Vindication (60 page)

Used in the ‘Sources, Contents, Questions' section and in the Bibliography

1
VIOLENCE AT HOME

‘I want to see
…
'
:
MWL
, 227;
MWletters
, 217.

‘the lash'
:
RM
. See below, ch. 7.

‘I am
…
pushes me on'
:
MWL
, 164;
MWletters
, 139.

wildness
:
English Woman's Journal
, cited by Caine, ‘Victorian Feminism', 268. Harriet Martineau called her a ‘poor victim of passion' in 1855.

‘romantic sentiments'
:
RW
, ch. 13, sect. ii.

‘firmest champion' and ‘the greatest ornament'
:
Memoirs
, ch. 9.

‘Europe was rejoiced
…
'
:
The Prelude
, Book VI.

‘Every day…'
: Woolf, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft'. 3‘
a foolish consistency…'
: Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Self-Reliance'.

‘an experiment from the start'
: Woolf, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft'.

‘mad'…‘licentious'
: John Adams, marginalia in his copy of
FR
.

‘little short of monstrous'
: ‘A Heart that Scorned Disguise',
Times Literary Supplement
(21 Apr. 2000), 36.

Ned Wollstonecraft
: Cousin to Edward Bland, who had been first officer on Grandfather Wollstonecraft's part-owned ship, the
Cruttendon
.

‘apparent partiality'
:
Mary
, ch. 2.

‘harsh'
: MW to BW (17 Aug. [1781?]),
MWL
, 76;
MWletters
, 31.

‘women…'
: Kames (1696–1782) participated in the Scottish Enlightenment as a writer on law, history and farming. His
Elements of Criticism
was published when MW was three years old.

divide…between worker and gentleman
: A telling instance of this divide is what happened to John Ruskin when he arrived as an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1837: though he had the gifts to be a scholar, his social-climbing parents had insisted on entering him instead for the higher class of gentlemen-commoners, who proceeded to ridicule Ruskin when his first essay was chosen to be read aloud. Gentlemen scorned work, and it was customary to bribe a scout (a college servant) to write the required weekly essay. (John Batchelor,
John Ruskin
:
No Wealth but Life
, London: Chatto, 2000, 36–7.)

‘a gentleman's daughter'
: Jane Austen,
Pride and Prejudice
, ch. 56.

‘an old mansion…'
: Elizabeth Osborne,
The History of Essex
(1817), cited in
SC
, i, 40. Her information came from WG as well as hearsay.

New Farm and neighbours
: Alternatives could be Reeves Gate Farm or Hay Hill Farm. Todd,
Wollstonecraft
, assumes plausibly that Grandfather Wollstonecraft provided for this farm, and notes Mr Gascoyne's origins in London trade.

‘reveries'
: MW,
Travels
, letter 8.

MW's attempts to protect her mother
:
Memoirs
, ch. 1.

‘Mary was continually in dread'
:
Mary
, ch. 2.

father beat her
: WG to JJ (11 Jan. 1798). Abinger: Dep. b.227/8.

status of women in Anglo-Saxon England
: Whitelock,
Beginnings
, 45, 87, 94, 150–1. Legal historian Anthony Honore tells me that slaves in the Roman Empire, women as well as men, had a mass of legal rights which we might think of as human rights.

The Lawes Resolutions
: Fraser,
Weaker Vessel
, 527.

Burney on marriage
:
Early Journals
, cited by Harmon,
Fanny Burney
, 72.

law and domestic violence
: The Hardwicke matrimonial law was only slowly unpicked in the latter half of the nineteenth century. As late as the end of the twentieth, legal redress and protection from domestic violence were still at issue.

farm at Walkington
: Todd,
Wollstonecraft
, 459, notes a local tradition that the farm was the present mixed farm of Broadgate just off the road from Beverley to York, but there is no firm evidence of this.

‘a very handsome town
…
'
:
Memoirs
, ch. 1.

isolation of child victims of violence
: Herman,
Trauma
, 99–100, 105. I am grateful to Margaret Bluman for recommending this innovative study.

letters to Jane Arden while they were at school
:
MWL
, 51–64;
MWletters
, 1–18.

Yorkshire idiom
: Used to GI in 1794,
MWL
, 247;
MWletters
, 244.

on John Arden:
His granddaughter Everilda Gardiner,
Recollections
.

‘The good folks
…
'
:
MWL
, 66;
MWletters
, 23.

leaving Yorkshire
: Durant's Supplement, gives the date as Sept. 1774 though the date of Henry's apprenticing suggests 1775 as more likely.

Henry's fate
: Insanity or criminality suggested by Sunstein,
Wollstonecraft
, 36ff.

WG avoiding Henry's name
: WG does note that one of MW's brothers predeceased her; i.e. he tells us indirectly that Henry was dead when his memoir of 1798 cites the brothers and sisters of MW who ‘are still living'. How Henry died remains unknown.

Henry and Hoxton's asylums
: Todd,
Wollstonecraft
, 21.

‘amiable Couple…took some pains'
: MW to Jane Arden,
MWL
, 66;
MWletters
, 24.

meeting Fanny
:
Memoirs
, ch. 2.

Blood family background
: Todd,
Wollstonecraft
, 23.

Flora Londinensis: Bodleian.

the Revd Mr Bishop
: EW to WG (Nov. 1797) distinguishes him from the Mr Bishop who was to marry BW in 1782.

MW's education
: Wagner and Fischer,
Pforzheimer Collection
, 25, suggest plausibly that education was more important for MW than feminism.

‘the prejudices'
:
Memoirs
, Appendix, 277. WG's revision of ch. 10 for the second edition.

2
‘SCHOOL OF ADVERSITY'

‘school of adversity'
:
Education
,
MWCW
, iv, 36.

‘keen blast of adversity'
:
MWL
, 69;
MWletters
, 27.

‘right of directing'
;
‘forwardness'
:
WW
, ch. 7.

bequest from their Dickson grandfather
: MW sent ‘several letters' to a Mr Dickson in the summer of 1780 which, Wardle's notes to her letters suggested, had to do with money.

Balthazar Regis
: Educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Chaplain to the King 1727–57 and Canon of Windsor 1751–7. Died in 1757.

entering Bath
: There is a profusion of contemporary detail in Jane Austen's
Persuasion
, ch. 14.

‘
flattery
…
wear a cheerful face
,
or be dismissed'
:
Education
, 25.

pay for companions
: Hufton,
History of Women
, 79.

MW's management of Mrs Dawson
:
Memoirs
, ch. 2.

‘very good understanding'
: To Jane Arden,
MWL
, 69;
MWletters
, 27.

‘A mind accustomed
…
'
:
Education
, 48–9.

‘Women are…'
: Lord Chesterfield,
Letters
i, 330. A play on Dryden's ‘Men are but children of another growth' in
All for Love
.

Waterhouse
: W. H. S. Jones,
St Catherine's College
, 129. In 1798, when he rigged votes so as to elect himself Master, Waterhouse instigated the worst quarrel in the history of the college. Three of the five Fellows who voted made the following declaration: ‘We whose names are underwritten declare this to be no Election, no one of us having voted for Mr Waterhouse.' The Lord Chancellor declared against Waterhouse. In 1801 the Lord Chancellor was called in again over the diversion of a share in the dividends of a vacant fellowship into Waterhouse pockets. Ousted eventually from the college, he lost his glamour, and became mean and slovenly. As Rector of Little Stukely in Huntingdonshire, he was murdered on 3 July 1827 by Joshua Slade, a dismissed servant.

‘I knew a woman…': Education
, 29;
SC
, i, 46–7; Nitchie, ‘Early Suitor', 163–9.

MW and the Ardens
: Quotations not noted separately below are from the second batch of letters to Jane Arden in 1779–c. 1783; see
MWL
, 64–80;
MWletters
, 19–39.

Jane Arden as governess
: Everilda Gardiner,
Recollections
.

‘I should be glad
…
'
:
MWL
, 67;
MWletters
, 26.

visit to Southampton
: It's probable that she stayed with a Wollstonecraft relation.
MWL
, 70, notes the existence of an Edward Bland Wollstonecraft of Gloucester Square, Southampton, who died in 1795–likely to be (as
MWletters
, 26, adds) the first officer of Grandfather Wollstonecraft's ship the
Cruttendon
, a share of which he, as a grandson, inherited.

‘truth
…
'
:
Education
, 16.

Gunning sisters
: Murray,
High Society
, 253.

stays
: It was considered indecent not to wear them. CC's mother and stepfather, WG, were relieved when she took to wearing stays in 1817 after she ran away (see below, ch. 17). The sense of indecency remained as late as the early years of the twentieth century. When the feminist Olive Schreiner walked without stays down Adderley Street in Cape Town, after the Boer War, she heard hoots and insults.

sombre grandeur
; ‘
measured pace of thought'
; ‘
Life…?'
:
Travels
, letter 7.

MW's efforts for mother
:
Memoirs
, ch. 2.

father's view of mother's illness
; ‘
I shall not dwell…disagreeable'
: Draws on
WW
, ch. 8.

date of Mrs Wollstonecraft's death
: Discovered by Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft
.

James…went to sea
: Aboard HMS
Carysfoot
: Durant's Supplement, 155.

‘the dear County of Clare'
: To Jane Arden,
MWL
, 78;
MWletters
, 37.

‘Few men…'
:
Education
, 26.

Her favourite song
: MW to WG [3 July 1797],
MWL
, 402;
MWletters
, 426, notes: ‘Allan Ramsay's poem
The Kind Reception
, sung to the tune of
Auld Lang Syne
. It opens with “Should auld Acquaintance be forgot/ Though they return with Scars?”'.

‘canker
-
worm'
:
Mary
, ch. 5. Some details of the character Ann are based on Fanny's history.

marriage versus MW's wish to be free
: In English law the unattached woman was termed the
feme-sole
as distinct from the woman who had no legal existence apart from her husband, the
feme-covert
. To declare aversion to marriage was seen as resistance to performing the only function–to propagate the species–for which woman existed. To earn a living in trade, to be a mantua-maker for instance, was sometimes looked on as a form of prostitution. As late as the 1840s, Charlotte Brontë's friend Mary Taylor emigrated to New Zealand in order to start a business. It was still unthinkable in England for a woman to do so on her own, and though Mary Taylor did amass a modest sum in the new colony, she had to put up with jeers.

baby Mary
: The child's full name was Elizabeth Mary Frances, but she was called Mary according to a letter from MW to EW.

held Bess in her arms
: MW to BW (23 Sept. [1786]),
MWL
, 113;
MWletters
, 78: ‘I could have clasped you to my breast as I did…when I was your nurse.'

Her ideas are all disjointed…'
:
MWL
, 80;
MWletters
, 39 (replacing Wardle's (
MWL
) reading of ‘unconnected' thoughts with ‘uncorrected'). Wardle's makes better sense (in the context of senselessness) and fits the repetition of ‘unconnected' in the similar situation of
WW
, ch. 2.

‘Poor Eliza's situation'
:
MWL
, 81;
MWletters
, 40.

‘One of the most terrible…'
: Stone,
Marriage in England
, 168.