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.

Scattered through the book are a number of rather desultory remarks from which may be gathered the author's notions regarding the baleful influence of slavery upon the moral aspirations of her sex. Nearly all contemporary authors agreed that woman's chief aim ought to be "to please". Among their number were Mrs. Barbauld, Mrs. Piozzi, Mme de Genlis and Mme de Staël. From the first the notion was inculcated that the chief object is to make an advantageous match, "it is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments, meanwhile strength of mind and body are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves—the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage."

The cardinal virtues of the sex are therefore those qualities which are best calculated to make them acceptable to men, as gentleness, sweetness of temper, docility and a "spaniel-like" affection. Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of women, forgetting that they are the natural outcome of an ignorance which is very far removed from innocence.

The education of women, such as it is, consists only in some kind of preparation for social life, instead of being considered the first step to form a rational being, advancing by gradual steps towards perfection. Thus a woman is methodically prepared for the bondage that awaits her, and never gets an opportunity of asserting her better possibilities. A sexual character is established by artificial means, and in this circumstance Mary sees the chief cause of woman's moral decay, for which she herself is only partly responsible.

All her life she remains powerless to get away from the shackles of first impressions. Her conduct is regulated by absurd notions of a specially feminine virtue, chastity, modesty and propriety. Instead of realising that virtue—which surely ought to be the same for women as for men—is nothing but love of truth and fortitude, she confounds with it reputation. Respect for the opinion of the world is considered one of her chief duties, for does not Rousseau himself declare that reputation is no less indispensable than chastity?

For true modesty—which is only that purity of thought which is characteristic of cultivated minds—she substitutes the coquettish affectations which are to draw the lover on while seemingly rejecting him. The insincerity of these principles of daily conduct tend to develop in the female mind that cunning which Rousseau calls natural and accordingly recommends! For a woman to show her actual feelings is to be guilty of the most flagrant breach of modesty.

Where writers have granted to man the monopoly of reason, they have given to woman as a substitute that which is delicately termed "sensibility", but is in reality nothing but a morbid sort of sensuality, the consequence of devouring novels which have the effect of inflaming the senses, and the only antidote to which is healthy exercise.

Mary Wollstonecraft, like the Bluestocking moralists, regarded the quality of sensibility with favour only when regulated by Reason. In her enjoyment of the beauty of natural scenery, according to her own analysis, it is her very reason which "obliged her to permit her feelings to be her criterion." (Letters from Sweden). But it was one of her chief contentions that far too much stress was laid on the cultivation of that kind of sensibility in women which in its very exaggeratedness leads to the worst excesses of sentimentalism. The eighteenth century interpretation of the term "sensibility" with its concomitant absurdities awakened in her feelings of intense disgust. All Rousseau's errors in her opinion arose from its source. To indulge his feelings, and not to imbibe moral strength at the fountain of Nature, or to satisfy a thirst for scientific investigation, he sought for solitude when meditating the rapturous but dangerous love-scenes of the Nouvelle Héloise. No doubt these scenes were in her mind when she wrote: "Love such as the glowing pen of genius has traced, exists not, or only resides in those exalted, fervid imaginations that have sketched such dangerous pictures." She only sees in them "sheer sensuality under a sentimental veil." The sentimentalists who, like Richardson and Rousseau, laid bare the play of the human passions to a reading public consisting almost entirely of women, whose minds were not sufficiently occupied to keep their imagination within bounds, "set fire to a house for the sake of making the pumps play."

Morbid sensibility, in its exaggerated tenderness over insignificant trifles and corresponding indifference to real social evils, excludes from the mind all sense of moral duty.

Two writers of Mary Wollstonecraft's time had shown a more than usual narrowness of views. They were the Rev. Dr. James Fordyce, author of a number of sermons addressed to women, and Dr. Gregory, who had written a "Legacy to his Daughters." The former proceeded from the propositions which had formed the basis of Rousseau's argument. He is so thoroughly convinced of the all-round superiority of man, that he assumes the natural folly of woman to be the cause of all matrimonial differences. He feels sure that women who behave to their husbands with "respectful observance", studying their humours and overlooking their mistakes, submitting to their opinion, passing by little instances of unevenness, caprice or fashion, and relieving their anxieties will find their homes "the abode of domestic bliss."

Fordyce held the principal charm of women to be a sickly sort of delicacy which, as it flatters the vanity of the male, is not wholly without effect even in our days, in spite of all Mrs. Fawcett may say to the contrary. Men of sensibility, he says, "desire in every woman soft features and a flowing voice, a form not robust, and demeanour delicate and gentle." This hint could only have the effect of making women more insipid than even Rousseau's Sophie, who at least after her marriage shared her husband's outdoor exercise. But the worst part of Fordyce's argument is that passage in which he advises young women to remember that the devout attitude of pious recollection (in prayer) is most likely to conquer a man's heart. When a clergyman thus by well-meant advice perverts his flock, what are we to expect from the grosser bulk of mankind!

As Mary Wollstonecraft justly points out, there is about these sermons, for all their sentimental posing and bombastic phrasing, a certain sneaking voluptuousness which would strike a modern woman as most insulting; a confident tone of proprietorship which could not fail to stimulate any woman of independent temper into revolt. Mrs. Rauschenbusch points out that Dr. Fordyce was acting in accordance with the tendencies of the Church in advocating that meekness and bearing of injuries without retaliation which are taught by the Gospel.

What particularly galled Mary was the hypocritical prostration of men before woman's charms, that mock politeness which seemed to her the most cruel proof of the degradation of her sex. The description of women by Fordyce as "smiling, fair innocents", and the frequent use of terms like "fair defects", "amiable weakness", etc. where women were concerned, sounded to her as an insult.

In Gregory's "Legacy to his Daughters" the case was slightly different. The author was an affectionate father, whose anxiety to shield his motherless girls induced him to become an author. That an honest, well-intentioned man like he should be capable of writing such trash makes us realise the hopelessness of Mary's task. He openly recommends dissimulation. For a woman to show what she feels must be termed indelicate. A girl should be careful to hide her gaiety of heart, "lest the men who beheld her might either suppose that she was not entirely dependent on their protection for her safety, or else entertain dark suspicions as to her modesty." In the lives of the poor Gregory girls Mrs. Grundy was omnipotent!

Unreserved praise, on the contrary, is bestowed upon Mrs. Catherine Macaulay's "Letters on Education with Observations on Religion and Metaphysical Subjects", which had appeared in 1790, shortly before their author's death. Mrs. Macaulay had been among the opponents of Burke in a vindication of a French government which owed its authority to the will of a majority; and also in matters educational her views coincided with those of Mary Wollstonecraft. She believed in co-education up to a certain age, which has the obvious advantage of making the daily intercourse between people of different sexes less strained and more natural not only in early youth, but also later in life, when the relations between the sexes ought to be based upon mutual appreciation and esteem. Like Mary Wollstonecraft, she protested against what she called "the absurd notion of a sexual excellence", which not only excluded the female sex from every political right, but left them hardly a civil right to save them from the grossest injuries. It was an unlucky circumstance indeed that the only woman who might have granted Mary the full support of her reputation as the author of a very successful work on the "History of England from the Accession of James the First to that of the Brunswick Line" should have been removed by death at a time when that support might have been of so much value to one who felt forsaken by the majority of her own sex.[47]

Mary Wollstonecraft pleads the necessity of giving woman an education like that which is granted to man, that she may learn to take Reason for her guide. Only then will she be able to perform the specific duties of her sex. But there is a weightier argument for the cultivation of Reason in women. Their deplorable deficiency in this quality has so far made them consider only earthly interests and disqualified them from looking beyond the affairs of this world to the promise of that eternity for which only the soul can fit them. It is in pointing out the evil consequences to the soul of a life devoted to pleasure that Mary's pleadings attain their greatest depth of pathos and intensity. The profound piety of her character makes her protest against this sordid view of life.

"Surely" she exclaims, "she has not an immortal soul who can loiter life away merely employed to adorn her person that she may amuse the languid hours and soften the cares of a fellow-creature who is willing to be enlivened by her smiles and tricks when the serious business of life is over."

Once a woman has attained her aim of a profitable marriage, the circumstances of which almost exclude the possibility of love, she turns all her "natural" cunning to account to establish a sort of mock tyranny over her master. She lives in the enjoyment of her present influence, forgetting that adoration will cease with the loss of her charms, and that woman is "quickly scorned when not adored". In later years there will be no sound basis of friendship arising from equality of tastes to take its place, no reflection to be substituted for sensation, and their earthly punishment consists in a miserable old age. Even when married to a sensible husband, who thinks for her, what will be the fate of a woman who is left a widow with a large family? "Unable to educate her sons, or to impress them with respect, she pines under the anguish of unavailing impotent regret." The passage in which she pictures her ideal of rational womanhood, who, far from being rendered helpless by her husband's death, rises to the occasion and devotes herself with a strong heart to the discharge of her maternal duties, finally reaping the reward of her care when she sees her children attain a strength of character enabling them to endure adversity, is a piece of true eloquence. "The task of life fulfilled, she calmly waits for the sleep of death, and rising from the grave, may say: "Behold, thou gavest me a talent, and here are five talents".[48]

There never was a more fervent champion of marriage and domesticity than Mary. The sanctity of matrimony needed no enforcement by means of a wedding ceremony, but consisted in the mutual affection and esteem which was felt. Hence her violent criticism of loveless marriages contracted from mercenary motives and her severe condemnation of the harshness with which society treated poor ruined girls.

The twelfth chapter of the Rights of Women contains a plea for national education. Mary is here seen treading in the steps of Talleyrand, and forsaking her old masters Locke and Rousseau. They both advocate a private education. Locke wants to educate the "gentleman", making his scheme practicable in isolated applications, but disregarding the bulk of the nation.

Rousseau, who did regard the mass of the people in matters of political speculation, entirely loses sight of the public interest in favour of the private in his educational scheme, thus reducing it to mere abstract speculation, incapable of extensive realisation. But Mary Wollstonecraft adopts the more practical view of the active socialist. The children of the nation are to be educated without the slightest reference to class distinction, and they ought to be brought up together. The exclusive teaching of a child by a tutor will make him acquire a sort of premature manhood, and will not tend to make him a good citizen. He is to be a member of society, and it will not do to regard him as a unit, complete in himself. The same view limits the freedom of the individual to what is compatible with the rights of others. To ignore the duties of the individual towards society would be to build the entire structure of education upon an unsound basis.

This plea for co-education will be seen to be a recantation from former opinions expressed in the "Original Stories". The latter had their rise chiefly in the experience gained of boarding-schools during her stay at Eton with the Priors. They seemed to her absolute hotbeds of vice and folly, where an utter want of modesty introduced the most repulsive habits. The younger boys delighted in mischief, the older in every form of vice. The colleges were full of the relics of popery, the 'mouth-service',which makes all religion but a cold parade of show, and the educators themselves were very poor champions of true religion. What Mary saw at Eton confirmed her in the belief that dayschools were to be preferred, as the only way of combining the advantages of private and public education.

That important part of education which aims at awakening the affections can only be given in the home of loving parents, and only that man can be a good citizen who has first learned to be a good son and brother. A country day-school, affording the best opportunities for unstinted physical exercise, might be expected to be productive of the greatest benefit to young pupils. The division of the educational task between school and home will moreover leave the children the necessary amount of freedom which is denied them when living the cramped lives of boarding-schools.

To make women the companions of men, and to remove the unhealthy atmosphere of an artificial separation of the sexes which produces indelicacy in both, she thinks it necessary that boys and girls should be brought up together. All children should be dressed regardless of class and submitted to the same rules of discipline. They should not be made to remain in the schoolroom for longer than an hour, and be taken out into the schoolyard, or better still, for walks. A good deal of outdoor instruction of the kind Rousseau described might be given by means of spectacular illustration.