CHAPTER VI.

_Radical Feminism: Mary Wollstonecraft._

Around the name of Mary Wollstonecraft a storm of adverse criticism

raged for years after her death, prompting Godwin to the publication of

his "_Memoirs of the author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman_",

and calling forth the somewhat half-hearted defence of her actions

and writings by an anonymous author in 1803. Both failed to attract

any degree of notice. Shelley, whose meetings with young Mary Godwin

over her mother's grave in St. Pancras cemetery are described in Mrs.

Marshall's biography, offered her the sincere tribute of his verse

in "_The Revolt of Islam_", where the heroine resembles her in her

character.

The champion of the Cause of Woman was herself an essentially loveable,

thoroughly feminine representative of her sex, whose many troubles

arose from an extremely sensitive heart, a pure, refined sensibility,

without any of the alloy which she was the first to regret in so many

other women, and from the circumstance that, being born a century

before her time, her striving was only moderately successful and

brought her the ill-will of many who were unable to appreciate the

sincerity of her motives. Nothing could be more undeserved, or bespeak

a more glaring ignorance of the character it reviled than Horace

Walpole's mention of Mary Wollstonecraft in his letter to Miss Hannah

More--in her rigid respectability the direct opposite of the author

of the "_Vindication_"--as "a hyena in petticoats, whose books were

excommunicated from the pale of his library". Few books and their

authors have been the object of such unsparing censure as the _Rights

of Women_ and Mary Wollstonecraft, and it may be added that seldom was

the imputation of meddling spitefulness and even of gross immorality

more utterly undeserved. There speaks from the entire work a spirit of

absolute sincerity, of disinterested eagerness for necessary reforms

and of that fervent enthusiasm in the pursuit of aims which will not

shrink at martyrdom, which endear the author to the unbiased reader,

and which only the narrowest conservatism could overlook. Nor would

it have met with the bitter antagonism it encountered had not the

public mind, harassed by the constant menace of the French Revolution,

been overmuch inclined to cry down all works of reform. As it was,

Mary Wollstonecraft's reputation passed through three distinctly

marked phases; in the first, the work and its author were violently

attacked by the many, and enthusiastically defended by the few; in the

second, they were consigned to temporary oblivion; in the third, Mr.

Kegan Paul in 1876, and after him Miss Mathilde Blind in "_The New

Quarterly Review_", Miss H. Zimmern in the "_Deutsche Rundschau_",

and E. R. Pennell in the "_Eminent Women Series_" tried with a fair

amount of success to awaken a new interest in both and to vindicate the

author's memory by clearing her personal character from the monstrous

imputations of immorality. The fact has now been definitely established

that she was prompted by the noblest love of humanity, and is entitled

to rank among those champions of the new faith who suffered martyrdom

for the cause. She was one of those predestined by that innate

character she was so fain to deny to a life of the bitterest anguish,

brightened by spells of almost perfect happiness. Both the joys and

the sorrows of humanity were abundantly hers. With her, character was

indeed fate, and the outward circumstances of her life only emphasized

the convictions to which a woman of her stamp was bound to come in

the world of inequality and cruel injustice in which she moved. She

combined in her person the rarest gifts of both head and heart; as

a quick perception, enabling her to grasp a situation very rapidly;

a never-flinching determination to use the divine gift of Reason in

the pursuit of useful knowledge, and a boundless devotion to what

she considered the obvious task of her life. Once she had discovered

her vocation she flung herself into her work with indomitable zeal,

trying to do herself violence in asserting the superiority of reason

over sentiment, and to put a restraint on the passions that threatened

to overpower her. In this attempt she did not always succeed, and

while it makes her appear to us thoroughly human, yet her imperfect

self-control was not without influence on her works of reform, leading

her to exaggeration and wearisome reiterations. In the chapter of the

_Vindication_ which deals with national education she insists that only

that man makes a good citizen, who has in his youth "exercised the

affections of a son and a brother," for public affections grow out of

private, and it is in youth that the fondest friendships are formed.

This sounds like a confession, for if Mary Wollstonecraft had not been

in earlier years such a devoted friend to her dear ones as to utterly

disregard her own comfort in her desire to befriend them, she could

never have loved humanity with such intensity. It is difficult to say

what would have become of the Wollstonecraft household if Mary had not

strained every faculty to assist them. When her drunken father beat

his wife, the latter used to appeal to Mary for protection. When at

last the poor soul felt death approach, it was again Mary who without

a second's hesitation flung up her situation as a lady's companion at

Bath to return to her mother's sickbed and to ease her last moments.

Not only her sisters Everina and Eliza, but also her younger brothers

Charles and James received from her both moral and financial support,

to be able to give which she cramped herself to such an extent that

the room in George Street in which she wrote was furnished only with

the barest necessaries, and her gowns were so extremely shabby that

Knowles in his "_Life of Fuseli_" describes her as "a philosophical

sloven". In thus reducing her wants, however, she was merely acting in

accordance with the view--held by all the friends of reform and derived

from Rousseau--that only he can be happy whose desires are so few that

he can afford to gratify them, an offshoot of the famous Nature-theory.

Nevertheless, the description of Mary as a "sloven" seems exaggerated,

judging from the two portraits by Opie which have been preserved, of

which the one may be spurious, but the other, now in the National

Portrait Gallery, is beyond any doubt genuine. It shows the face

("physiognomy" Mary Wollstonecraft herself would have preferred to call

it) of a strikingly pretty, refined-looking woman, with a profusion of

auburn hair, a clear complexion and a pleading look in her brown eyes

which reminded Mr. Kegan Paul of Beatrice Cenci.

The grim realities of Mary's youth left little space for the

development of any sense of humour, but they bred in her a fighting

spirit which afterwards stood her in good stead. Her next championship

was that of Fanny Blood, whom she shielded from domestic misery very

much like that she had herself experienced, and whose brother George,

who became involved in a nasty scandal[36], also experienced Mary's

all-embracing kindness of heart. From her correspondence with him in

the years of his forced absence from England it indeed appears that she

was not by any means a "fair-weather friend".

The extremely serious cast of her character--which circumstances

afterwards developed into melancholy--also found expression in a strong

sense of duty. Unlike those champions of humanity who clamour for the

rights of Man without reference to the corresponding obligations, Mary

Wollstonecraft in later years always insisted not only that every right

of necessity involves a duty, but also that we should insist upon

those rights chiefly to be enabled to perform the moral duties which

life imposes. Add to this an absolute "incapability of disguise", as

her friend and publisher Johnson expressed it, and a frankness which

made her "fling whate'er she felt, not fearing, into words"--often

uncovering the worst sores of society in all their hideousness with a

determination bordering upon indelicacy--and the portrait of Mary's

character, as far as elementary traits go, is complete.

The strong natural bent of her character was further emphasized by

incidents which presented to her mind the problem of the subjugation

of women urgently demanding a champion. On three different occasions

did she see the lives of women ruined by cruel, dissipated husbands.

The third of these was by far the worst. It concerned the marriage of

her sister Eliza ("Poor Bess", as Mary calls her in her correspondence

with Everina and Fanny), to a Mr. Bishop, who, although he was probably

a clergyman, appears to have been a most hypocritically sensual brute.

No doubt the wife also was to blame; indeed, all the Wollstonecraft

girls were inclined to be suspicious, irritable, and over-ready to

take offence. Shortly after the birth of a child matters came to a

crisis, and Mary, having come over to nurse her sister, who after

her confinement had had an attack of insanity, proposed that they

should leave Mr. Bishop's house together, a plan actually carried

into execution, after which Mary, Eliza and Fanny Blood started

teaching as a profession. The daily bickerings of the Bishop household

impressed upon Mary's mind the state of utter defencelessness and

abject slavery in which many women were kept. It afterwards made her

decide to supplement her "_Rights of Women_" with a novel, dealing

with the Wrongs of Women, in which some of the incidents she had

witnessed found a place. The work was unfortunately interrupted by her

unexpected death, and in its unfinished state was included by Godwin

in the posthumous edition of some of Mary Wollstonecraft's works in

1798. Thus death claimed her while making a last effort to succour the

oppressed.

With the sisters' flight from Mr. Bishop's house began the long

struggle against adverse circumstances in which Mary did most of the

fighting. One wonders what would have become of Eliza and the boys--who

had soon left their father's home--but for Mary's resourcefulness.

Everina found a home with Edward, the eldest brother, who obviously

thought that in sheltering her he had done all that could be expected

of him. The girls met with little or no sympathy from friends, the

general opinion finding fault with Eliza's conduct and judging that

"women should accept without a murmur whatever it suits their husbands

to give them, whether it be kindness or blows". This represents the

general belief of those days with regard to the position of married

women. The possibility of girls of the better middle class having

at any time of their lives to earn their own living had never been

seriously considered, and the sisters were indeed in great distress.

Again Mary had the utter incapacity of even the bravest of her sex to

support themselves brought home to her in a way that left no doubt. And

yet the two or three years of the little boarding-school at Newington

Green were not wholly devoid of enjoyment. Mary made the acquaintance

of the famous Dr. Price, the dissenting preacher who was soon to rouse

the fire of Burke's indignation, and who strongly influenced her

religious views.

It seems the right place here to say something of Mary's attitude

towards religion. In a life like hers, bringing her face to face with

the evils of existing society, and with her degree of sensitiveness it

is but natural that religious feelings should have played a prominent

part. Her mother had bred her in the principles of the Church of

England, but Mary was far too independent to allow her mother any real

influence. But at least the circumstances of her youth saved her from

sophistic teachings, which may form hypocrites or awaken an altogether

disproportionate hatred of whatever smacks of Christianity, under

the impression that Christianity and the dogmatism of narrow-minded

orthodoxy are at bottom one and the same thing. Such was Godwin's

case, and it proved a deathblow to his faith. Mary, however, was a

great deal left to herself and, as Godwin informs us in the _Memoirs_,

her religion was mostly of her own creation, and little allied to any

system of forms. The many Biblical quotations in her works suggest

diligent reading of the Bible and point to a state of mind very far

removed from indifference or antipathy. She rather felt a natural

leaning towards religion, a craving for mental peace to be satisfied

only by firm religious convictions. As Godwin puts it, the tenets of

her system were the growth of her own moral taste, and her religion

therefore was always a gratification, never a terror to her. The

same almost feminine yearning for the moral support of a religion

that warms the heart, distinguished Rousseau from the robust and

self-reliant philosophers of the rational school, and possibly caused

Mary Wollstonecraft to feel attracted towards him and at the same time

to pity him, when first reading his "_Emile_"[37]. Up to the time of

her first meeting with Dr. Price her attitude had been that of simple

faith, with constant appeals to the Divine interference. She had been

a regular church-goer, and it is quite possible that the public and

regular routine of sermons and prayers and the implicit subjection

it demands, had already begun to pall upon her, and predisposed her

for the adoption of the less dogmatic views of Deism. It may also be

safely assumed that her experiences in Ireland as a governess and

the subsequent period of close intimacy with some of the leading

revolutionists lessened her interest in religion, which points to

the future, and proportionately increased that in Man, who is the

present. As the years advanced, the rapid growth of her considerable

intellectual powers, the tendencies of the times in which she lived,

and the society which she frequented made her drift unconsciously

towards rationalism. Then it was that a conflict arose between

Sentiment and Intellect. She set about "repressing her natural ardour

and granting a more considerable influence to the dictates of Reason",

or, as Professor Dowden puts it, "she set her brain as a sentinel over

her heart, trying to put a curb on her natural impulsiveness"[38].

This change in her views of life, dating from her intimacy with Price,

was hastened by circumstances. The death of her friend Fanny--who

died in her arms at Lisbon,--and the want of success of her first

educational efforts--due chiefly to Mrs. Bishop's mismanagement of

the school in Mary's absence--had made her feel low-spirited and

ill. It was only the sale of the manuscript of the "_Thoughts on_

_the Education of Daughters_" to Mr. Johnson, the publisher of Fleet

Street, for ten guineas--part of which sum she sent to the Bloods

whose straits were worse than her own--that staved off utter ruin. She

relinquished her work as a schoolmistress, and through her friend Mr.

Prior, assistant master at Eton, obtained the situation of governess to

the children of Lord Kingsborough at a salary of forty pounds a year.

Before leaving for Mitchelstown in Ireland, she spent some time with

the Priors at Eton, where she had an opportunity to study the life in

an English public-school. It did not impress her favourably and gave

rise to some severe criticism in the _Rights of Women_ on the subject

of false religion and undue attachment to outward things. "I could not

live the life they lead at Eton", she says in a letter to her sister

Everina, "nothing but dress and ridicule going forward, and I really

believe their fondness for ridicule tends to make them affected, the

women in their manners, and the men in their conversation, for witlings

abound and puns fly about like crackers, though you would scarcely

guess they had any meaning in them, if you did not hear the noise they

create". This was her first glimpse of society. In the same letter

she finds comfort in the reflection that the time will come when "the

God of love will wipe away all tears from our eyes, and neither death

nor accidents of any kind will interpose to separate us from those we

love". No wonder she was horrified at the boy who only consented to

receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to avoid forfeiting half a

guinea!

She was now, indeed, entering upon a new phase of her life. She had

witnessed the horrors of a domestic life in which drunkenness and

other moral vices reigned supreme; she was now to behold the utter

worthlessness of the pleasure-seeking, irresponsible upper classes,

whose religion was all sham, and who tried to make up in dogmatic

narrowness what they lacked in true piety. It was the conduct of her

own sex that most of all disgusted her. It taught her that the absurd

distinctions of rank corrupted not merely the oppressed dependents,

but also their tyrants, whose only claim to respectability was in the

titles they held. In short, it turned her from a mere educator into a

social reformer, and from a devout Christian into a Deist.

What struck her most forcibly about the women of the Kingsborough

household was their unfitness for their chief task in life: that of

educating their own children. They represented a varied catalogue of

female errors. Lady Kingsborough was too much occupied with her dogs to

care for her children, whom she left to the care of their governess.

When afterwards that governess came to stand first in the children's

affections, she promptly dismissed her. Mary Wollstonecraft's revilers

have tried to substantiate the charge of irreligiousness against her

by pointing out that her favourite pupil Margaret--afterwards Lady

Mount Cashel--was not wholly without blame in her later life; thus

ignoring the degrading influence of a mother like Lady Kingsborough,

and overlooking the fact that Mary's stay in Ireland lasted only one

year. In her correspondence with Mrs. Bishop there is a description of

Lady Kingsborough's stepmother and her three daughters, "fine girls,

just going to market, as their brother says". This short sentence shows

the state of revolt she was in against the frivolity of women in making

a wealthy marriage the sole aim of life. If, therefore, her religious

principles were of a sternness hardly suited to the practice of those

days, it need not necessarily be the former that were at fault. The

imputation of insincerity, however, merits absolute contempt. Here,

indeed, "to doubt her goodness were to want a heart". It is impossible

to read any portion of her works without being struck by the earnest

tone of sincere piety which pervades them all. It was a great pity that

what she saw of Christianity prevented her from going to the source of

that religion, which might have given her that peace "which passeth

understanding" for which her heart yearned and which the vagueness of

her deistic views, although better suited to satisfy her Reason, could

not supply.

While at Bristol Hot Wells in the summer of 1788 she wrote a little

book entitled "_Mary, A Fiction_", relating the incidents of her

friendship with Fanny Blood. But it is not the incidents that make

the charm of this composition. Godwin, who could admire in another

those qualities which he knew he himself lacked, says that in it "the

feelings are of the truest and most exquisite class; every circumstance

is adorned with that species of imagination which enlists itself under

the banners of delicacy and sentiment"[39].

Mary's dismissal as a governess fortunately did not leave her

unprovided for. The generous Mr. Johnson found her lodgings in George

Street, near Blackfriar's Bridge, and made her his reader. She

criticised the manuscripts sent to him, and the kindness and sincerity

of her criticisms brought her a few real friends, among whom was Miss

Hayes, who afterwards became the means of bringing her and Godwin

together. Mr. Johnson had just started the _Analytical Review_, in

which Mary took a considerable share. The many translations she did

at this period were suggested by Johnson, and as such throw no light

on her personal taste, but in the case of Salzmann's "_Moralisches

Elementarbuch_" he certainly gave her a congenial subject. She had by

this time read Rousseau's _Emile_, with the main tendencies of which

she agreed as far as the boy Emile was concerned, but whose ideal of

womanhood, embodied in Sophie, was very far removed from her own, and

also Thomas Day's "_Sandford and Merton_," in which the influence of

Rousseau is very marked. The ideas expressed by Day, corroborated and

added to by her own experience and by Salzmann's theories, form the

basis of her "_Original Stories from Real Life, with Conversations

calculated to regulate the Affections and form the Mind to Truth and

Goodness_". (1788). The idea of a private tutor (or preceptor) had

been Rousseau's, and Day makes a kind-hearted clergyman, Mr. Barlow,

who had attained excellent results in the training of young Harry

Sandford, a farmer's son, undertake the instruction of Tommy Merton,

the son of a rich planter of Jamaica. Day obviously cannot refrain from

introducing the theme of class-distinctions, making the farmer's child

appear to great advantage by the side of the gentleman's son, who has

been utterly spoiled by an over-indulgent mother and has had the whole

catalogue of prejudices of birth and station inculcated into him. The

story consists of a string of incidents, partly arising from natural

causes and partly due to Mr. Barlow's "coups de théâtre pédagogiques",

in which Rousseau also was fond of indulging. They all contribute

towards the formation of Tommy's mind and heart, in conjunction

with a number of stories, told at the psychological moment by their

preceptor, which it appears do not fail to produce their effect, for

Tommy is promptly changed from an insufferable little despot into a

paragon of virtue. Nor is he slow himself to adopt the oracular tone of

self-sufficiency which Harry exhibits from the first. Where Day's book

differs from Rousseau,--which is only in two respects,--the deviation

is due to the fact that Rousseau was essentially a theorist, whose

aim was to provide an educational scheme, whilst Day in combination

with Mr. Edgeworth meant to, and did carry his theories into practice,

in doing which he had to make a good many concessions to outward

circumstances. Rousseau seldom indulges in story-telling, in his scheme

the work of instructing the child under twelve (Tommy and Harry are

only six) is left to Nature, and the preceptor keeps his precepts to

himself and merely mounts the most jealous guard over his pupil to

ward off undesirable influences and to leave Nature undisturbed in

accomplishing her task. Thus Rousseau advises the negative education

for young children. In Day, however, the preceptor takes a decidedly

active part, and both by precept and example directs his pupils'

thoughts towards certain conclusions they are meant to draw. A natural

consequence of Rousseau's radical Nature-scheme is that the pleasure

of reading books--beyond a few of great practical value to the Man of

Nature, such as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe--is withheld from the young

pupil, who is only taught to read at his own request, and at a much

later age. Instead, he should be content to read the book of Nature,

which is in a language every human creature can understand. Here again

the more practical Day disagrees, and in _Sandford and Merton_ books

play a prominent part. Again, Rousseau wants to separate his pupil not

only from the family to which he belongs, but from all other children,

thus overlooking the important factor of inter-education. Day educates

the two boys together and occasionally brings them in contact with

other children also, mostly of the peasant-class.

For the rest, however, there is a close parallelism between the two

systems. Stress is laid on simplicity being the mother of all virtues,

the boys are taught to regard manual labour as an honest occupation of

which no so-called "gentleman" need be ashamed, and which may stand him

in good stead should circumstances make it necessary for him to earn

his own living. They have their physical strength developed by manly

exercise, and the advantages accruing from a life in accordance with

the dictates of Nature are pointed out to them in a most suggestive

way. They learn to regard class-privileges with scorn; to them a "man"

is a being superior to a "gentleman"; are taught that the only property

a man is entitled to is the result of his own labour; and acquire some

knowledge of botany, zoology, cosmography, geography and in general of

such subjects as may render the child more fit for a life in accordance

with Nature such as Day himself practised.

It need hardly be said that Mary Wollstonecraft's educational ideas did

not go the entire length of Day's somewhat eccentric radicalism. She

sympathised with Rousseau's Nature-scheme only inasmuch as it asserted

the advantages of country-life and did away with conventionality.

Although accustomed to the most rigid simplicity, she never approached

the utter disregard of appearances which Day professed to feel. She

utterly disagreed with Rousseau where he asserted the necessity of

giving girls an education "relative to men", it being one of the chief

aims of her later works to show that there should be no difference

of principles in the education of the two sexes; but she applied a

great many of Rousseau's suggestions, which he intended for boys,

to her own sex. Far from wishing to furnish a complete scheme for

the education of young girls upon a basis of abstract reasoning, she

follows Day in attacking the defects most common to childhood and

in trying to establish a standard of virtue which may be attained

by following Reason. She entirely relies upon the force of a moral

lesson contained in a well-told story, or, better still, illustrated

by personal example. In one point of difference the contrast in

character between her and Rousseau becomes most obvious. The latter's

lack of moral firmness makes him, while shielding his pupil from the

evil influence of his surroundings, rather unaccountably overlook the

necessity of inculcating a sense of duty. His scheme has no ethical

background. In Mary Wollstonecraft, however, this ethical background

is the essential thing. Her parting advice to her pupils (voiced by

Mrs. Mason) is: "Recollect, that from religion your chief comfort must

spring, and never neglect the duty of prayer. Learn from experience the

comfort that arises from making known your wants and sorrows to the

wisest and best of Beings not only of this life, but of that which is

to come." Rousseau's pupil was not likely to become a "striver", Mary

Wollstonecraft's had had high ethical principles instilled into her.

The lack of incentives to virtue which characterises Rousseau's scheme

may be the consequence of his theory of original innocence. He does not

believe in the existence of evil in connection with the Divine Will,

but holds that evil is merely the consequence of wrong opinions. Here

he was Godwin's teacher. A radical change in individual opinion will

cause evil to disappear. How original sin and evil could find their

way into the world, mankind being in a state of perfect innocence, he

does not explain. Godwin, and with him Mary Wollstonecraft, were of

opinion that there is in mankind no natural bias towards either good or

evil, and that everything depends on the forming of the mind, hence the

all-importance of education.

Religion, therefore, is an essential part of Mary Wollstonecraft's

educational plan. It is true that the child cannot grasp the

fundamental truths, its power of reasoning being as yet limited, and

should not for this reason be permitted to read the Bible. But her

girls are taught from the first that "religion ought to be the active

director of our affections" and that "happiness can only arise from

imitating God in a life guided by considerations of virtue. Virtue,

according to her mouth-piece Mrs. Mason, is "the exercise of benevolent

affections to please God and bring comfort and happiness here, and

become angels hereafter."

In the "_Original Stories_" we have some of the theories of the _Rights

of Women_ presented to us in a nutshell. They claim for girls equality

of education with boys, and indirectly deny the sexual character

theory, based on that of innate principles, which Mary Wollstonecraft

agreed with Godwin did not exist. Rousseau held that Reason was the

prerogative of Man, and that Woman's substitute for it was Sensibility.

Man was made to think, and Woman to feel. "Whatever is in Nature is

right", was the axiom he applied to the case of Woman. Nature meant

her to be kept in a state of subjection to Man, and to give her an

education without regarding the limitations of her sex would have

seemed to him flying in the face of providence.

Mary Wollstonecraft's views of society were sufficiently pessimistic

to consider the average parent utterly unfit to educate a child. She

therefore adhered to Rousseau's idea of a preceptor. Her two girls,

Mary and Caroline, aged 14 and 12, far from having been kept in

ignorance, and further handicapped by the death of their mother, had

already imbibed some false notions and prejudices. Mary's judgment

was not sufficiently cool to make her realise that appearances are

often deceptive, and that bodily defects may be found together with

excellent moral qualities. She had an unfortunate turn for ridicule.

Her sister Caroline, by being vain of her person, proved that she

did not understand the source of true merit. It was, therefore, the

task of their monitress to carefully eradicate these prejudices and

to substitute for them correct notions of true virtue. In Mrs. Mason,

Mary Wollstonecraft enriched English literature with the portrait of

the typical British matron with "no nonsense about her", but in making

this woman her mouth-piece she scarcely did justice to the qualities

of her own heart. It was the struggle of her life to make her heart

yield to the dictates of Reason, and Mrs. Mason certainly does not

impress the reader as struggling very hard. She is the embodiment of

pure, undiluted Reason in all its unyielding sternness. Any show of

tenderness towards her charges would have seemed to her a confession of

weakness. When after a long spell of life together she returns them to

their father, they have advanced just far enough in her affection to be

termed "candidates for her friendship"; which, by the way, is meant

to imply that they have made satisfactory progress in the faculty of

Reason.

Mary Wollstonecraft for the moment does not seem to realise that the

essential quality in an educator should be to make her pupils not

only respect, but also love her, and Mrs. Mason is a most unloveable

person. Her haughty arrogance and insufferable self-sufficiency were

not likely to escape her eldest pupil's sense of humour and could not

but seriously affect her influence over the girls. Thus the children of

Mary Wollstonecraft's fancy are brought up in the midst of reasoning

logic, unwarmed by the sunshine of parental love.

To make matters worse, this champion of liberty, who found fault with

Rousseau for failing to see that his schemes of freedom applied with

equal justice to women; who was soon herself to protest against the

abuse of parental authority, who held with Locke that "if the mind

be curbed and humbled too much in children, if the spirit be abased

and broken much by too strict a hand over them, they lose all their

vigour and industry",[40] herself made the fatal mistake of aiding

and abetting the thraldom of the young girl. The education which

Mary and Caroline receive is nothing but a dreary course of constant

admonition, in which the word liberty would be utterly misplaced.

She has entirely failed to catch the spirit of Rousseau's _Emile_,

in which the instructor only prevents the pupil from hurting himself

overmuch through his ignorance, leaving him otherwise free to draw

the conclusions of awakening Reason, and above all allowing him to

live out his life. Harry Sandford and Tommy Merton go together for

long walks in the woods, get lost and owe their rescue to the lucky

accident of meeting a boy who takes them to his home. When Mr. Barlow

is informed that the boys have turned up, he goes to meet them on their

way home and merely tells them to be more careful in future, availing

himself of the incident to instil certain lessons in geography which

smack of Rousseau. But their liberty is in no way cramped. With Mary

Wollstonecraft, however, the case is entirely different. One wonders

what sort of paragons Mrs. Mason was going to turn out. The chances

would seem pretty even between prim old maids and confirmed young

hypocrites, depending on those very innate tendencies she was fain

to deny! She held that children should not be left too much freedom,

because, the faculty of Reason being as yet insufficiently developed

in them, they might make the wrong use of it. But the restrictions on

their liberty should be such as to remain almost unnoticed by them.

They should not have a variety of prohibitions imposed upon them, as

was the case with Lady Kingsborough's children, whom she immediately

restored to some degree of liberty. One cannot help thinking that

theory and practice often clash, owing to the perpetual conflict

between reason and the feelings. Granting, however, that Mrs. Mason had

the best and most disinterested intentions, what, we may ask, can be

left of liberty to children whom their monitress "never suffers out of

her sight?"

In her catalogue of living creatures Mary puts animals at the bottom on

account of their being incapable of Reason. They are guided exclusively

by instinct, which is a faculty of a coarser growth than Reason. The

love of their young, for instance, though sweet to behold, and worthy

of imitation, is not in their case dictated by Reason. Next upon the

list come children; in them the latent faculty ought to be developed by

older and wiser people bringing what Godwin would call "the artillery

of Reason" to bear upon the infant mind. Mary Wollstonecraft protests

against the arrogance of those philosophers who, while granting their

own sex the privilege of an education, wilfully exclude the other half

of humanity from the blessings of Reason, which is the only guide to

virtue and moral perfection.

When Mary wrote the "_Original Stories_" she was not more than

twenty-nine herself, and had known neither the passion of love nor

motherhood. Her all-embracing love of humanity made the subject of

interest to her, but there is upon the whole too much of Reason and

too little of the heart in the little volume. Circumstances over

which she had no control were soon to teach her for good and all that

the affections will not be suppressed and peremptorily demand their

share. When next she touched upon the subject she was a mother and

confronted with the task of educating her own child in the long and

frequent absences of a faithless and undeserving father. The "_First

Lessons for an Infant_" in Volume II of the posthumous edition of

her works are the result of the joint teachings of maternal love and

bitter experience. Here she is herself, an essentially human, loving

woman, overflowing with tenderness and bound up closely with her child

not merely by the ties of duty, but by those of an all-absorbing

affection. Having thus tried to do justice to the author by accounting

for what seems contradictory, we may frankly say that Mrs. Mason is an

insufferable pedant. The Mr. Barlow of _Sandford and Merton_, while

constantly moralising,--in doing which he draws far more sweeping

conclusions than even Mrs. Mason--and arranging incidents to illustrate

and anticipate his moral lessons like the best of stage-managers[41],

at least does not obtrude her own personality. But the impeccable Mrs.

Mason in her boundless self-confidence never loses an opportunity to

introduce her own personality. Her benevolence is unlimited, and she

is utterly incapable of doing wrong. If she inflicts bodily pain, it

is that Reason has whispered to her that in doing so she avoids a

greater evil. She puts her foot deliberately on a wounded bird's head,

"turning her own the other way". She teaches by example rather than

precept, and the example somehow seems to be always herself. Never for

a moment are the girls allowed a rest from the moral deluge. The first

eight chapters of the little book contain the moral food for one single

day, carefully divided into a morning, an afternoon and an evening

of incessant moralising. Yet she is "naive" enough to imagine that

she teaches imperceptibly, by rendering the subject amusing! If Mary

Wollstonecraft had possessed the slightest indication of a possible

sense of humour, the absurdity of the Mrs. Mason portrait would have

struck her. But she had not, and while relating the most ludicrous

incidents, she always remains terribly in earnest!

There is something distinctly oppressive, too, about Mrs. Mason's

benevolence. She relieves the distress of the poor, but while doing so

her coldly critical eye wanders about the humble cottage and makes the

poor wretch feel uncomfortably conscious of its generally unfinished

appearance. With her, Reason is always enthroned. The passions are not

to be mentioned in her presence. And yet, her cupboard, too, has its

skeleton. Early attachments, we are informed, have been broken, her own

husband has died, followed by her only child, "in whom her husband died

again". Her afflictions have taught her to pin her faith on the hope

of eternity, in doing which she has unfortunately forgotten to learn

the lesson of earthly suffering and to realise her own imperfections.

The virtue of modesty, which she recommends to the girls in contrasting

the sweet and graceful rose to the bold and flaunting tulip (!) was not

among her many accomplishments.

The little book prepares the reader's mind for the "_Vindication of the

Rights of Women_," which was soon to follow, in that it contains a

long plea for the glorious faculty of Reason, leading to virtue. The

heart should be carefully regulated by the understanding to prevent

its running amuck. All errors are due to a relegation of Reason to an

inferior position; a systematical application, however, cannot fail to

conduct towards perfection.

One seems too be listening to the sweeping assertions of _Political

Justice_, which was to appear a few years later and in which the

general philosophical tendencies of the revolutionary movement were

gathered up and stated with bold radicalism. The main line of thought

which Godwin followed, and the tendency to resort to "first principles"

is everywhere manifest. To call girls "rational creatures" for doing

what their monitress expects of them is to give them the most unstinted

praise. The absolute subjection of the poor children to their governess

is the necessary outcome of the infallibility of the latter's superior

Reason, which renders implicit obedience the interest of the former.

In her discussion of the filial duties in connection with the parental

affections in the _Vindication_, Mary Wollstonecraft insists on just

such a degree of obedience as is compatible with the child's obvious

interest. Nor is the respect due to superior Reason lost sight of when

she opines with respect to marriage that, although after one and twenty

a parent has no right to withhold his consent on any account, yet

the son ought to promise not to marry for two or three years, should

the object of his choice not meet with the approbation of his "first

friend". Thus the principles of liberty and obedience are made to fit

each other.

The infallibility of Reason is enforced by some "glaring" examples,

which bring fresh proof of the author's fatal insensibility to the

ludicrous and absurd. The story of the girl who, like Caroline, was

vain of her good looks, until she had smallpox, when, having to pass

many days in a darkened room, she learned to reflect and afterwards

took to reading as a means of enlarging the mind, may pass; but the

history of Charles Townley is utterly absurd and distinctly inferior

to Day's stories, some of which afford pleasant reading and must have

amused the boys. Its hero is the "man of feeling" so prominent in the

sentimental school, who allows his conduct to be governed solely by

sentiment. Having chosen the wrong guide, he is made miserable for

life, and his sorrows culminate when he beholds the daughter of his

benefactor, a maniac, "the wreck of a human understanding", merely

because he has too long put off assisting her and relieving her

distress, as he intended to do.

The principal vices against which the book inveighs and which are

for the most part illustrated by means of fitting stories, or warned

against by means of toward incidents, are: anger and peevishness,

by which Reason is temporarily dethroned (story of Jane Fretful),

lying, immoderate indulgence of the appetite, procrastination, pride,

arrogance to servants[42], sensitiveness to pain and an excessive

regard for the vanities of dress and for the opinions of the world

(story of the schoolmistress). Thus the ideas which found an outlet

in the _Vindication_ were anticipated, and the little book marks the

first step in the transition from pedagogical to social and political

authorship.

Next to the careful eradication of vices, the cultivation of virtues is

attended to. The children are taught to love all living creatures, the

love of animals being characteristic of the new movement as a natural

offshoot of the greater but more difficult love of mankind. They are

instructed in the practice of charity, economy, self-denial, modesty

and simplicity. The last-named virtue constitutes the link between

the educational and the social instruction. The stories of "the Welsh

Harper" and of "Lady Sly and Mrs. Trueman" are intended to convey the

great truth that class-distinctions are not by any means dependent on

moral character and that often "the lower is the higher." Nor can Mary

Wollstonecraft refrain from making herself the advocate of the greater

love towards mankind. The sad fate of Crazy Robin, who languishes in

a debtor's prison, after losing his wife and children through death,

is described in a little story which has true touches of pathos, and

the horrors of the Bastille are incidentally thrown in to heighten

the impression produced. In the naval story told by "Honest Jack"--in

which, by the way, absurdity reaches its climax when the hero, losing

an eye in a storm, thanks God for leaving him the other--we hear that

even the French are not so bad as they are often painted, and are

capable of mercy, for while Jack was pining away in a French prison,

some women brought him broth and wine, and one gave him rags to wrap

round his wounded leg. The whole story is rather a poor attempt at a

sailor's yarn, in which the author visibly though vainly exerts herself

to catch the right tone, with a rather too obtrusive moral background.

We feel that Jack is Mrs. Mason's ideal of manhood and the excellent

lady forgets herself and her constant companion Reason to such an

extent that tears of benevolence are seen "stealing down her cheeks"!

The girls' trials come to an end when at last their father writes for

them to return to London. They are described as visibly improved, "an

air of intelligence" beginning to animate Caroline's fine features.

Mrs. Mason accompanies them to London, and there takes her leave of

the two girls, probably to inflict her personality on a pair of fresh

victims.

In the next few years the problem of the education of children,

although remaining a subject of constant speculation, receded before

that of the Cause of Woman. But when Mary was herself a happy mother,

the old problems presented themselves in a more tangible form. Godwin

informs us in the "_Memoirs_" that shortly before her death she

projected a work upon the management of the infant years, "which she

had carefully considered, and well understood".

It was about the time of the publication of the "_Original Stories_"

that Mary made up her mind to definitely adopt writing as a profession.

She realised that in doing so she was flying in the face of prejudice.

But she had seen enough of the world, and the result of her long and

bitter wrestlings with adversity had been a sufficient increase of

moral strength to render her independent of the opinion of others.

Henceforth it was to be her task to form the opinions of her sex, and

in doing so she totally disregarded the opinion of others concerning

herself. Her voluntary martyrdom had begun.

At the same time her scope of observation became considerably widened.

Mr. Johnson's house was the resort of a great many of the leading

philosophical minds of the day, all of whom had strong revolutionary

tendencies, and whose works he brought out with an utter contempt of

consequences very much to his credit. Nothing could be more natural

than that the constant intercourse with people like Thomas Paine,

Fuseli the Swiss painter, Mr. Bonnycastle the pedagogue, Dr. Priestley,

Dr. Geddes, Dr. George Fordyce, Lavater and Talleyrand (who in those

days paid a visit to England)--to whom was added afterwards the

enigmatical personality of William Godwin--should tend to inspire her

with strong revolutionary ideas. It had the effect of widening her

horizon and of causing her to transfer her energies from the work of

education to that of social reform. Mr. Johnson's circle consisted

almost entirely of men, the only women, besides Mary, being the more

easy-going, and less energetic Mrs. Inchbald and the far less gifted

Miss Hayes and Mrs. Trimmer. Where the men had the Rights of Men for

their watchword, Mary Wollstonecraft as a natural consequence found her

attention directed towards the position of her own sex, a subject which

these hot-headed champions were too apt to overlook.

It was in those days (Nov. 1, 1790) that Burke made his violent

onslaught upon what he termed the "seditious" theories concerning the

rights of man voiced by her dear friend Dr. Price in his epoch-making

sermon at the Old Jewry to his congregation of sympathisers with

the Revolution. This direct attack had the effect of making Mary

Wollstonecraft seize her pen in defence of her old friend and in

support of those principles which had slowly and gradually come to mean

a great deal to her. Already the correspondence of the Kingsborough

period is distinctly suggestive of awakening social interests, stress

being laid on the prejudices connected with rank and station. (Letters

to Everina, 1787 and 1788, and to Mrs. Bishop, 1787). In Ireland her

eyes had been opened to the moral inferiority of men and women of

quality and to the distress of those who, like herself, were dependent

on them. The picture of eternity receded before that of earthly

injustice to be repaired.

At Mr. Johnson's she frequently took part in the discussion of the

possibility of reestablishing the governments of Europe on primary

principles, and the new ideas sounded in her ears like a new Gospel of

Man. The reflections of Jean-Jacques--she must have read and discussed

the _Contrat Social_ in those days, although there is no correspondence

to prove the assumption--couched in prose "made lyrical by faith" could

not fail to impress a mind like that of Mary, than whom they never made

an easier proselyte. Add to this the direct stimulus of the revolution,

and the prospect of immediate application of the new theories which

electrified all revolutionary minds, and it will not be difficult to

account for her enthusiasm, which placed her among the first to use

her pen in defence of the new creed. When she had almost finished her

pamphlet and was about to have it printed, she felt less sanguine

about her powers of persuasion, but the work as she wrote it bears the

unmistakable evidence of having been struck at a heat, which, together

with its obvious sincerity, may account for some of its success.

Dr. Price, in his sermon of 1789, "in commemoration of the Revolution

of 1688", had given vent to the feelings of approbation with which he

had greeted the outbreak of the French Revolution, and among others

expressed the view that the king owes his crown to the choice of his

people and "may be cashiered for misconduct", thus openly declaring

himself a follower of the theories of the Social Contract, which are

based upon the sovereignty of the people.

Burke in his "_Reflections on the Revolution in France_", takes his

stand upon the British constitution--once the object of the admiration

of a Montesquieu--to oppose what he regards as nothing less than a

direct attempt at sowing the seeds of revolution in Great Britain. His

pamphlet called forth no fewer than thirty-eight replies, of which that

written by Thomas Paine was the most successful amongst the partisans

of the new movement in consequence of its radical tendencies. Mary

Wollstonecraft was in the van of the revolutionary army, and shared

with Dr. Priestley the honour of being the first to enter the field.

To account for her indignation it should be remembered that Burke had

until then been regarded as one of the principal Whig advocates of

reform, in connection with his attitude towards the American problem.

No one had anticipated this sudden change of tactics, so welcome,

though unlooked-for, to King George and to Pitt, and it fairly maddened

the champions of reform.

Buckle, in his "_History of Civilisation in England_", deeply regrets

Burke's conduct, which he calls the consequence of an unfortunate

hallucination, due to his feelings having temporarily got the better

of his Reason. The vehemence of the controversy in question between

opponents who were equally sincere and convinced of the soundness of

their views, is due to an essential difference in standpoint, leading

to opinions which in either case, though containing an element of

truth, must be termed one-sided. The thoroughly practical Burke,

whose political ideas were the fruit of an experience of nearly half

a century, placed himself upon the purely empirical standpoint,

resting his arguments upon a basis of sound historical experience,

and asserting that the legislator's first aim should be expediency,

taught by experience, and not abstract, speculative truth. He points

to the difference between political and social principles, which are

the outcome of reason; and political practice, which is the product of

human nature, and of which reason is but a part. The reformers of the

opposing camp took their stand upon a basis of abstract, geometrical

reasoning, and persistently refused to consider the argument of

expediency. They only regarded the theoretical aspect of the social

problem. Both parties recognised the doctrines of human rights and of

the popular sovereignty, which were of British growth, having been put

forward long before Rousseau by John Locke; but they differ in their

application of them. With Burke, rights are of an hereditary nature.

To him, the constitution is the embodiment both of the rights of the

free British citizen, and of the duties of the British subject, an

inheritance they derived from their ancestors of 1688, together with

the duty of keeping the legacy intact in its general tendencies. It

was Burke's firm conviction that a statesman should steer clear of

philosophical principles, which an absolute want of adaptability to the

exigencies of a special case renders unfit for practice.

It must be granted that this line of argument in Burke's case led to

a fatal blindness to obvious injustice and to a curious inability

to appreciate what was good, noble and disinterested in the leaders

of the revolutionary movement. Mary Wollstonecraft and her friends

failed to see that reforms which are to affect the roots of existing

conditions--however desirable and even necessary--must of necessity

be slow and gradual, lest our gain should prove but a poor substitute

for our certain loss. There are none more dangerous to society than

the abstract idealist, whose very inexperience confirms him in the

belief that he is in possession of absolute Truth, for which he is

willing to lay down his own life, and, _en passant_, the lives of

others. Of such a nature was the "amiable defect"--to use her own

terminology--developed in Mary Wollstonecraft's nature by too impulsive

a zeal in the cause of mankind.

She felt intensely on the subject. The furious onslaught which she

makes upon Burke in the _Rights of Man_--without that respect for grey

hairs which she would have Burke observe in his dealings with Dr.

Price--was prompted by a far deeper feeling for mankind than Burke was

capable of. The two vulnerable points in Burke's pamphlet were his

unreasonable vehemence and the personal character of his attacks on the

one hand, and his want of real sympathy with the "swinish multitude"

on the other. The submerged portions of humanity have little to hope

for in a statesman who coolly advises them "by labour to obtain what by

labour can be obtained and to be taught their consolation in the final

proportions of eternal justice". The hopeless conservatism of this view

aroused the indignation of Mary Wollstonecraft. "It is possible," she

exclaims, "to render the poor happier in this world without depriving

them of the consolation which you gratuitously grant them in the next!"

Nor has Mr. Burke's "immaculate constitution" her undivided sympathy.

She agrees with Rousseau that property, while one of the pillars of the

monarchical system, is a deadly enemy to that equality of men before

the law without which there can be no real liberty. The preservation

of the intact family-estate for the purpose of perpetuating a

time-honoured name and tradition, much as it appeals to Burke, was a

phrase the force of which did not strike Mary Wollstonecraft, whose

indifference to opinion we have already referred to. It would be far

better for society if each large estate were divided into a number

of small farms, so that each might have a competent portion and all

amassing of property cease.

In the same passage she boldly asserts the rights of man, as laid

down by Rousseau in his famous Social Compact, which give him a title

to as much liberty, both civil and religious, as is compatible with

the rights of every other individual. As it is, the first rule of the

doctrine of equality, which says that all men are equal before the

law, is utterly disregarded, for does not the law shield the rich and

oppress the poor? Property in England is a great deal more secure than

liberty.

The views expressed in the above passage to a great extent anticipate

those of Godwin's "_Caleb Williams_", published in 1794, which,

according to the author's preface, comprehended "a general view of

the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes

the destroyer of man", and in which a social system was denounced

which enabled the rich man to use the power of a law which seemed

to regard only the interests of one single class of society for the

most nefarious purposes[43]. A parallel to this sociological novel is

afforded by Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished "_Maria, or the Wrongs of

Woman_", to which, if we replace the last word by "woman", the sentence

just quoted applies literally.

It is but fair to state that Mary Wollstonecraft did not persist in her

extreme views as to the necessity of a sudden and radical change which

at one time made her overlook the principle of slow evolution. She was

willing to recognise this principle in her "_Historical and Moral View

of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution_", of which the

first and only volume was written some three years later. At Paris,

before her intimacy with Imlay and the birth of her daughter Fanny

brought about a temporary relaxation in her social zeal, her time was

spent in watching the development of events with eager and sympathetic

interest. Her optimistic faith in the perfectibility of mankind helped

her--as it did Wordsworth--to look beyond the horrors and bloodshed

by which her heart was moved to intense pity and indignation. She was

convinced that out of the chaotic mass "a fairer government was rising

than ever shed the sweets of social life on the world." But, she adds,

"things must have time to find their level."

The "_Vindication of the Rights of Man_"--although quite overshadowed

by Paine's pamphlet--met with so much success that very soon after its

publication a second edition was called for. There is no doubt that

this circumstance gave Mary a great deal of encouragement. It became

an incentive to further efforts on a larger scale in the direction in

which she now realised lay the mission of her life. In spite of her

theories she was sufficiently sensitive to praise to feel gratified by

it and to derive from it the moral courage necessary to defy public

opinion and constitute herself the champion of the Cause of Woman.

We have seen that the Cause of Woman had met with very little regard in

England in the course of the century, except where moral improvement

was concerned. In France, however, the progress to be recorded was

considerable. It will be remembered that Fénelon had been the first

to insist on an education which might teach girls the pursuit of some

useful ideal instead of leaving them to pass their time in a degrading

search for pleasure. There is in Fénelon a distinct foreshadowing

of the tendencies of educational reform in later years. With Mary

Wollstonecraft also, the chief aim of education is not to prepare the

individual for social intercourse, but to accustom the mind to listen

to the dictates of Reason. Fénelon has a more negative way of putting

the question. He believes in filling the mind with useful ideas as a

means of preventing moral degradation.

In the course of the following century, the philosophers of the

Encyclopédie introduced their theories of rationalism. Helvétius

(in his _Traité de l'Homme_, 1774) insisted on the necessity of an

education in connection with his theory that the human mind, which is

sovereign, is the exclusive product of education and experience. He

may be called a link in the chain of advocates of the Cause of Woman,

although not paying the slightest attention to women in particular;

for he indirectly advances their cause a step by defending the view

that an education is indispensable to develop the mind and thus attain

perfection. He is one of the originators of the theory which says that

the mind is in a perfectly neutral state at birth, capable of receiving

and guarding any impressions which may be produced by accidental

circumstances, which a well-regulated education may to a certain extent

make or re-make; the obvious conclusion being that all men are of equal

birth. To this scheme Diderot in his "_Réfutation_" opposed his theory

of heredity, or innate character. Both Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft

were adherents of Helvétius. Viewed in the light of original equality,

which supposes equal possibilities in individuals who are only

physically different, it will be readily seen what a long vista of

improvements may be opened by perfecting the education.

In the catalogue Rousseau must be passed over until Mary herself will

introduce him, when he will be fighting on the wrong side, although

not so completely as Mary Wollstonecraft would have us believe.

Although their respective views on the subject of female education and

the consequent position of women in society are almost diametrically

opposed, yet there is a great deal of sound reasoning in the remarks

of both. However, we find in each the same unfortunate tendency to

generalisation and exaggeration.

A discussion of the social position of women without direct reference

to education, criticising them as they then were, and pointing out what

they might be, may be found in d'Holbach's _Social System_ (1774),

where an entire chapter is devoted to the subject. Mr. Brailsford[44]

points out the strange incongruity which lies in the fact that an

atheist and a confirmed materialist was among the first to recommend

the emancipation of women. For a rationalist philosopher, indeed, to

arrive at the conclusion that women should be made the social equals of

men, would be nothing very remarkable, but where d'Holbach constantly

keeps in view the moral side of the problem, he approaches the English

moralists rather than the French thinkers of the school of Reason.

The tone of his plea is sincere, and his hints are wise, moderate and

worthy of consideration. He complains that the education of the women

of his time, instead of developing in them those qualities which are

best calculated to bring happiness to men, merely tends to make them

inconstant, capricious and irresponsible. They are being tyrannised

over in every country; in Europe their position is not more enviable

than elsewhere, although a varnish of gallantry seeks to hide the fact.

Not woman herself is to blame for this, but rather man, who refuses her

the benefit of an education which may render her fit to perform the

duties of life. There is nothing more inconsistent than the education

of girls, which includes instruction in religious matters, teaching

them the hope of eternity in conjunction with all the vanities of life,

such as dancing and a too great regard for dress and deportment, which

are incompatible with true piety.

D'Holbach was also the first to protest against those marriages in

which even mutual esteem is wanting, which is even more important than

love, because of its greater permanence. Where conjugal infidelity is

encouraged on the stage and in society, married life too often becomes

one protracted intrigue, and the domestic duties and the education

of the children cease to be regarded. Women of the lower classes are

even worse off; prostitution is their only course, and society, while

readily forgiving the seducer, leaves the victim to a life of infamy.

The chapter ends with an earnest appeal to women to learn the value of

reason and the power of virtue, which alone lead to happiness, and to

respect themselves if they wish others to respect them.

The parallelism between the passages referred to above and the main

drift of Mary Wollstonecraft's contentions in her "_Vindication of the

Rights of Women_" is so particularly striking, that the assumption

seems justified that she had read d'Holbach.

The outbreak of the revolution caused the new philosophical principles

to be put to the test of practical experiment. In 1791 the National

Assembly, realising that an important step towards the realisation

of that equality they aimed at was the institution of a national

education, called upon Talleyrand to elaborate a project of an

educational scheme on rational principles. Talleyrand's report pointed

out the desirability of allowing women to share in the universal

education and to establish schools to which both sexes were to be

admitted. As regards the possibility of their taking part in political

discussions, he was of opinion that their domestic duties forbade their

entering the arena of politics. The education of children was the

principal of these duties, and the report says that "after reaching the

age of eight, girls should be restored to their parents to be taught

housekeeping at home."

The dissolution of the National Assembly caused Talleyrand's scheme to

be consigned to oblivion, and his task was entrusted by the Legislative

Assembly to the philosopher Condorcet. This disciple of Turgot, who

may be called the French Godwin, sharing the latter's love of the

mathematics of philosophy, blessed with the same boundless confidence

in the future of humanity, and actuated by the same unselfish

enthusiasm, which he did not, like Godwin, take the trouble to hide

under a mask of seeming Stoicism,--read his report in April 1792. It

almost coincided with the publication of the _Vindication_, for a

letter written by Mrs. Bishop to Everina Wollstonecraft in July of

the same year refers to Mary as the successful author of the _Rights

of Women_. Condorcet's views differ from Mary's in that he wishes the

instruction which is open to all classes to be regulated in accordance

with talent and capacity. An education, therefore, regarding innate

talents rather than social distinctions, and by which each man is to be

rendered independent of others[45].

Women are to receive the same instruction as men. It is not astonishing

that the theorist Condorcet should be inclined to go beyond what the

practical Talleyrand considered feasible and to forget the undeniable

difference in character and capacities existing between the sexes. In

this, Mary Wollstonecraft felt like Condorcet. Both make the mistake,

when anxious to assert the intellectual equality of women and to have

them recognised as "partakers of Reason", of trying to strengthen

their plea by pointing to one or two exceptional women to prove what

woman is capable of. The grounds on which Condorcet--continuing the

line of thought of his French predecessors--demands instruction for

women are the same as those of Mary. Women are the natural educators

of the young, they should guard their husbands' affections by making

themselves agreeable companions, capable of taking an interest in their

daily occupations. But it is the last argument that clinches matters:

the two sexes have equal _rights_ to be instructed.

It is Condorcet's ideal--as it had been that of Bernardin de St.

Pierre--to give the children of the two sexes a joint education, which

may prepare them for the social state, and which he feels confident

will remove the atmosphere of unhealthy mystery which an artificial

separation is apt to produce. Mary heartily concurs with this view. "I

should not," she says, "fear any other consequence than that some early

attachment might take place, which, whilst it had the best effect on

the moral character of the young people, might not perfectly agree with

the views of the parents."

I have tried to point out that, although the acquaintance of Mary

Wollstonecraft with the works of the French educationalists (Rousseau,

of course, excepted) is doubtful, yet there is the closest resemblance

in the spirit which animates them. The English writers on the subject,

as we have seen, were upon the whole much less enlightened. Their

names are repeatedly mentioned in the _Vindication_, and their methods

criticised. The principles underlying the theory of the Rights of

Man are adopted with perfect logic as a basis on which to consider

the position of the female half of society. "If the abstract rights

of man will bear discussion and explanation", says the dedication to

Talleyrand, in whom she trusted to find a sympathiser, "those of woman,

by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test."

Mary's methods of investigation are borrowed from Rousseau. In his

scheme for the improvement of social conditions, the latter had

insisted on the necessity of reverting to the original principles

which underlie the social structure, and out of the misunderstanding

and consequent misapplication of which the great hindrances to human

progress, prejudice and prescription arose. A too close regard to

expediency--continually contrasted with simple principles--seems to

her the cause of the introduction of measures "rotten at the core",

from which flow the misery and disorder which pervade society. While

adopting Rousseau's general lines of thought, however, she cannot bring

herself to share his raptures about the state of nature, which in its

essence is nothing but a denial of the possibility of a well-organised

society. The optimism with which he regards the individual does not

extend to society, in respect to which he is far too pessimistic to

suit Mary's unshakable confidence in human perfectibility. Where

Rousseau asserts that "l'homme est né bon", and holds the social state

responsible for the introduction of evil, Mary Wollstonecraft feels

in the presence of evil the will of the Almighty that we should make

use of the gift of Reason as a means of conquering evil and attaining

perfection. To return to Nature, therefore, would mean evading the

chief task which God meant to impose upon his favourite creature, that

of cultivating virtue in the social state which He ordained.

Here again, as in Helvétius, d'Holbach and so many others, Reason is

to be the governing power. In Reason lies Man's pre-eminence over

the brute creation, and out of the struggle between Reason and the

passions arise virtue and knowledge, by which man is conducted towards

happiness. Mary Wollstonecraft, in bringing her reason to bear upon

the existing social conditions, had become deeply conscious of the

degrading position of her sex, and, having herself risen above her

troubles, makes a fervent appeal to rational men to give them a chance

of becoming more respectable. Her plea, while in the first place

for her sex, embraces all humanity, for unless woman be prepared by

education to become the companion of man rather than his mistress, she

will hamper the progress of knowledge and virtue.

There seems, indeed, a great deal of absurdity in a social scheme which

in vindicating the rights of the male portion of humanity, in claiming

for them equality, liberty and the blessings of education, could leave

the other half of mankind out of consideration. Was liberty to be the

portion of men only; and was woman to continue in her state of bondage?

Were all men to be partakers of Reason, guided by her only, whilst

women had the use of that faculty denied them? In a social state where

such partiality could prevail, man was himself responsible for the

utter depravity of women. The worst despotism is not that of kings, but

that of man, and woman is the trampled-upon victim.

We are thus led to a natural division of the subject into an

examination of the position of woman such as it is, and an

investigation of what it ought to be and might be. There is one

circumstance which distinguishes Mary Wollstonecraft from other

champions of the new social creed. In their eagerness to champion

oppressed humanity against all forms of tyranny and oppression, Thomas

Paine and his followers had been too much inclined to forget that

"every right necessarily includes a duty." It is very much to Mary's

credit that she emphatically pointed out that "they forfeit the right

who do not fulfil the duty." In her claims for equality with men,

far from being prompted by sordid motives of envy, or by a desire to

obtain power or influence for her sex, she aims at enabling women to

discharge the duties of womanhood, among which that of educating their

own children occupies the first place. She was always ready herself to

take more than her share of those duties, and no one at present doubts

her sincerity when saying that she pleads for her sex rather than for

herself.

In considering the actual position of women in society she concludes

that the trouble arises from two widely different sources. Women

have either too much attention paid them, or they have no attention

whatever paid them, and the result is equally disastrous, although in a

different way. She had had personal experience of the defencelessness

and helplessness of a young woman whom fate had cast out upon the

cruel world without the means of fighting adverse circumstances, when

financial embarrassments forced her to accept a situation as governess

in Lord Kingsborough's home. It had stung her to the quick to realise

the contempt in which she was held by those whom she justly considered

her intellectual inferiors, merely because no government had ever

taken the trouble to provide for women without a natural protector,

and the narrow views of society were that any woman who, compelled

by circumstances, tried to support herself in an honest profession,

degraded herself. That her only alternative was to throw herself upon

the protection of some lord of creation and prostitute herself, did

not seem to occur to these judges of morality. The only compassion

excited by the helplessness of females was the consequence of personal

attractions, making pity "the harbinger of lust."

It is the duty of a benevolent government to add to the respectability

of women by enabling them to earn their own bread, and to save them

from inevitable prostitution, or from the degradation of marrying

for support. Let the professions be thrown open to them, let women

study to become physicians and nurses. Let there be midwives rather

than "accoucheurs", let them study history and politics, all of which

will keep them far better employed than the perusal of romances or

"chronicling small beer". Women are capable of taking a share in the

dealings of trade, of regulating a farm, or of managing a shop. The

only employments which have hitherto been open to them are of a menial

kind. Thus the position of a governess, who must be a gentlewoman to be

equal to her important task of education, is held in less repute than

that of a tutor, who is himself treated as a dependant. This prejudice

entirely destroys the aim of tutorship in rendering him contemptible to

his pupils.

How the personal note appears in the above remarks, the demands of

which will certainly not strike the modern reader as exorbitant.

However, seen in the light of the prejudices prevailing in Mary's days,

they make her stand out very clearly from the common herd of those who

were willing slaves to man. She seconds Condorcet in hinting at the

remote possibility of having female representatives in Parliament. It

may here be argued in favour of her modest proposal--which she fears

may excite laughter--that the introduction of women into the Parliament

of those days could not very well have made matters worse than they

were. The mock representation of the "rotten boroughs" was indeed as

she calls it "a handle for despotism" of the worst description, and

on this subject at least a large portion of the nation held coinciding

views.

The position of women of the upper classes, who have every attention

paid them and pass their lives in search of amusement, although

it seems better, is in reality even worse. In connection with his

views on this subject Mary is reluctantly obliged to recognise in

Rousseau--whose inconsistency is among his chief characteristics--a

champion of despotism. Making allowance for a few deviations in details

of education, it may be said that here Rousseau's views reflect the

general opinion of his time. His educational scheme, which upon the

whole had Mary's sympathy, and from which she borrowed largely in

her purely educational works, only regards Emile, the boy. The girl,

Sophie, only interests him as being essential to the happiness of the

male. The theory that the education of women should be "relative to

men", as Rousseau puts it, places him in direct opposition to Mary

Wollstonecraft, as it implies a necessary inferiority on the part of

women. His maxims supply her with a target against which to direct

the shafts of her disapprobation and indignation. In his "_Lettre à

d'Alembert_" he had made a violent onslaught on women and the passion

they inspire. It does not leave them a shred of reputation: modesty,

purity and decency are said to have completely forsaken them. The

hysterical violence of his sallies was probably due to his hatred of

the Encyclopedians, those "philosophers of a day" whose rationalism

opposed the utter subjection of women to man's desires. I have already

pointed out that it was from the French school of rationalism that the

first suggestions of emancipation came, and the above-mentioned epistle

marks the beginning of hostilities between the rationalist and the

emotional school.

Mary Wollstonecraft did not find it difficult to agree with Rousseau

that many women had sunk to a state of deep degradation, but, she

asked: "A qui la faute?" It was man who brought her there, and she

expected man to lift her on to a more exalted plane.

The Julie of Rousseau's "_Nouvelle Héloise_" impresses us as

another inconsistency. She displays, it is true, the characteristic

submissiveness to a characteristically masterful parent, and the usual

notions of virtue consisting chiefly in the preservation of reputation

which Mary attacks so vigorously in the _Rights of Women_, but Julie

has far more individuality than the average young woman of the period.

She rather leads her lover than he her. The _Nouvelle Héloise_,

however, displays Rousseau's sentimental vein, and is therefore more

directly irrational than anything else he wrote. The Sophie of _Emile_

is partly the creation of his intellect, the Julie of the _Nouvelle

Héloise_ almost exclusively that of his sentiment.

In the fifth book of _Emile_, therefore, sentimentality only plays

an occasional part. Rousseau's intellect assigns to woman the place

which she ought to fill in society. A writer on female education,

says Lord John Morley, may consider woman as destined to be a wife,

or a mother, or a human being; as the companion of man, as the rearer

of the young, or as an independent personality, endowed with talents

and possibilities in less or greater number, and capable as in the

case of men of being trained to the best or the worst use, or left

to rust unused[46]. Rousseau insists upon the first, makes little of

the second, and utterly ignores the third. Emile is brought up to be

above all a man; Sophie, however, is given no chance of attaining the

necessary qualifications for womanhood and motherhood and is merely

educated to be an obedient and submissive companion to her husband. Her

opinions are modelled upon Emile's, and in no matter of importance, not

even in religion, is she allowed to choose for herself. The last is

an emphatic denial of the faculty of Reason in women. That a woman of

this stamp, accustomed to mental and moral dependence, is all unfit to

educate her own children, is self-evident, nor did Rousseau destine her

for this task. As soon as the child has been weaned, the mother passes

out of the educational scheme, her place and that of the father being

taken by the instructor.

Mary Wollstonecraft regards women in the first place as human beings

and asserts their right to be educated. They are in possession of the

faculty of Reason, which in them is as capable of being perfected as

in their lord and master, man. Their conduct and manners, however,

show that their minds are in no healthy state. Having been taught that

their chief aim in life is to make a wealthy marriage, they sacrifice

everything to beauty and attractiveness of appearance. Instead of

cherishing nobler ambitions, they are satisfied to remain in that

state of perpetual childhood in which the tyranny of man has purposely

kept them. The relative education has made them utterly dependent on

masculine opinion. Rousseau, who calls opinion the tomb of virtue in

men, recommends it to women as its "high throne", thus introducing

a sexual code of morality. They know that the flattering sense of

physical superiority makes man prefer them feeble and clinging for

protection, and accordingly they cultivate physical weakness and

dependence. A puny appetite is considered by them "the height of human

perfection". Why did not Rousseau extend his excellent advice regarding

outdoor sports and games to girls? They would not care for dolls if

their involuntary confinement within doors did not incapacitate them

from healthier pursuits. Thus the physical inferiority of women is

partly of man's own creation, and might be to a large extent remedied.

Once the right of being educated has been granted to women, they must

of necessity develop into suitable companions to their husbands and

affectionate parents to their children. To assert that woman's only

duty consists in catering for the happiness of her lord and master

is taking a sordid view of her possibilities. Granting that woman

has a soul, and that the promise of immortality applies also to

her, it follows naturally that the cultivation of that soul is her

chief business in life. The prevailing notion of a sexual character,

therefore, is subversive of all morality. Soldiers, who like women are

sent into the world before their minds have been stored with knowledge

or fortified by principles, show the same deplorable lack of common

sense.