Mary Wollstonecraft

by Janet Todd

With Mary Wollstonecraft and her A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792, a modern female consciousness came clearly into being, one that tied the mind to the body. This beautifully written biography, the first new study of Mary Wollstonecraft in thirty years, argues that it is her life and letters that are her most lasting legacy. Her story reads like a novel -- extraordinarily scandalous in conventional terms (a close involvement with a woman, two male lovers, an illegitimate child, and a habit of initiating amorous relationships), yet in her own terms always principled and highly moral. She strove to reconcile integrity and sexual desire, the duties and needs of a woman, motherhood and intellectual life, domesticity and fame.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Biography Memoir, 20th Century, British Literature

538 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1976

About the author

Janet Todd (Jan) is a novelist, biographer, literary critic and internationally renowned scholar, known for her work on
women’s writing and feminism. Her most recent books include
the novel: Don't You Know There's A War On?;
edition and essay: Jane Austen’s Sanditon;
memoir: Radiation Diaries: Cancer, Memory
and Fragments of a Life in Words;
biography: Aphra Behn: A Secret Life;
the novel: A Man of Genius 2016.
Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden: An Illustrated Novel, forthcoming 2021

A co-founder of the journal Women’s Writing, she has published biographies and critical work on many authors,including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughters, Mary (Shelley) and Fanny (Death And The Maidens) , and the Irish-Republican sympathiser, traveller and medical student, Lady Mount Cashell (Daughters of Ireland).

Born in Wales, Janet Todd grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Ceylon/Sri Lanka and has worked at schools and universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, the US (Douglass College,
Rutgers, Florida), Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen) and England (Cambridge, UEA). A former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, she is now an Honorary Fellow of
Newnham College.

Reviews

[Kadesh · Rating 1 out of 5]

Todd's thoroughly researched literary biography remains one of the most important contributions to Wollstonecraft scholarship. For depth of coverage and factual background into her life, this biography cannot be rivaled.

However, the influence of Freud via Lacan and Julia Kristeva in 1980s literary criticism appears to have made it impossible for Todd to "read" the fact of Wollstonecraft's mental illness as it influenced her life and works without imposing a shockingly harsh and (to me even more shocking) essentially patriarchal criticism of her lack of "emotional" steadiness. In other words, Todd consistently reads Wollstonecraft's mental illness as a weakness of character and subjects her to what she herself would condemn as masculine criticisms.* Considering the place given this text within Wollstonecraft scholarship, I consider such an egregious misrepresentation of Wollstonecraft, her writings, her life, and women's mental illness in general to be reprehensible. Our modern understanding of bi-polar disorder is such that Todd's comments on Wollstonecraft, if made about a living individual suffering from a mental illness, would be met with public outcry and censure. Even a cursory bit of research into a mental illnesses can give a critic more than enough information with which to examine the lives of past artists with the same kind of compassion and understanding we would give those living in the present. Likewise, scholars of women's writing, and fiction written about women, should be doubly cautious of replicating the kind of attitudes and language that have served to stigmatize women by demonizing the irrational, the excessively passionate, and the broader spectrum of emotions that are held up as evidence that women are incapable of rationality. One of the foundational beliefs of the feminist movement -- and its scholarship -- is to reject such polarizations; likewise, one of the primary objectives of the feminist scholar should be to reject the privileging one over the other. Todd has fallen into this trap in her representation of Wollstonecraft. She does so in such an extreme degree that most of her readings of the life -- if not the works -- of Mary Wollstonecraft can only be seen as the opposite of true feminist scholarship.

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*I have not cited these instances here, but in my reading, they are consistent throughout the text. Todd's method of working chronologically through Wollstoncraft's life is to paraphrase large sections of the journals and letters, quoting choice bits to highlight mile markers or points she wishes to make. The effect, though, is that we hear Todd's interpretation of what Wollstonecraft is saying rather than Wollstonecraft herself. Todd "interprets" large chunks of text for us in the (understandable) interest of space. Yet nearly every time Wollstonecraft suffers from any sort of mental "episode," Todd uses adjectives like "self pitying" and "whining" to describe Wollstonecraft's attempts to share her sufferings with her friends and family. This does not happen once or twice in the book; this tone and language is used nearly every time Wollstonecraft talks about mental anguish -- including times when a death occurs and the time surrounding her first suicide attempt. Todd also dismisses Wollstonecraft's suicide attempts as ploys for attention.

[Anne Amison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read a good biography of Mary Wollstonecraft. Unfortunately this is not it. The book was published in 2000, and - fortunately - a great deal has changed in our understanding of mental health issues in the intervening years. Todd is hyper-critical of Mary's mental state, more than once describing her mental crises as "moaning."
Surely modern feminists should rejoice in Mary's refusal to accept a status granted by family (hers seem to have been particularly sponging and annoying) or marriage and not condemn her (as Todd seems over-eager to do) for constantly kicking against the patriarchal society in which she was condemned to live. A little more sisterly solidarity and a little less criticism would have made this a much better book.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book left me with no affection for Mary Wollstonecraft. Though carefully researched and well documented, the frequent and lengthy sections of quotation from letters become pedantic. Mary's relationship with her sisters is interesting, but overwhelming in this story. So is reference to her book Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman As a biography it does remain firmly focused on Mary's life, to the point where her death seems abrupt. Despite the focus on relationships, any other "character" in Mary's story is simply left off. She is dead. So it ends.
This perhaps wouldn't be such a problem if there weren't entire chapters given to exploring the feelings of her sisters. Is this a biography about Mary...the hypochondriac? The sister? The feminist? The lines become so blurred it is impossible to identify her. Though a good biography for a scholarly, even textual, representation of Mary's life and relationships, it does not make for an easy read. It is not a "popular" biography, so to speak. Would recommend for truly interested readers rather than the casually curious.

[Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be fair, Wollstonecraft was what the kids today might call 'a lot'. Self-educated and from an impoverished family with difficult sisters and hopeless parents, Wollstonecraft managed to make her way in the world at a time when an independent woman writer was still something of an anomaly. She was fortunate in Joseph Johnson, a printer who gave her opportunities and mentored her as she began to carve an identity first as a reviewer and then an independent thinker and author. Her background and temperament combined to make her, at the best of times, a prickly, oversensitive soul fully capable of seeing (and describing in full) the depths of her own depression and challenges while quickly taking umbrage with friends and relatives who weren't as keenly sensitive to her problems as Wollstonecraft herself was. That she was both unlucky and voluble in love presents a would-be biographer with opportunities and hazards aplenty. And Todd isn't entirely successful in navigating these rapids. She documents at length Wollstonecraft's alternating in- and oversensitivity to her sisters and would-be partners in particular. There was a would-be affair with artist Henry Fuseli and then consummated affair with the feckless American Gilbert Imlay. Todd goes over Wollstonecraft's robustly documented sense of grievance with each man in excruciating detail—Wollstonecraft was not exactly discreet or brief in her epistolary laments. And over time, one senses Todd herself losing patience with her subject. A biographer needn't like their subject, but the increasingly snarky asides at Wollstonecraft's endlessly querulous written combat with friends, relatives and lovers almost makes one want to take Wollstonecraft's side. No doubt, she was a difficult friend and partner under the best of circumstances. But however much one wants to blame Wollstonecraft for doing and writing exactly the wrong thing to keep her baby daddy Imlay in play, Todd's sniping feels a bit out of bounds at times. Wollstonecraft was lucky in love at the end, in finding William Godwin. By Todd's account, their sexual and intellectual life was quite fulfilling. And when Wollstonecraft (inevitably) became pregnant, Godwin swallowed his published scruples against marriage to help his lover and their future child out by marrying Wollstonecraft. Though they kept separate establishments, their partnership was by Todd's account a largely happy one, with the usual rocky moments provided by Wollstonecraft's inability to curb all of her insecurities. Godwin too seems to have been pretty awkward and oblivious at times. Given the length at which Todd works through the ample correspondence Wollstonecraft left documenting her relationships, the end of the biography comes astonishingly quickly. There is no summation or reflection on the whole. We get the horrifying details of the obstetrical difficulties that brought Mary Shelley into the world and her mother out of it, and then Todd washes her hands of the life. It seems a curiously curt ending for a book that isn't short of judgment on Wollstonecraft's foibles and perhaps somewhat scant of praise for her triumphs under the most difficult of circumstances.

[Jennifer deBie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Wollstonecraft was... a complicated woman. After reading several biographies of her, I'm not sure she was an entirely pleasant woman, but she was definitely a complex individual, and that is how Todd has presented her in A Revolutionary Life.

Where some biographies focus on things like the impressive impact Wollstonecraft's writing would have on future generations, the intellectual equality of her relationship with Godwin, and her tragic death, thus smoothing over some of the rough edges and sharp corners to her personality, Todd doesn't shy away from them. Yes, all of these things are obviously present in A Revolutionary Life, but so is her (frankly off-putting) clinginess to Gilbert Imlay in France, the high-handed way she managed her sister's lives, sometimes to their detriment, and the way her frankness frequently put her on the wrong side of those who could have helped her.

This is good. No historical figure is without their flaws, and no biography is complete without being honest about those flaws. At the end of the day, Todd has been honest, or at least as honest as we can be over 200 years after Wollstonecraft's death with only letters and other documents to reconstruct the woman.

Would I have sat down and had a beer with Wollstonecraft, probably not. But am I glad to have learned how she became who she was? Yes, very much so.

[Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wollstonecraft was Mary Shelley's mom and an outspoken 18th century feminist. Either of these attributes should make her biography a worthy read. However, Todd's whimsies, her "perhaps she thought thises" or "maybe she did thats" are well illustrated by an egregious supposition, "he was dropped from mention in the family letters, so perhaps he tried to commit suicide," with no other clue than he was not mentioned in family letters is too much fiction for me to bother reading farther than Chapter Three. By that time, the fantasizing already had been piled too high to be interesting. I understand a biographer setting the stage in a moment of time, but just say so. I'm interested in what we can actually say about Wollstonecraft, not what she may have thought, may have said or may have done. In short, the author took biographical license into the next county.

[Lauren Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable biography of a fascinating woman and author.

[Robyn Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an enormous tome of a book and it's so unnecessary because a good half of it is taken up with telling the reader how depressed Wollstonecraft was and relaying endless letters to her sisters and other people telling them how depressed she was. In actual fact, she wasn't a very nice person, having decided at a young age that she wanted to be first in everyone's life and plaguing everyone she knew with this idea ad nauseam.
I knew she'd married William Godwin before I read the book, but this didn't happen in the book till nearly the end. To be fair to the biographer, fine accounts were given of Wollstonecraft's writing, especially A Vindication of the Rights of Women (which was a novel!)which didn't seem to apply to her own life. I found it incredible and somewhat stupid that her idea of curing her sister Eliza's post-natal depression was to remove her from her husband and child. Thereby creating a situation where she was responsible for her sister's living costs for most of the rest of her life.
A great deal of the book is taken up with Wollstonecraft's affair with an American rogue called Gilbert Imlay. By this time Wollstonecraft lived in Paris, along with other intelligentsia and she witnessed the revolution firsthand. About the best thing Imlay did was pretend Wollstonecraft was his wife, as English people were being lined up by the dozen and routinely guillotined.
Wollonstonecraft bore a daughter to Imlay and she and Fanny lived together, with many entreaties to Imlay to help them more (financially and in other ways, but they fell on deaf ears. Wollstonecraft fell heavily for this man but he tired of her continual neediness and self-pity and eventually left her for another woman.
I enjoyed the last part of the book (apart from W's death after childbirth)more as, in Godwin, W seemed to have found a kindred spirit and he agreed to marry her when she became pregnant again, even though he and Mary both disapproved of marriage. Thus Mary Godwin (later Shelley) was born.
This book provides a fascinating insight into the life and times of the late 18th century in Europe, as well as an extremely scholarly analysis of W's work.
It seems the middle classes haven't changed much - all everyone seemed to do was borrow money from others in their set, often never paying it back!
However, the book is far too long and parts of it drag for the lay reader. Nevertheless a clear-eyed view of a flawed revolutionary.

[Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this books was alright, but it could of been better. It picked up a bit around page 158 to 200 and then went back to being boring. The only way i got through this book was to sorta research it, and found that there is a lot of B.D.S.M in this book. I guess you can see that because she was a feminist.

I thought she was more of a hypocrite than a feminist person. She kept wavering off and on about her beliefs of women having equal rights and she finally found her true love, i will say, she sorta just kinda got off of that and only wanted her pure bliss.

Now on the B.D.S.M part, the reason i can see it in this book is because being a feminist is having power or equal power in politics and etc, and thats what B.D.S.M is about, power and what not. So it went each way. I do not see how she could of been a good writer by the way she wrote for the most part.
She was more melodramatic than a writer, and only wrote about her life. So how could she be a fiction writer, and also did hack writing, and reviews. That doesn't consider you to be a writer.

I think thats what got me the most, she said she was a feminist but she was only so for about half her life or so, and then just got off of it. She just went on with her life, when it picked up, not caring about what women wanted, but what she really wanted. Domestic,comfortable life with a husband. So how could she be so idolized by people, that is the question. Anyways i wont read this book ever again.

[Kit Kincade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wollstonecraft turned out to be nothing like I had imagined. It must have been very frustrating for Janet Todd to write this. When Susan Eilenberg reviewed it for the _London Review of Books_, she said, "It is hard to write about her even sympathetically without seeming hostile. The more a biographer tells – and the more she cares about her subject, the more she can tell – the worse the story sounds...For after decades of devoted feminist interest and patient, genial scholarship, Todd finds in Wollstonecraft’s life just what her old antagonist found: silliness, egotism, envy, rancour, meddling, mediocrity and bad writing – imperfect heroism indeed." (Here is the review in full: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n23/susan-ei...). I appreciate the trouble that Todd went through to write it and the research she did to do so.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary was a woman way ahead of her time. She was faced with many problems but I feel they were of her own making. She is much like the women of today seeking the life does not push women to the bottom of the rung while only males climb the ladder. She is making her impact now. What better time to open her book and see what she went though. Every enjoyable read if not a bit repetitious.
Lisa

[Charlotte Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admire Professor Todd's erudition. She is also a smart, funny writer. This is a great literary biography of a fascinating woman.

[Elizabeth]

get this from the library

[Kathleen]

Not on list but looks interesting and pertinent

[Aria Ligi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well researched and excellently written book.