Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Pennell, 1885)/Introduction
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN.
INTRODUCTION.
Few women have worked so faithfully for the cause of humanity as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and few have been the objects of such censure. She devoted herself to the relief of her suffering fellow-beings with the ardour of a Saint Vincent de Paul, and in return she was considered by them a moral scourge of God. Because she had the courage to express opinions new to her generation, and the independence to live according to her own standard of right and wrong, she was denounced as another Messalina. The young were bidden not to read her books, and the more mature warned not to follow her example, the miseries she endured being declared the just retribution of her actions. Indeed, the infamy attached to her name is almost incredible in the present age, when new theories are more patiently criticised, and when purity of motive has been accepted as the vindication of at least one well-known breach of social laws. The malignant attacks made upon her character since her death have been too widely known to be ignored, but the Life which follows may serve for their refutation.
As a rule, the notices which were published after she was dead were harsher and more uncompromising than those written during her lifetime. There were happily one or two exceptions. The writer of her obituary in the Monthly Magazine for September, 1797, speaks of her in terms of unlimited admiration, but it is more than probable that it was written by a personal friend. A year later the same magazine, in its semi-annual retrospect of British literature, expressed somewhat altered opinions. The notice in the Gentleman's Magazine for October, 1797, the month after her death, was friendly, but guarded in its praise.
In 1798 Godwin published his Memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft, together with her posthumous writings. He hoped, no doubt, by a clear statement of the principal incidents of her life to moderate the popular feeling against her. But he was the last person to have undertaken the task. Outside the small circle of friends and sympathisers who really loved him, he was by no means popular. There were some who even seemed to think that the greatest hardship of Mary's life was to have been his wife. Thus Roscoe, after reading the Memoir, expressed the sentiments it aroused in him in the following lines:—
Hard was thy fate in all the scenes of life,
As daughter, sister, mother, friend, and wife;
But harder still thy fate in death we own,
Thus mourned by Godwin with a heart of stone.
Moreover, Godwin's views about marriage, as set forth in his Political Justice, were held in such abhorrence that the fact that he approved of Mary's conduct was reason enough for the multitude to disapprove of it. His book, therefore, was not a success as far as Mary's reputation was concerned, and, indeed, increased rather than lessened the asperity of her detractors. It was greeted by the European Magazine for April, 1798, almost immediately after its publication, by one of the most scathing denunciations of Mary's character which had yet appeared, and the opinion of the European Magazine was the one most generally adopted, and almost invariably re-echoed when Mary Wollstonecraft's name was mentioned in print.
Probably the article which was most influential in perpetuating the ill-repute in which she stood with her contemporaries, is the sketch of her life given in Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary. The papers and many books of the day soon passed out of sight, but the Dictionary was long used as a standard work of reference. In this particular article every action of Mary's life was construed unfavourably, and her character shamefully vilified. Beloe, in the Sexagenarian, borrowed the scurrilous abuse of the Biographical Dictionary, which was furthermore accepted by almost every history of English literature and encyclopædia as the correct estimate of Mary's character and teachings. It is, therefore, no wonder that the immorality of her doctrines and unwomanliness of her conduct came to be believed in implicitly by the too credulous public.
That she fully deserved this disapprobation and contempt seemed to many confirmed by the fact that her daughter, Mary Godwin, consented to live with Shelley before their union could be legalized. The independence of mother and daughter excited private as well as public animosity. During all these years Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was not without defenders, but their number was small. Southey was always enthusiastic in his admiration, and his letters are full of her praises. Shelley, too, offered her the tribute of his praise in verse.
But the mere admiration of Southey and Shelley had little weight against popular prejudice. Year by year Mary's books were less frequently read, and the prediction that in another generation her name would be unknown bade fair to be fulfilled. But the latest of her admirers, Mr. Kegan Paul, has, by his zealous efforts in her behalf, succeeded in vindicating her character and reviving interest in her writings. By his careful history of her life, and noble words in her defence, he has re-established her reputation. As he says himself, "Only eighty years after her death has any serious attempt been made to set her right in the eyes of those who will choose to see her as she was." His attempt has been successful. No one after reading her sad story as he tells it in his Life of Godwin, can doubt her moral uprightness. His statement of her case attracted the attention it deserved. Two years after it appeared, Miss Mathilde Blind published, in the New Quarterly Review, a paper containing a brief sketch of the incidents he recorded, and expressing an honest recognition of this good but much-maligned woman.