for. This led to her penning her work, The Vindication of the Rights of Men.
Men here meaning humanity, not males, as an FYI.
It was in this work that Mary basically called Burke out, claiming that Rights are Rights and apply equally to everyone and therefore everyone should live EQUALLY and FAIRLY.
It was this concept of 'fair' and ‘equality’ that Burke and men in general had a really hard time grasping.
So, Mary continued. She picked up her pen once more and proceeded to create one of the most groundbreaking texts to ever furnish the Women's Rights movement, and that is the text known as "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" (I'll refer to it as 'Vindication' from now on).
It's at this point we must return to The French and, once again, thank them.
Because this time it wasn't just one boring ol' Brit criticising women or The French and How They Handled Being Unhappy but a Frenchman criticising women.
WHAT? A man, in the late 1700s, criticising women?
I know, I know. I'm as shocked as you are, reader, believe me!
Anyways.
This Frenchman, named Charles (not that anyone cares), decided to publicly, and rather foolishly, state that women simply needn't bother accessing education because they simply didn't need educating. This was because women should only concern themselves with a calm life, one that didn't excite them too much, and one which focused on preserving their sensibilities and fragile. . .
Hah.
This guy actually went around proclaiming this BS, only this time it's not just a group of hippity-hoppity stuffy Brits I can see frowning and nodding, but Men from all over the world.
As I said, foolish.
And so thought Mary.
So she strides over to her pen and paper and within six weeks she'd used her tiny, delicate Woman Brain to explain to the entire world exactly why this man was wrong.
Not only that but she took this opportunity in writing Vindication to educate everyone on why women should be educated. She tripled down on this belief, claiming that girls who were educated became apt, critical thinkers who would be then equipped to pursue what their souls really desired to do. They could love and protect what brought them happiness. They could make THEMSELVES happy, versus having to rely on a man to provide everything for her. Not only that, but an educated girl would go on to become a SELF-SUFFICIENT girl. A girl who valued herself, who knew herself, who could provide for herself without having to rely on a man to do that for her.
It's at this point that Mary then makes the audacious (and rather fabulous) claim that marriage was simply "legal prostitution".
You can't help but love her, can you?
Allow me to shed a little more context on this. Sure, Mary Wollstonecraft penned and published Vindication as a response to Charles's ridiculous claims about women but he wasn't the only one going about making these sexist and insulting claims. Other educated (and therefore powerful) men and philosophers, such as John Gregory, James Fordyce and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were all out there, loudly stating to anyone who would listen that women had no need to be educated and to even entertain the idea that they should be was pure folly.
Oh, boy.
So now we have Mary, madly in love with Imlay, unmarried, living in London and desperate to win back Imlay's love.
Slowly the love in him died, much to Mary's dismay. Eventually, the pain became too much and she attempted suicide.
She failed when Imlay came to her rescue but instead of growing close once more, he became even more distant, growing colder with each passing day.
The irony isn't lost on me that a proud woman, so headstrong and devoted to educating girls and achieving societal equality wound up a single mother in London in the late 1700s. After being deserted by a man she refused to marry but simultaneously relied so heavily on that her happiness depended on him. Look, we've all been there. Well, most of us have. Rest assured, though, that Mary gave Imlay a REALLY hard time about deserting her and their daughter. Never the one to go down without a fight, Mary attempted suicide again but not before telling Imlay she would haunt him for the rest of his life. Fortunately for civilisation, Mary was rescued.
So there was Mary, a self-educated woman, sitting in between the haughty, tight-lipped Brits and the revolting French and deserted by the man she loved, realising that no matter what country she was in, no matter what government was in charge, no matter what language they spoke, men everywhere could agree on one thing: that women were lesser than them, and must be treated as such.
All under the guise of 'protecting' them. . . Sounds familiar, actually, doesn't it?
"But if you don't have a husband, who will protect you?" is a very common argument I've seen/read/heard in the last few years in response to the ever-growing Women's Independence Movement. It's amazing to see how often those making this claim fail to see it for the enormous self-call-out that it is.
Now, I wanted to highlight something important here - Mary used God to support her argument for equality. She very clearly states that men and women are equal in the eyes of God and therefore BOTH need to adhere to the moral law of existing.
I'm putting this in here because it highlights exactly what Feminism is. It's the fight for equality. To share spaces dominated by men. It's not asking for special treatment or exemptions from stuff but it's asking that women be considered, respected, treated and thought about with equal attention awarded to men. It's really not that difficult a concept to grasp but a lot of people out there believe it's something different. That feminists are all angry, miserable women who hate men and want to see them overthrown.
To me, this is another self-call-out. I'll let Ms Azar Nafisi explain:
"Hope for some means its loss for another; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power - the ones who had taken it away - become afraid, more protective of their endangered interests, more repressive."
-AzarNafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran, pp276.
Need we say any more?
Well, Mary knew this and Mary understood this and it was this that Mary sought to bring to the forefront of everyone's attention. That is: girls ought to go to school alongside boys. That is why women should be free to pursue their desires. That is why women ought to be self-reliant so they don't have to be married/have children in order to have any value or meaning in life.
I cannot agree more.
I mean I'm not a Christian but I don't fault her for utilising religion in her argument. In fact, I think it's a brilliant move. Use the religion, the one that was considered the religion of 'civilised' societies, the one that any Good Englishman or Good Frenchman would follow, and use it to highlight exactly what's going wrong and how it can be rectified. Using God instead of sheer sass and wit in a time when women weren't even encouraged to read. . .
Bold.
It's most likely that it was this audacity that led to people claiming that Mary Wollstonecraft was nothing more than a "hyena in petticoats".
Let's all just pause for a moment and relish what a magnificent compliment that is!
"A hyena in petticoats". . . I tell you, if anyone were to call me a hyena the first thing out of my mouth would be "Oh, thanks very much!". Hyenas are tough, with a powerful bite (almost seven times more powerful than the strongest human bite) and are an all-out matriarchal society. They are tough, and can withstand intolerable levels of pain (Google hyena birth if you don't believe me!).
Side note: I highly recommend picking up a copy of Lucy Cooke's book, Bitch. It will tell you exactly why hyenas are incredible animals, and why this would-be insult is actually a huge compliment. Oh, and Cooke challenges the gender bias that exists in science, even going so far as to challenge Charles Darwin himself.
Oh, look. Another badass babe challenging a dude with sexist beliefs called Charles. Funny ol' world, isn't it?
Okay so I've gone on long enough now, it's time to wind down and yes, sadly, that means talking about the end of Mary's life.
Tragically, Mary Wollstonecraft passed away on the 10th Sept., 1797, a mere ten days after giving birth to her daughter, Mary Godwin-Wollstonecraft, the future Mrs Mary Shelley.
It's heartbreaking when you think how these two mighty women never even had the chance to have a conversation and yet, went on to challenge the patriarchy by using their words. On one hand you've got The Mother stating factually that Men and Women are equal in the eyes of God so Society, please do better! On the other hand, you've got The Daughter going "Okay, you didn't listen to my mother, so here's a piece of fiction for you all detailing EXACTLY why women need to be more involved in the world."
It's obvious when you pick up Frankenstein exactly how much of it was influenced by her mother.
This is hardly surprising - Mary Shelley's father William Godwin held his late wife in such high regard that Mary was determined to be like her mother.
And, she did good.
She read every single piece of writing her mother wrote, eventually learning all of her works by heart, went on to promote the concept of free love and challenged societal norms by falling in love with a married man, running away with him, and scandalising half of England by writing the most blasphemous book they'd ever laid eyes on.
Her father wanted this for his little darling, too. Not the running-away-with-a-married-man-part (which was a massive double-standard, by the way, because Godwin himself also believed in free love and was actively against marriage) but the everything else part.
Every day he would take little Mary to her mother's grave today 'Hello' and learn her letters by reading her mother's tomb. He sought to instil a sense of independence and rebellion in his daughter, worthy enough to make his wife proud.
Well, I would say he did a good job, didn't he?
Let's just linger on the subject of Mr William Godwin for a second, actually. Because this guy. . . this guy got it. Did he believe in marriage? No. Did he understand love and lust and women and was a massive flirt? Also, no. Did he believe that life should be committed to the arts and challenging the status quo? Yes.
And still, when Mary Wollstonecraft found out she was pregnant, he decided to marry her. This guy worshipped the ground his wife walked on. Even after her death, he went so far as to pen a biography about her, calling it Memoirs of the Author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women.
His intentions were clear: show the world, through the eyes of a man, exactly why his wife was amazing, why men should not write her off and why society as a whole needs to at least consider his wife's arguments.
However, society did what society does best. Instead of listening to the underlying message of Will’s words and actually giving them any weight whatsoever, society expertly gleaned over her accomplishments, as it had done a million times before and has done since, and focused instead on Mary's sex life. It was revealed in Memoirs that Mary had had a daughter out of wedlock with a married man.
An attempt was made but alas, it failed.
It nearly failed too hard because Vindication was all but forgotten at this point in history. Fortunately, it was re-discovered in the 1970s, some two hundred years later, and played a vital role in the formation of the women's rights movement of that decade. With 'Vindication' at the centre of the new women's rights movement, it's not an unfair statement to make that Mary's beliefs, her declarations, her ideas all fed into transforming modern-day feminism.
Mary Wollstonecraft.
She never stopped.
She never gave up.
She continued to fight for her cause that is, girls everywhere should, and must, be educated to the same level boys are and alongside them, too.
This is something we should all believe in.
Note
Now, when I originally wrote this post in early March, I had not yet finished reading 'Romantic Outlaws' by Charlotte Gordon.
This incredible book examines the lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley in fine detail and allows you to see just how complex these magnificent women really were. Up until the point of reading Charlotte's book, I firmly believed, as I said in my blog post, that Godwin worshipped Mary and couldn't wait to marry her and all that good stuff.
However, having finished Romantic Outlaws last week, I felt compelled to add here that, whilst I'm acknowledging and celebrating William's efforts to memorialise his wife, it appears that maybe William's intentions weren't as romantically or honourable inclined as I first believed.
Now, I've never read his Memoir of Mary but from what I'm understanding via Charlotte is that William was. . . I'm not sure how to put this. . . Almost apologetic about Mary? This was my impression, anyways. And how he went about putting Mary's memoir together was just weird.
For example, he did not contact Mary's sisters Eliza and Everina to ask them, which was a bit odd. After all, Mary had looked after them, secured them jobs, and had even saved one of them from a rotten, abusive marriage, and they must have known Mary with a level of intimacy that William couldn't. Every relationship is different and shows a different side to a person and all that. But, no. William didn't write to her sisters (which rightfully royally effed them off!) but instead proceeded to charge ahead with his memoir, going so far as to not attend Mary's funeral because he was working so hard on it.
Reading Charlotte's work, it gets worse. William makes excuses for Mary, criticised her literary style, and changes her from an intelligent, strong-willed woman to a hapless heroine with whom we should all sympathise with, and who had only known heartbreak, abuse and despair. Then, at the end of her life, she was happier because she met him. . .
Seriously. It's like he used this opportunity to beef up his own ego here. "I'm the one who married her". . . "I'm the one who tamed her," . . . "I'm the one she turned to when there was no-one else". . . I'm the one she consulted about her work" . . . Now, William never actually said this but he didn't have to.
All of this being said, I do applaud his efforts at trying to process his grief by writing the Memoir but I'm astonished that even he, so intelligent and sharp himself, missed the mark so terribly. Why didn't he focus on Mary's books and philosophies and ideals? Why did he turn her into this. . . I don't even know.
You know, from reading Charlotte's book, it's clear that Percy Shelley also possessed this mindset. Being the saviour of young, untamable and unhappy women, that it. Percy left his 'unbearable' wife Harriet to be with young, lost Mary. He then spent his entire relationship and marriage to Mary Shelley flirting and pursuing young women - always beautiful and helpless and in need of saving - turning them into muses, despite how much it hurt his wife (who spent most of her marriage grieving the death of their children!). . . Perhaps that's why William and Percy got on so well in the beginning?
Shame, really. . .
These radical men with their radical policies and radical beliefs really were so radical that they failed to see women as equals.
Let's hope this mindset stops, once and for all. Because we are over it.