Mary Wollstonecraft's Social And Aesthetic Philosophy: An Eve to Please Me

229 Pages·2002·0.65 MB·English

by  Saba Bahar

Mary Wollstonecraft’s
Social and Aesthetic
Philosophy
Saba Bahar
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Social and Aesthetic Philosophy

Mary Wollstonecraft’s
Social and Aesthetic
Philosophy:
‘An Eve to Please Me’
Saba Bahar
© Saba Bahar, 2002
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bahar, Saba, 1964–
Mary Wollstonecraft’s social and aesthetic philosophy: an Eve to please me
/ Saba Bahar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-333-97390-9
1. Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759–1797 – Political and social views. 2.
Feminism and literature – England – History – 18th century.
3. Women and literature – England – History – 18th century.
4. Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759–1797 – Aesthetics. 5. Aesthetics, British – 18th
century. I. Title.
PR5841.W8 Z58 2002
828’.609–dc21
2001054887
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
1. ‘An Eve to Please Me’: Mary Wollstonecraft
and the ‘Public Woman’ 13
‘An Eve to please me’ 13
‘Invidious censures … will not keep me mute in the cause
of Liberty and Virtue’: Catherine Macaulay and
the ‘public woman’ 24
Rights and righteousness: wives, mothers and women 36
Mary Wollstonecraft and the ‘public woman’ 47
2. The Old Abelard: or, Héloïse among
the Immodest Philosophers 51
The New Héloïse or the same Old Abelard 51
Ogle: or, how the philosopher sinks into the man 64
Mary: or, how genius must educate itself 66
Rousseau’s paradise 73
Modesty 78
Immodest philosophers and female citizens 88
3. Making Novel Creatures 92
How novels make women creatures of sensation 97
How women make novels creations of sensation 111
Reforming the genre 115
4. The Wants of Women 129
Mary’s and Fanny’s wants 132
Representing women in distress 137
The wants of Scandinavian women 145
v
vi Contents
Contracting wants 154
From the wrongs of women to the wants of women 167
5. Conclusion 175
Notes 178
Bibliography 203
Index 214
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Gregory T. Polletta for supervising the thesis sub-
mitted to the University of Geneva, on which this book is based. I am
grateful to the members of my thesis committee, namely Elisabeth
Bronfen, Marilyn Butler, Mary Poovey and Richard Waswo, for helpful
suggestions for revisions. I am particularly indebted to Marilyn Butler
for continued support and encouragement.
A fellowship from the Fonds national suisse de la recherche
scientifique ensured I had a year in which to devote myself to complet-
ing the thesis. I thank François Flahaut, Director of the Centre de
recherches sur les arts et le langage of the CNRS–EHESS, Paris, for invit-
ing me to participate in the activities of the Centre. I am grateful to
Malcolm Bowie, Ian McClean and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Directors
of the European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford for
making my stay at the University of Oxford possible.
I would like to thank Michèle Le Doeuff for her support during the
first stages of this study. I would like to acknowledge numerous col-
leagues and friends for helpful suggestions on how to pursue my
reflections. Ros Ballaster, Pete De Bolla, Valerie Fehlbaum, Agnese
Fidecaro, Lucy Newlyn, Simone Oettli and Barbara Taylor generously
commented on parts of the thesis in progress. Besides reading
significant portions of the thesis, Luisa Calè, Fabienne Michelet and
Valeria Wagner listened to the proverbial lamentations of an otherwise
solitary thesis-writer.
I am indebted to Rashed and Silva Bahar for their encouragement. It
is without any ta’arofthat I express my gratitude for generous offers of
bed and board, conversation and transportation from Delseta Atkins,
Jalil and Merya Bahar, Dana Bahar, Nasim Bahar, Sylvie Ferioli, Lise
Magnollay, Heide Renner and Reda Sadki. Last but not least, no thank
you to Jamal but profound acknowledgements of another sort.
vii
Abbreviations
With the exception of her letters, all references to Mary
Wollstonecraft’s writings are to The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed.
J. Todd and M. Butler, assistant ed. E. Rees-Mogg, 7 vols. (London:
William Pickering, 1989). Where her correspondence is concerned, I
refer either to one of these volumes or to The Collected Letters of Mary
Wollstonecraft, ed. Ralph M. Wardle (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1979).
The following abbreviations are used:
AR Contributions to the Analytical Review(1788–97), vol. 7
LI ‘Letters to Imlay’ [1798], vol. 6
LSND Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway
and Denmark [1796], vol. 6
M Mary, A Fiction[1788], vol. 1
MWL The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. R.M. Wardle
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979)
OP ‘On Poetry’ [1797], vol. 7
OS Original Stories from Real Life[1788], vol. 4
VRM Vindication of the Rights of Men[1790], vol. 5
VRW Vindication of the Rights of Woman[1792], vol. 5
WOW The Wrongs of Woman: or, Maria [1798], vol. 1
viii
Introduction
Since the publication of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary
Wollstonecraft’s seminal role in the emergence of Anglo-American
feminism has been acknowledged. If the initial positive reception was
soon repressed in the general conservative backlash following the
French Revolution,1 she remained an inspiration and a reference for
many subsequent attempts to improve the lives of women and to claim
their political rights.2Recent studies have highlighted Wollstonecraft’s
importance for the network of Radical Unitarians,3for the women of
the ‘Langham Place Circle’,4as well as for the American women’s suf-
frage movement,5 all of which were directly involved in the nine-
teenth-century movement for women’s rights. Although the
membership of these groups was largely middle-class, there is some evi-
dence of her relevance to women in the emerging socialist and
working-class movements.6 By the end of the nineteenth century,
interest in Wollstonecraft’s life and work had been revived and was
openly celebrated, thanks in large part to the impact of the New
Woman and the rise of a full-fledged suffrage movement. New editions
of her work were published; sympathetic biographies were written; and
a university thesis, charting her relation to the Enlightenment and
socialism, was undertaken.7Wollstonecraft’s position as an icon of the
Anglo-Saxon feminist movement was thereafter guaranteed.
Much of that early interest is biographical. Although her work was
occasionally read seriously, more often than not it was the exemplary
life that was privileged. As Virginia Sapiro has argued, Wollstonecraft’s
life ‘came to serve as a text for analysis by those who felt compelled to
comment against the laws and conventions that subordinated women
to men’.8This observation remains true, with some notable exceptions,
for much of the critical commentary undertaken in the twentieth
1