A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft
GODWIN, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT,
The first wife of William Godwin, better known however by her maiden name of Wollstonecraft, was born on the 27th. of April, 1759. At the time of her birth her father owned a small farm in Essex, from which he afterwards, in 1768, removed to another farm near Beverley, Yorkshire. Mary Wollstonecraft's early years were thus spent in the country, and she had no better opportunities of education than were furnished by the day-schools of Beverley, where she resided from her tenth to her sixteenth year. When she had attained this age, her father, having entered into a commercial speculation, removed from Beverley to Hoxton, near London. Willie she resided at Hoxton, Godwin was a student in the Dissenters' College of that place, but they did not then meet. Mary Wollstonecraft's early years were not passed happily. Her father appears to have been a man of no judgment in the management of a family, and of a most ungovernable temper. "The despotism of her education," says Mr. Godwin, in his unaffected and interesting memoir of his wife, "cost her many a heart-ache. She was not formed to be the contented and unresisting subject of a despot; but I have heard her remark more than once, that when she felt she had done wrong, the reproof or chastisement of her mother, instead of being a terror to her, she found to be the only thing capable of reconciling her to herself. The blows of her father, on the contrary, which were the mere ebullitions of a passionate temper, instead of humbling her, roused her indignation." A woman of exquisite sensibility, as well as of great energy of character, she was thus led early to think of quitting her parents and providing for herself. She went first to live as a companion to a lady at Bath, and afterwards, in 1783, in concert with two sisters, and also a friend for whom she had conceived an ardent attachment, she opened a day-school at Islington, which was very shortly removed to Newington Green. Mr. Godwin, who is well qualified to give an opinion, speaks in high terms of her pre-eminent fitness for the teaching of children; but the call of friendship having carried her for a time to Lisbon, and the school having been mismanaged in her absence, she found it necessary on her return to give up this plan of subsistence. She almost immediately obtained the situation of governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough.
Mary Wollstonecraft had by this time made an attempt in authorship. She had, in 1786, written and published, in order to devote the profits to a work of charity, a pamphlet entitled "Thoughts on the Education of Daughters." On leaving Lord Kingsborough's family, in 1787, she went to London, and entered into negociations with Mr. Johnson, the publisher, with a view of supporting herself by authorship. The next three years of her life were accordingly spent in writing; and during that period she produced some small works of fiction, and translations and abridgments of several valuable works, for instance, Salzman's Elements of Morality, and Lavater's Physiognomy, and several articles in the Analytical Review. The profits of her pen, which were more than she needed for her own subsistence, supplied aid to many members of her family. She helped to educate two younger sisters, put two of her brothers out in the world, and even greatly assisted her father, whose speculative habits had by this time brought him into embarrassments. Thus for three years did she proceed in a course of usefulness, but unattended by fame. Her answer, however, to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, which was the first of the many answers that appeared, and her "Vindication of the Rights of Women," which was published in 1791, rapidly brought her into notice and notoriety.
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft went to Paris, and did not return to London till after an interval of three years. While in France she wrote her "Moral and Historical View of the French Revolution;" and a visit to Norway on business, in 1795, gave rise to her "Letters from Norway." Distress of mind, caused by a bitter disappointment to which an attachment formed in Paris had subjected her, led her at this period of her life to make two attempts at suicide. But it is a striking proof of her vigour of intellect that the "Letters from Norway" were written at the time when her mental dLstress was at its height, and in the interval between her two attempts at self-destruction.
In 1796, Mary Wollstonecraft became acquainted with William Godwin, the celebrated philosopher and political writer. A mutual attachment was the result; and as they, unfortunately, held similar opinions respecting the ceremony of marriage, they lived together, unwedded, for six months; when finding the necessity of legitimatizing the child which would otherwise be an outcast from her birth, they were married. Mrs. Godwin died in child-bed a few months afterwards, leaving her infant daughter, who subsequently became the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and has given ample proof that she inherits the talents of both her parents.
Mr. Godwin mourned the death of his wife deeply. In 1798 he edited her posthumous works, and also published a small memoir of her, which is eminently marked by genuine feeling, simplicity, and truth. The style of this memoir is different from the other productions of Godwin, which he ascribed to the influence the genius of his wife had exercised over his own mind; he concludes thus: "This light was lent to me for a very short period, and is extinguished for ever."