Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay
September 23, 2008 by Carol
Filed under romantic love letters
Mary Wollstonecraft (27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and radical feminist even before feminism as a movement as we know it today existed. Indeed many people suggest the feminist movement did not really start till around one hundred years afte her death so it is of interest to see her work.
Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. Her radical life style and romantic relationships portrayed her strong feelings about the role of women. Gilbert Imlay to whom she wrote this love letter (written in Paris during the French Revolution) was one of many men and women with whom she showed heavy romantic and sexual involvement. Although they did not marry she was registered by him as his wife to save her life at a time when many of her British friends were losing theirs on the guillotine.
Paris, 1793, Friday morning
I am glad to find that other people can be unreasonable as well as myself; for be it known to thee that I answered thy first letter the very night it reached me ( Sunday ). though tho couldst not receive it before Wednesday, because it was not sent off till the next day. There is a full, true, and particular account.
Yet I am not angry with thee, my love, for I think that it is a proof of stupidity, and like wise of a milk —and — water affection, which comes to the same thing when the temper is governed by a square and compass. there is nothing picturesque in this straight — lined equality, and the passions always give grace to the actions. Recollection now makes my heart bound to thee; but it is not thy money — getting face, though I cannot be seriously displease with the exertion which increases my esteem, or rather is what I should have expected from thy character.
No; I have thy honest countenance before me — relaxed by tenderness; a little — little wounded by my whims; and thy eyes glittering with sympathy. Thy lips then feel softer than soft, and I rest my cheek on thine, forgetting all the world. I have not left the hue of love out of the picture — the rosy glow; and fancy has spread it over my own cheeks, I believe, for I feel them burning, whilst a delicious tear trembles in my eye that would be all your own, if a grateful emotion directed to the Father of nature, who has made me thus alive to happiness, did not give more warmth to the sentiment it divides. I must pause a moment.
Need I tell you that I am tranquil after writing thus? I do not know why, but I have more confidence in your affection, when absent, than present; nay, I think that you must love me, in the sincerity of my heart let me say it, I believe I deserve I your tenderness, because I am true, and have a degree of sensibility that you can see and relish.
Yours sincerely, Mary
The relationship later brke down as Wollstonecraft following the birth of her first daughter became more domesticated and maternal. He left her behind in France and showed no sign of returning before she attempted suicide the first of many. She later died just days after giving birth to a second daughter by another man William Godwin who later published his own book on her lifestyle and destroyed her reputation socially by describing her life in detail and she was promptly forgotten by history
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