Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885)/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
LITERARY WORK.
1793–1796.
The first volume of An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution, and the Effect it has produced in Europe, which Mary wrote during the months she lived in France, was published by Johnson in 1794. It was favourably received and criticised, especially by that portion of the public who had sympathised with the Revolutionists in the controversy with Burke. One admirer, in 1803, declared it was not second even to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It went very quickly through two editions, surest proof of its success.
Mary had apparently spent in idleness the years which had elapsed since the Rights of Women had taken England by storm, but, in reality, she must have made good use of them. This new book marks an enormous advance in her mental development. It is but little disfigured by the faults of style, and is never weakened by the lack of method, which detract from the strength and power of the work by which she is best known. In the French Revolution her arguments are well weighed and balanced, and flowers of rhetoric, with a few exceptions, are sacrificed for a simple and concise statement of facts. Unfortunately the first volume was never followed by a second. Had Mary finished the book, as she certainly intended to do when she began it, it probably would still be ranked with the standard works on the Revolution.
Among the most remarkable passages in the book are those relating to Marie Antoinette. As was the case when she wrote her answer to Burke, the misery of millions unjustly subjected moved Mary more than the woes of one woman justly deprived of an ill-used liberty. Her love and sympathy for the people made her perhaps a little too harsh in her judgment of the queen. "Some hard words, some very strong epithets, are indeed used of Marie Antoinette," Mr. Kegan Paul says in his short but appreciative criticism of this book, "showing that she, who could in those matters know nothing personally, could not but depend on Paris gossip; but this is interesting, as showing what the view taken of the queen was before passion rose to its highest, before the fury of the people, with all the ferocity of word and deed attendant on great popular movements, had broken out." The following lines, reflecting the feelings and opinions of the day, must be read with as much, if not more interest than those of later and better-informed historians:—
The unfortunate Queen of France, beside the advantages of birth and station, possessed a very fine person; and her lovely face, sparkling with vivacity, hid the want of intelligence. Her complexion was dazzlingly clear; and when she was pleased, her manners were bewitching; for she happily mingled the most insinuating voluptuous softness and affability with an air of grandeur bordering on pride, that rendered the contrast more striking. Independence also of whatever kind, always gives a degree of dignity to the mien; so that monarchs and nobles with most ignoble souls, from believing themselves superior to others, have actually acquired a look of superiority.
But her opening faculties were poisoned in the bud; for before she came to Paris she had already been prepared, by a corrupt, supple abbé, for the part she was to play; and, young as she was, became so firmly attached to the aggrandizement of her house, that, though plunged deep in pleasure, she never omitted sending immense sums to her brother on every occasion. The person of the king, in itself very disgusting, was rendered more so by gluttony, and a total disregard of delicacy, and even decency, in his apartments; and when jealous of the queen, for whom he had a kind of devouring passion, he treated her with great brutality, till she acquired sufficient finesse to subjugate him. Is it then surprising that a very desirable woman, with a sanguine constitution, should shrink, abhorrent, from his embraces; or that an empty mind should be employed only to vary the pleasures which emasculated her Circean court?
Mary's inflexible hatred of the cruelty of the court and the nobility, which had led to the present horrors, through great, did not prevent her from seeing the tyranny and brutality in which the people indulged so soon as they obtained the mastery. Her treatment of the facts of the Revolution is characterized by honesty. She is above all else an impartial historian and philosopher. She distinguishes, it is true, between the well-meaning multitude—those who took the Bastille, for example—and the rabble composed of the dregs of society,—those who headed the march to Versailles. She declares, "There has been seen amongst the French a spurious race of men, a set of cannibals, who have gloried in their crimes; and, tearing out the hearts that did not feel for them, have proved that they themselves had iron bowels." But while she makes this distinction, she does not hesitate to admit that the retaliation of the French people, suddenly all become sovereigns, was as terrible as that of slaves unexpectedly loosed from their fetters. It is but fair, after quoting her denunciations of Marie Antoinette, to tell that the new rule was far from receiving her unqualified approbation.
The same impartiality is preserved in the relation of even the most exciting and easily misconceived incidents of the Revolution. The courageous and resolute resistance of the Third Estate to the clergy and nobility is described with dignified praise which never descends into fulsome flattery. The ignorance, vanity, jealousy, disingenuousness, self-sufficiency, and interested motives of members of the National Assembly are unhesitatingly exposed in recording such of their actions as, examined superficially, might seem the outcome of a love of freedom. In giving the details of the taking of the Bastille, and the women's march on Versailles, Mary becomes really eloquent.
Notwithstanding its excellence and the reputation it once had, this work is now almost unknown. But few have ever heard of it, still fewer read it; a fact due, of course, to its incompleteness. The first and only volume ends with the departure of Louis from Versailles to Paris, when the Revolution was as yet in its earliest stages. This must ever be a matter of regret. That succeeding volumes, had she written them, would have been even better is very probable. There was marked development in her intellectual powers after she published the Rights of Women. The increased merit of her later works somewhat confirms Southey's declaration, made three years after her death, that "Mary Wollstonecraft was but beginning to reason when she died."
The last book she finished and published during her life-time was her Letters written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Her journey, as has been explained in the last chapter, was undertaken to attend to certain business affairs for Imlay. Landing in Sweden, she went thence to Norway, then again to Sweden and then to Denmark, and finally to Hamburg, in which latter place she remained a comparatively short period. Not being free to go and come as she chose, she was sometimes detained in small places for two or three weeks, while she could stay but a day or two in large cities. But she had letters of introduction to many of the principal inhabitants of the towns and villages to which business called her, and was thus able to see something of the life of the better classes. The then rough mode of travelling also brought her into close contact with the peasantry. As the ground over which she travelled was then but little visited by English people, she knew that her letters would have at least the charm of novelty.
They were published by her friend Johnson in 1796. Hitherto, her work had been purely of a philosophical, historical, or educational nature. The familiar epistolary style in which she had begun to record her observations of the French people had been quickly changed for the more formal tone of the French Revolution. These travels, consequently, marked an entirely new departure in her literary career. Their success was at once assured. Even the fastidious Godwin, who had condemned her other books, could find no fault with this one. Contemporary critics agreed in sharing his good opinion.
It is true that occasionally affected and involved phrases occur in Mary's letters from the North, and that the tone of many passages is a trifle too sombre. But the former defects are much less glaring and fewer in number than those of her earlier writings; while, when it is remembered that during her journey her heart was heavy-laden with disappointment and despair, her melancholy reflections must be forgiven her. With the exception of these really trifling shortcomings, she may be said to have ably fulfilled the required conditions.
She found Swedes and Norwegians unaffected and hospitable, but sensual and indolent. Both good and evil she attributes to the influence of climate and to the comparatively low stage of culture attained in these northern countries. The long winter nights, she explains in her letters, have made the people sluggish. Their want of interest in politics, literature, and scientific pursuits, have concentrated their attention upon the pleasures of the senses. They are hospitable because of the excitement and social amusements hospitality ensures. They care for the flesh-pots of Egypt because they have not yet heard of the joys of the Promised Land. The women of the upper classes are so indolent that they exercise neither mind nor body; consequently the former has but a narrow range, the latter soon loses all beauty. The men seek no relaxation from their business occupations save in Brobdignagian dinners and suppers. If they are godly, they are never cleanly, cleanliness requiring an effort of which they are incapable. Indolence and indifference to culture throughout Sweden and Norway are the chief characteristics of the natives.
To Mary the coarseness of the people seemed the more unbearable because of the wonderful beauty of their country as she saw it in midsummer. She could not understand their continued indifference to its loveliness. Her own keen enjoyment of it shows itself in all her letters. She constantly pauses in relating her experiences to dwell upon the grandeur of cliffs and sea, upon the impressive wildness of certain districts, full of great pine-covered mountains and endless fir woods, contrasting with others more gentle and fertile, which are covered with broad fields of corn and rye. She loves to describe the long still summer nights and the grey dawn when the birds begin to sing, the sweet scents of the forest, and the soft freshness of the western breeze. The smallest details of the living picture did not escape her notice. She records the musical tinkling of distant cow-bells and the mournful cry of the bittern. She even tells how she sometimes, when she is out in her boat, lays down her oars that she may examine the purple masses of jelly-fish floating in the water.
The Letters were published in the same year, 1796, in Wilmington, Delaware. A few years later, extracts from them, translated into Portuguese, together with a brief sketch of their author, were published in Lisbon, while a German edition appeared in Hamburg and Altona. The book is not now so well known as it deserves to be. Mary's descriptions of the physical characteristics of Norway and Sweden are equal to any written by more recent English travellers to Scandinavia; and her account of the people is valuable as an unprejudiced record of the manners and customs existing among them towards the end of the eighteenth century. But though so little known, it is still true that, as her self-appointed defender said in 1803, "Letters so replete with correctness of remark, delicacy of feeling, and pathos of expression, will cease to exist only with the language in which they were written."
Shortly after her death, Godwin published in four volumes all Mary's unprinted writings, unfinished as well as finished. This collection, which is called simply Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, may more appropriately be noticed here in connection with the more complete productions of her last years.
Of the Letters to Imlay, which fill the third and a part of the fourth volume, nothing more need be said. The next in importance of these writings is Maria, or, The Wrongs of Woman, a novel. It is but a fragment. Mary intended to revise the first chapters carefully, and of the last she had written nothing but the headings and a few detached hints and passages. Godwin, in his Preface, says "So much of it as is here given to the public, she was far from considering as finished; and in a letter to a friend directly written on this subject, she says, "I am perfectly aware that some of the incidents ought to be transposed and heightened by more luminous shading; and I wished in some degree to avail myself of criticism before I began to adjust my events into a story, the outline of which I had sketched in my mind.'" It therefore must be more gently criticised than such of her books as were published during her life-time, and considered by her ready to be given to the public. But, as the last work upon which she was engaged, and as one which engrossed her thoughts for months, and to which she devoted, for her, an unusual amount of labour, it must be read with interest.
The incidents of the story are, in a large measure, drawn from real life. Her own experience, that of her sister, and events which had come within her actual knowledge, are the materials which she used. These served her purpose as well as, if not better than, any she could have invented. The only work of her imagination is the manner in which she grouped them together to form her plot. The story is, briefly, as follows: Maria, the heroine, whose home-life seems to be a description of the interior of the Wollstonecraft household, marries to secure her freedom, rather than from affection for her lover, as was probably the case with "poor Bess." Her husband, who even in the days of courtship had been a dissolute rascal, but hypocrite enough to conceal the fact, throws off his mask after marriage. He speculates rashly, drinks, and indulges in every low vice. All this she bears until he, calculating upon her endurance, seeks to sell her to a friend, that her dishonour may be his gain financially. Then he learns that he has gone too far. She flies from his house, to which she refuses, on any consideration, to return. All attempts to bring her back having failed, he, by a successful stratagem, seizes her as she is on her way to Dover with her child, and, taking possession of the latter, has his wife confined in an insane asylum. Here, after days of horror, Maria succeeds in softening the heart of her keeper, Jemima by name, and through her makes the acquaintance of Henry Darnford, a young man who, like her, has been made a prisoner under the false charge of lunacy. Jemima's friendship is so completely won that she allows these companions in misery to see much of each other. She even tells them her story, which, as a picture of degradation, equals that of some of Defoe's heroines. Darnford then tells his, and the reader at once recognizes in him another Imlay. Finally, by a lucky accident, the two prisoners make their escape, and Jemima accompanies them. The latter part of the story consists of sketches and the barest outlines; but these indicate the succession of its events and its conclusion. Maria and Darnford live together as husband and wife in London. The former believes that she is right in so doing, and cares nothing for the condemnation of society. She endures neglect and contumely because she is supported by confidence in the rectitude of her conduct. Her husband now has her lover tried for adultery and seduction, and in his absence Maria undertakes his defence. Her separation from her husband is the consequence, but her fortune is thrown into chancery. She refuses to leave Darnford, but he, after a few years, during which she has borne him two children, proves unfaithful. In her despair she attempts to commit suicide, but fails. When consciousness and reason return, she resolves to live for her child.
Maria is a story with a purpose. Its aim is the reformation of the evils which result from the established relations of the sexes. Certain rights are to be vindicated by a full exposition of the wrongs which their absence causes. Mary wished, as her Preface set forth, to exhibit the misery and oppression peculiar to women, that arise out of the partial laws and customs of society. Maria, in fact, was to be a forcible proof of the necessity of those social changes which she had urged in the Vindication of the Rights of Women. In the career of the heroine the wrongs women suffer from matrimonial despotism and cruelty are demonstrated; while that of Jemima shows how impossible it is for poor or degraded women to find employment.
The incidents selected by Mary to prove her case are, it must be admitted, disagreeable, and the minor details too frequently revolting. The stories of Maria, Darnford, and Jemima are records of shame and crime, little less unpleasant than the realism of a Zola. It is an astonishing production, even for an age when Fielding and Smollett were not considered coarse. But, as was the case in the Rights of Women, this plainness of speech was due not to a delight in impurity and uncleanliness for their own sakes, but to Mary's certainty that by the proper use of subjects vile in themselves, she could best establish principles of purity. Whatever may be thought of her moral creed and of her manner of promulgating it, no reader of her books can deny her the respect which her courage and sincerity evoke. Maria seemed to many of its readers an unanswerable proof of the charge of immorality brought against its authoress. Mrs. West, in her Letters to a Young Man, pointed to it as evidence of Mary's unfitness for the world beyond the grave. The Biographical Dictionary undoubtedly referred to it when it declared that much of the four volumes of Mary's posthumous writings had better been suppressed, as ill calculated to excite sympathy for one who seems to have rioted in sentiments alike repugnant to religion, sense, and decency. Modern readers have been kinder. The following is Miss Mathilde Blind's criticism, which, though somewhat enthusiastic, shows a keen appreciation of the redeeming merits of the book:—
For originality of invention, tragic incident, and a certain fiery eloquence of style, this is certainly the most remarkable and mature of her works, although one may object that for a novel the moral purpose is far too obvious, the manner too generalised, and many of the situations revolting to the taste of a modern reader. But, with all its faults, it is a production that, in the implacable truth with which it lays open the festering sores of society, in the unshrinking courage with which it drags into the light of day the wrongs the feeble have to suffer at the hands of the strong, in the fiery enthusiasm with which it lifts up its voice for the voiceless outcasts, may be said to resemble Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo.
The other contents of these four volumes are: a series of lessons in spelling and reading, which, because prepared especially for her child, Fanny Imlay, are an interesting relic; the "Letter on the French Nation," mentioned in a previous chapter; a fragment and list of proposed "Letters on the Management of Infants"; several letters to Mr. Johnson, the most important of which have already been referred to; the "Cave of Fancy," an Oriental tale, as Godwin calls it,—the story of an old philosopher who lives in a desolate sea-coast district and there seeks to educate a child, saved from a shipwreck, by means of the spirits under his command (the few chapters Godwin thought proper to print were written in 1787, and then put aside, never to be finished); an "Essay on Poetry, and Our Relish for the Beauties of Nature," a short discussion of the difference between the poetry of the ancients, who recorded their own impressions from nature, and that of the moderns, who are too apt to express sentiments borrowed from books; and finally, to conclude the list of contents, the book contains some "Hints" which were to have been incorporated in the second part of the Rights of Women which Mary intended to write. These fragments and works are intrinsically of small value.