Vindicated Read online

  Godwin brought Fanny in to say her goodbyes. She is still my love-child, named after my first love, Fanny Blood. I’ve tried my best to forget about little Fanny’s father, Gilbert Imlay, the man who wrecked my heart, who caused me irreparable heartache. Whatever happens, she is testament to my enduring love for him, even despite his cruelty and duplicity to me. Godwin cannot know that Imlay still resides in my heart as I approach my end.

  After little Fanny returned to her nursery, Fanny Blood came closer and sat next to me on my bed. She unwrapped her shroud and placed the corner of it in my hand and then laid her cold hand in mine. Our fingers intertwined. She no longer looked angry with me. I even saw a shy smile grace her lips. I nodded to affirm my love for her.

  10 September 1797

  It is over. Mary labored to breathe for nearly three hours this morning. Her pulse was erratic and the doctors often thought that she was gone but then she would rise up and gasp as if she was trying her best to stay here in this world with us. Finally, at 7:40, the struggle was over and her spirit departed.

  I blame these inept doctors who know so little about how to contain life. And the child herself failed to save the only woman that I have ever truly loved. In fact, some would say that the child killed her mother. This is what the dressers whispered as they washed my wife’s body and prepared her for burial. I had to close my ears to their words, even though, in a sense, they are true. I shall endeavor not to blame young Mary; she will need my affection and devotion and, in a way, she will need to serve as her mother’s replacement, if that is possible.

  I am numb. Eleven days ago, we were over-joyed that our new little Mary was born. Now, my wife lies inert and cold. The light vanished from her eyes. The daring mind disappeared forever, except through the writings that she left for posterity. I will remain faithful to her memory and ensure that she is not forgotten.

  15 September 1797

  Today we buried Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, at St. Pancras Church, Middlesex, the church where we were joyfully wed five months ago. I must return home and leave my wife in the ground. I have two young daughters who need their mother. All that they have is me, an old Prospero, who wishes to bury himself in his books. I need to return to my study and sort out how to proceed in this life without the person for whom I felt the greatest affinity and ardor. The person who gave me my first taste of genuine love and life.

  1811

  27 December 1811

  Tragically, I never knew my mother. Nevertheless, she haunts my waking and dreaming worlds.

  Like God, my father forbade me from eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He encouraged me to read everything that my philosopher mother had penned but did not permit me to read the memoir that he had written about my mother after I killed her.

  One evening, after one of our rows, my stepmother, Mrs. Clairmont, announced that it was time I learned my origin and she handed me the outlawed book that included an account of my mother’s death. I read it and then I stayed up until my candle burned all the way down and imagined what my mother and my father may have thought and felt during Mother’s last days, days that forever changed the course of my own life. Thus, I returned to my origins for it is sometimes said that a mother’s life ends when a child is born. In this case, that is literally true.

  Right now, I am fourteen years old. I endeavor to be close to my mother Mary by visiting her grave and resting against her tombstone while I learn from her by re-reading her writings and what my father wrote about her after she died. I feel such guilt that my birth effected the end of a modern Hypatia, a brilliant female philosopher who advocated for women’s rights, a champion for women and girls who told women the truth—that their minds are “enfeebled by false refinement”—that they are rational beings, like men—that they have the right to be educated in the same way as males are. The “organ” that nourished me in her womb, essentially a part of myself, and the cord that connected me to my mother, extinguished my mother’s life. That seems so ironic and obviously tragic. Something straight out of Sophocles. Whenever I read or hear the story of her gruesome and untimely death, I cover my eyes and ears so that I feel less responsible for killing my mother. I feel shame. My father has lamented that I failed to save my mother, but I dare not ask what that even means. How can a newborn child possibly save her mother?

  I often sit and gaze for hours at my mother’s portrait, which hangs above the fireplace in Father’s study. Father commissioned it after my mother died. She looks so wise and learned, as if she is a great counselor of all women and men, as if she could be one of Plato’s Guardians in his Republic. I speak with her and disclose my heart to her, telling her how I wish she could return to earth, telling her that I wish that she could tell me her own life story. She remains silent and stoic, though, and I am forced to turn to her writing to hear her words.

  Some believe that her Mary: A Fiction is a thinly-veiled autobiography. I do not. From the outset, my mother calls it a fiction, so obviously, she utilized her imagination in shaping her characters: Eliza, Mary, and Ann. Her only “memoir” is what my father recollected and recorded after her death. However, I can’t help but think that second-hand knowledge of a life is not as accurate or meaningful as knowledge from the primary source. What if he misremembered their conversations or skewed her story in a certain way? What if she kept secret that which she wished to remain private? What if he didn’t know the entire truth? And how could he, since he was not witness to many of the events? If I should ever become as famous—or infamous—as my mother, I will be sure to record my own truth so that no one makes my story their own. To that end, I shall endeavor to keep a journal so that I can record events and express my musings and thoughts as they arise.

  My mother never explicitly inscribed her own story, except in her travels to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, which she undertook alone with her maid, Marguerite, and with my half-sister Fanny when she was a baby. It was an unheard of journey for a woman alone, one thought preposterous and dangerous. But, as she did in her writing, she always demonstrated courage and daring. I hope that I have inherited these attributes of hers. I shall not dwell on the fact that she initially undertook the journey to impress and try to win back the heart of her love at the time, Mr. Gilbert Imlay, Fanny’s father.

  My father’s memoir of my mother’s early life is all that I have, so I will relate what I know from his rendition, but I may, along the way, ponder what he has said and try to imagine my ghostly mother’s life.

  29 December 1811

  I often wonder where my mother’s splendid and audacious mind came from. Her father Edward was not raised or educated to any particular profession, but, according to what my mother told Godwin, her father dallied as an itinerate farmer, moving frequently from Epping Forest to Beverley in Yorkshire to the outskirts of London to Wales and sundry other locations. Unfortunately, he was not a good, kindly man, someone to emulate. He tended toward despotic behavior, lording over the entire family, her five brothers and sisters, but most particularly over her mother.

  My mother’s early life was radically different from mine. Out of necessity and because she was courageous, she protected her mother from her father’s wrath. I’ve never needed to intervene to keep my father from throttling my stepmother, although my father Godwin does, on occasion, become rather impatient and perturbed with Mrs. Clairmont, just as I do, for she can be most vindictive. When he does, he just retreats into his study to read Heraclites or further ponder his own Political Justice. (I, on the other hand, try to ignore her resentment of me brought on by the fact that my father adores me and I him. She’s a bit of a jealous shrew, which I realize is rather unkind of me, but there it is).

  Father reports that my mother was a brave soul who would stand between her intoxicated father and her mother and tell him that if he wanted to hit someone, hit her. He often complied. She accepted the blows on her mother�
��s behalf; her face and body were bruised and blackened; she suffered broken bones. She acted as her mother’s savior, unlike me. I failed as my mother’s redeemer.

  I would suspect that, in such circumstances, you would need to sleep with one “eye open,” always concerned about potential violence. Such is the plight of woman in these times, where a man has the right to beat his wife and children without recourse, according to the “rule of thumb.” We are his property. As my mother effectively argues, “A wife being as much a man’s property as his horse, or his ass, she has nothing she can call her own.” Not even herself, unless she claims self-ownership.

  Fortunately, Godwin is not a violent or aggressive man. But, if he did strike me, I would seriously consider returning the blow. I am a pacifist, but I will defend myself, if need be. As a woman, I will own myself, as my mother advised in her writings.

  With that said concerning her father’s violence toward her, my Grandfather Edward made a fortunate move that benefited my mother’s mind and spirit. At one point, the family moved near a Mr. Clare, a clergyman, with whom my mother spent many happy and fruitful hours. Mr. Clare was a recluse but he took a shining to my mother because he observed her quick and curious mind. Due to her inquisitive intellect and her hunger for knowledge, he generously provided her with books, the usual that any literate person would own at the time: Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a copy of the Bible, but also Mr. Milton’s Paradise Lost. Even though she later disparaged its supposed “sublimity,” she loved its wayward Eve who longed to fly across the earth and observe with the eye of a god the entirety of the planet. Without knowing it, Mr. Clare piqued my mother’s imagination, something sorely feared by the Anglican Church, allowing her to see that it may be possible for a woman to rise above her supposed station and see as a god. The only problem being that, if a woman did so, she would be condemned for her transgression and blamed, like Eve and Pandora, for unleashing all of the evils of the world. That, apparently, did not deter my mother from dreaming. She did not abide by Milton’s Raphael’s order to Adam and Eve to “dream not of other worlds.” She imagined and believed in the possibility of a more just and perfect world for everyone but particularly for women, half of our planet’s population.

  So, even though Mr. Clare intended Christian instruction in his tutelage of my mother, his patronage of her mind led her to want more. Around this time, Mr. Clare introduced my mother to Frances Blood, or Fanny as she was called, and my mother grew to love this older girl who inspired her to excel. She and Fanny did not live in the same vicinity but they kept regular and lively correspondence and dreamt of the time when they would start their own school and would educate girls in the same way that boys were educated. They practiced, with the help of Mr. Clare, their Greek and Latin; they pursued mathematics; they read philosophers, like Plato, who argued that the sexes were equal, and even Aristotle, who disparaged women and believed that we are imperfect men. They knew that we are not imperfect men and that in order to become the social and political equals of men, we need the same educational opportunities. They were not discouraged or dissuaded when their fathers told them that they would not succeed in their endeavors to be published writers or to be properly educated. That they would never be vindicated in seeking an equal education or ways to use their innate talents and imaginations. That they could never be scientists, intellectuals, or philosophers. That they were wasting their time and should look to be satisfied with the domestic not public sphere; they should be content with being proper wives and mothers; this should be their singular occupation. This is what God intended for them; they should remain silent and subservient as St. Paul admonishes.

  My grandfather only hoped that his daughter would marry well and become a helpmate for a successful man. However, my mother and Fanny were not content to be silent and conventional like other girls, to practice piano or fine embroidery or landscape painting or a modicum of French, in order to become “accomplished” and win a mate who would make them mute, decorative objects, like the dolls that they were supposed to have loved and cared for as they imitated motherhood. I am proud to learn that, according to Godwin, my mother refused to play with dolls as a child. She tossed them on the ground. Instead, I imagine that she ran about the farm with her brothers, climbed trees, swam in the brook, and scribbled in a discarded notebook that her father no longer used. Her childish writings intermingled with the cost of pig feed and when to begin the harvest.

  I have been far more fortunate in my education. Although I have not been formally educated, as privileged boys are at elite schools, because girls are not allowed to attend Harrow or Eton or any of the public schools that lead to Oxford or Cambridge, Godwin has educated me and given me every available material mental object; he made his vast library available to me and my sister Fanny, although she is not as inclined to burrow into a chair and read Dante’s Paradiso as I am. My father has attempted to raise me in the fashion that my mother describes in her “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters,” which I have pored through to try to absorb what she hoped for me, Fanny, and all girls.

  I do wish that I had been suckled by my mother, as Fanny was, and not a wet nurse; my mother feared wet nurses who could pass on syphilis and other venereal diseases in their breast milk! Fortunately, my father followed my mother’s prescriptions and was careful to choose a healthy wet nurse; I suffered no ill effects from being fed by her. In my mother’s book, my mother advocated mother’s milk and a mother’s tenderness as the first way that a child learns about love. Godwin, of course, could not provide this mother’s milk but he tried to ensure that my wet nurse and nursery nurse were not ignorant or given to allowing me to exercise all of my passions, but rather cultivate my reason. My nursery nurse read to me and Godwin did too, in the way that my mother professed. Later he instructed my stepmother in these methods, although she was not a tender reader or teacher. I find this odd, since she and my father are now publishing children’s books. At any rate, first, I was read stories about animals, like “The Perambulation of the Mouse,” to cultivate my heart and then later stories of experiences of nature and its innate beauties, rather than absurd fairy stories. Godwin, like my mother, forbids ridiculous fairy tales that foster female dependence.

  He also affirms, like my mother, that ostentatious dress and cosmetics “enfeeble” women and hide the true nature of the human being. I once saw a woman riding in a carriage with blue and red powder in her hair, her face painted white, as if she were dead. I told Godwin that she looked like the living dead, a zombie that my Jamaican nursery nurse, Miss Adela, told me about! My father laughed at my assumption and said that her look was deliberate and supposedly fashionable and that such face paint contains arsenic, a poison, which, of course, cannot be good for the complexion and can be fatal for the body. He said that my mother also criticized this artificiality. Yet it was difficult not to look at the spectacle of this woman seeking so much vain attention for herself. I wondered if she knew that poison was seeping into her blood as she smiled her vacuous smile. Although I am not given to vanity, there may come a time when it will behoove me to wear such face paint, to don the look of a zombie. If I need to, I will, but I will retain within me my inherent self-worth and not lose my soul in the process.

  30 December 1811

  I have also been fortunate that Godwin has included me in his “circle of friends,” even though I am too young to fully take part. As a child, I often listened with Fanny from the stairs or under the table to the boisterous arguments rendered by his friends about reason vs. passion, good government, and human perfectibility. For the entirety of my life, we have been frequently visited by intellectuals: economists, philosophers, and scientists, such as Malthus, Hazlitt, and Davy. And we have been honored to dine with every major poet, Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge included. From the intellectuals, I’ve heard fiery arguments about population control and why anarchism is preferable to democracy. On the other hand, the poets have ennobled my h
eart. I’ve been soothed by hearing Mr. Wordsworth read from his “Ode to Intimations of Immortality” and I’ve imagined my soul traveling to earth “trailing clouds of glory.” I’ve also heard Mr. Coleridge’s sonorous voice reciting his “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” I know that I should feel for the man who killed the albatross and that I should understand that all things are beauteous, even the snake, but the mariner gave me chills and nightmares and I wished that I had not heard Mr. Coleridge repeat his poem as the mariner does as his recompense for his great failings. Afterwards, I was so frightened that I crawled into bed with Miss Adela. Her zombie tales are not nearly as horrifying as Coleridge’s Mariner’s. I would rather have heard his “Christabel” in its entirety, but apparently he has not found a suitable ending for this poem. Such are the stumbling blocks to writing. But we all experienced terrified rapture, when we heard him proclaim and warn us of his vision in “Kubla Khan”:

  A damsel with a dulcimer

  In a vision once I saw:

  It was an Abyssinian maid

  And on her dulcimer she played.

  Singing of Mount Abora.

  Could I revive within me

  Her symphony and song,

  To such delight ’twould win me,

  That with music loud and long,

  I would build that dome in air,

  That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!