Authors: Dorothy Hoobler
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN
Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”
Born April
27
th,
1759
, Died September
10
th,
1797
It is not known how old Mary was when she realized that she and her mother bore the same name, and that her mother had died
giving birth to her, but later in life, Mary often wrote in her journal of her duty to fulfill the promise left unfulfilled
by her mother’s death.
Godwin realized quite early that Mary was extraordinarily intelligent, and he wished to create in her a wonderful specimen
of learning. Once she learned to read, he gave her the use of his fine library, and she adopted the Godwin method of reading
two or three volumes simultaneously. Books were her childhood companions, for she had few friends her own age. She could hear
adults constantly discussing books in her home, which, despite Godwin’s marginalization, remained a gathering place for intellectuals
and writers. The two founders of English Romantic poetry, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were frequent guests
of the Godwins. In 1798 they had jointly published a collection of their poetry,
Lyrical Ballads,
which literary historians regard as the beginning of the Romantic movement in England. Wordsworth, in the preface to a later
edition, called “all good” poetry the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” a definition that inspired the next generation
of poets. Among those who gathered in Godwin’s drawing room were poets and writers such as political essayist William Hazlitt;
Robert Southey, who would be poet laureate of Britain and a historian as well; the Irish patriotic poet Thomas Moore; dramatist
Richard Brinsley Sheridan; Humphry Davy, then a young poet but in the future England’s leading scientist; and Thomas Holcroft,
dramatist and novelist, who was one of those who had been indicted for treason in 1794. All were eager to discuss poetry and
ideas—political, philosophical, scientific, literary.
Mary always remembered one Sunday in 1806, when Coleridge and Charles and Mary Lamb came to tea and stayed for supper. It
was a magical evening of poetry in the Godwin home. Though there was a strict bedtime, Mary and Clara sneaked behind the sofa
to listen as Coleridge recited his poem
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Throughout the rest of Mary’s life, this was one of her most beloved works of literature, for she identified with the isolated
mariner and his torment. She was particularly haunted by the words:
Alone, alone, all all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And Christ would take no pity on
My soul in agony.
Mary also began to learn about her mother through the books that bore her name; she was as attracted to Wollstonecraft’s collection
of letters from Scandinavia as her father had been. It was more than merely a travel narrative. Written at a time of great
personal anguish, the book incorporated Wollstonecraft’s passions and grief (often expressed in her letters to Imlay, which
form part of the book) with vivid descriptions of places she visited. It would later prove particularly influential in the
writing of
Frankenstein
.
Godwin was perennially in need of money, particularly now that he had a family of seven to support. Fortunately, his new wife
had a good head for business. At her instigation they opened a bookshop in 1805 on Skinner Street, north of Blackfriars Bridge
in the heart of London. (Thomas Wedgwood, philanthropic heir to a fortune from the pottery business, lent Godwin one hundred
pounds to start the venture.) Two years later, the Godwin family moved in upstairs in the five-story building. It was not
a pleasant neighborhood for ten-year-old Mary to grow up in. Only a hundred yards from the shop were the Fleet Prison and
the Old Bailey, the scene of public executions that drew raucous and sometimes violent crowds. At a double hanging in 1807,
twenty-eight spectators were crushed or trampled to death. Not much farther away was Smithfield Market, where cattle and pigs
were slaughtered for sale; their bellowing sometimes wakened the children. Adding to the stench of animal dung was the Fleet
Ditch sewer, a covered passage that carried human waste through the city. It is not hard to understand why Mary preferred
to stay inside with her daydreams than to venture out into the gruesome reality outside.
Mary’s personal problems were exacerbated by the fact that the family was always in financial trouble. Godwin, as a single
man, had been able to support himself as a writer. Having a wife and five children made life a constant struggle. Godwin would
be perpetually “borrowing” throughout his life. He traded on the admiration others felt for him by hitting them up for loans
that were never repaid. In an uncompleted autobiography he wrote:
As long as I remained alone, I neither asked nor would accept aid from any man—I lived entirely as I listed.
Since I have been a married man, the case has been otherwise. I never repented the connections of that sort I have formed,
but the maintenance of a family and an establishment has been a heavy expense, and I have never been able with all my industry,
which has been very persevering, entirely to accomplish this object.
Godwin’s bookstore sold standard titles along with supplies such as copybooks and pencils and pens, but the Godwins also began
to publish children’s books, then a growing field. Using a pen name because his own was too notorious for English parents,
Godwin wrote titles for the list, among which were histories of Rome, Greece, and England. Godwin did not always hide his
political opinions; he ended the history of Rome with the reign of Augustus, stating that the next four hundred years, during
which “tyrants” (emperors) ruled, were unworthy of mention for when Rome “ceased to be a Republic it ceased to deserve the
name of History.” His wife contributed by doing translations from books in French, as well as writing books herself.
The Godwins were the original publishers of their friends Charles and Mary Lamb’s classic
Tales from Shakespeare
. Few who have read the Lambs’ loving versions of the stories from Shakespeare’s plays, and their other tales for children—for
they have remained in print to our own time—suspected that these siblings both were for some time confined to what were then
known as “madhouses,” and that Mary Lamb stabbed her mother to death with a kitchen knife. A jury’s verdict of insanity saved
her from the death penalty; afterward, she was in the care of her brother, who committed her to asylums whenever he thought
it necessary.
Mary Godwin began to develop a double life in literature, learning to experience life vicariously through her reading. When
she was growing up, works of fiction for children—like those of Helen Maria Williams, who had been a friend of Mary’s mother
in France—often portrayed the heroines as orphans all alone in the world, a situation Mary identified with. One of her favorite
books was Charles Brockden Brown’s
Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleepwalker,
whose heroine was described: “Her mother died shortly after her birth. Her father was careless of her destiny. She was consigned
to the care of a hireling.” As her literary experiences grew wider than the narrow world she knew at home, Mary started to
interpret and deal with real-life events from what she read. In her mind, fiction, fable, life, and experience became intertwined,
a condition that would continue throughout her life.
Often, when Mary sought escape from her family problems, she retreated to St. Pancras churchyard, where her mother was buried.
There Mary could commune with the only person who truly loved her as she wished to be loved. Just as that mother, Mary Wollstonecraft,
had always insisted on coming first, so her daughter wished herself to be. Yet the daughter noted regretfully, “I did not
make myself the heroine of my tales. . . . I could not figure to myself that romantic woes or wonderful events would ever
be my lot.” Otherwise, she hid from her anguish in books and imagination. Reading led Mary to daydreaming, or “waking dreams”
as she called them: “My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed—my dearest
pleasure when free.” She soon started to write down the dreams that she imagined. From the examples of her youthful writing
that survive, it is clear that she had learned no punctuation or spelling from her freethinking father. What she did receive
from Godwin was the encouragement, even the expectation, that she would be a writer and artist. Having such famous parents
put pressure on her to be worthy of their names. Mary herself said she had been from birth “nursed and fed with glory.” Her
stepsister, Clara Jane, described the same pressure from a more skeptical viewpoint. “In our family,” she wrote, “if you cannot
write an epic poem or novel, that by its originality knocks all other novels on the head, you are a despicable creature, not
worth acknowledging.”
As Mary grew from childhood into adolescence, her relationship with her stepmother, never very good, deteriorated further.
A clash of wills between the two became virtually a part of daily life. Mary accused her stepmother of snooping in her mail,
invading her privacy, and making her do housework (something Mary always loathed). Of course, these are normal manifestations
of adolescence, but Jane Clairmont also had to deal with the fact that she was constantly compared to the dead, now idealized,
Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary read and reread her mother’s works, finding fuel for defying her stepmother’s discipline, and now
that Mary was a teenager, the sexual passages in Godwin’s memoir of Wollstonecraft took on new meaning for her. Mary also
clashed frequently with Clara Jane, who was not unnaturally favored by her mother. Clara was aware of Mary’s superior intellect,
a fact that Mary flaunted. The second Mrs. Godwin told a friend that Mary “always thought and called [Clara] . . . stupid.”
Frustratingly for Mary, Godwin’s favorite daughter at that time seems to have been Fanny. She was less trouble, and for that
Godwin was grateful. To all appearances, Fanny had the sweetest temperament of the three girls in the household. Christy Baxter,
a friend of Mary’s, said she was “more reflective, less sanguine, more alive to the prosaic obligations of life. . . . Godwin,
by nature as undemonstrative as possible, showed more affection to Fanny than to anyone else. He always turned to her for
any little service he might require.”
Seldom a source of emotional support to Mary, Godwin all but ignored his daughter’s teenage angst. He wrote his wife to “tell
Mary that in spite of unfavourable appearances, I have still faith that she will become a wise, & what is more a good & happy
woman.” Like her mother she suffered from extreme mood swings, and it was sometimes unclear if her physical maladies were
actually psychosomatic. At thirteen, Mary had started to suffer from a wasting of her arm and hand, and developed a skin infection
that would not heal. This certainly could also have sprung from the unhealthy climate—the sewer and livestock market—around
the family home on Skinner Street, but there was some doubt as to its origin. Two years earlier Clara had spent three months
at Margate on the southeast shore of England, for her health. Now Mrs. Godwin took Mary to the nearby Ramsgate health resort,
which offered “water cures,” then a popular health practice. Those who wished to immerse themselves would enter “bathing machines,”
which were carts dragged by horses into the sea. From a door in the rear, the bathers could descend into the water and lower
a canvas awning to protect their privacy from prying eyes on the shore.
Unfortunately, the visit to Ramsgate did not improve Mary’s health or temperament sufficiently. In May of 1812, Godwin asked
William Baxter, an acquaintance from Dundee, Scotland, to take Mary for her health—and to restore domestic peace at Skinner
Street. One can only imagine how Mary felt about being dumped with strangers. In a letter written the day after the fourteen-year-old
Mary was on her way, Godwin wrote another letter to Baxter, which showed his doubtful feelings about his daughter. “I am quite
confounded to think how much trouble I am bringing on you & your family.” Godwin goes on to characterize Mary as a virtual
problem child—indeed, even a “monster.” He relates that she has talents but apologizes in advance for her: “I tremble for
the trouble I may be bringing on you in this visit.” Godwin certainly wasn’t paving the way for a great first impression.
Prone to seasickness, Mary endured a long sea voyage up the east coast of England. (The chilly, forbidding scenes of that
trip would find their way into descriptions in
Frankenstein
.) After arriving, however, Mary loved Scotland’s stark landscape. She believed that it was here “beneath the trees of the
grounds belonging to our house, or the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights
of my imagination were born and fostered.”
The Baxters were a loving family group—the first that Mary had known outside of books. They accepted her. She became closest
to the two daughters, Christina and Isabella; for the first time in her life, Mary had girlfriends. Staying with them improved
Mary’s physical and mental health, and her bad arm seems to have been cured. She remained with the Baxters for two years,
making only one trip home between the summer of 1812 to early spring of 1814. Throughout her chaotic lifetime, she would continually
seek to regain her ideal of the stable family that they represented.
On that single trip back to Skinner Street, accompanied by Christy Baxter, Mary found her family abuzz about a young man named
Percy Shelley. He had discovered
Political Justice
and one day arrived to tell Godwin he wanted to dedicate his life to achieving the book’s ideals. At the time Mary was just
fifteen, and Shelley a married man of twenty. He seems to have made little impression on her. When she returned to London
in March 1814, however, she was about to meet him again, and this time he would turn her life upside down.