Foreword
When our professor, Kevin J. Anderson, told us we’d be republishing a public-domain work for our Publishing MA thesis in the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Western Colorado University, I knew only one thing—I was not going to reissue a work by a white man. Once I understood what the “public domain” was, I knew it would be populated by the works of white bros. I was right.
My quest to “do something different and have a meaningful impact,” as is always my wont, led me to works related to Peru, where I am from; India, where I am also from; or The Female Quixote (yes, it exists!), because I’m a World Language Teacher and love Don Quixote by Cervantes; but none of the alternatives were quite what I was looking for. When I searched “Mary Shelley,” it took me a long time to realize that I was seeing works by two different women: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. I’d never heard of Wollstonecraft. Once I jumped into the rabbit hole and realized who she was, I was appalled that I did not know of her, realized a great many people probably didn’t know of her either, and so I committed to reissuing something written by her as my thesis project.
You see, in early November of 2020, a statue dedicated to Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled in Newington Green, London, England, 223 years after her untimely death. The front reads “For Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797).” A side of the base contains an adapted quote from her most renowned work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: “I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.” I do too, Mary Wollstonecraft, I do too. Two centuries after your untimely death, we’ve got a long way to go.
Like most things in 2020, the statue set off heated debates, nasty comments, and general ire from critics at home and abroad. The Guardian published an article titled “Why I Hate the Mary Wollstonecraft Statue,” critiquing its nakedness and asking whether a man would be honored by a statue depicting a penis. Endless images of naked Roman and Greek male sculptures are flashing in my mind right now, not to mention the statue of a naked Percy Bysshe Shelley, Wollstonecraft’s son-in-law, on display at University College, Oxford since 1893, which seems to offend no one. Body parts aside, what the 2020 statue episode demonstrates is that Wollstonecraft, appropriately deemed the “Mother of Modern Feminism,” is still relevant today. Like Virginia Woolf once said of Wollstonecraft: “We hear her voice and trace her influence even now among the living.”
I’ll gladly note that my commitment to reissuing her work came way before the hullaballoo about Wollstonecraft’s statue broke out in England. You see, I fancy myself a witch, and when the hubbub did break out about Wollstonecraft—Kevin saw it in the news and sent me an article—I was delighted, but not surprised; as a certified witch, this type of thing happens to me a lot.
So, let me tell you why this book is important and why you should care. In 38 years of life, Mary Wollstonecraft changed the world. She was born on April 27, 1759 in Spitalfields, London, to a family that went from relative riches to relative rags. She moved continuously and had a violent alcoholic father who squandered their modest fortune. Thus, she sought work and independence at an early age and also began forming her views on human and women’s rights.
During her time as a lady’s companion and then governess, she wrote a conduct book (think self-help book), a novel, and a children’s book. In 1787 she made the bold move of trying to support herself solely as an author. Even today, this takes much courage and savvy, and I take solace that women like Wollstonecraft have trodden the path before me, and successfully, too. She wanted to become “the first of a new genus,” as she wrote her sister Everina. In 1790 she wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men, a rebuttal to a conservative critique of the French Revolution. This launched her to fame. In 1792 she published her most well-known work: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, which extended her fame beyond England. She kept up with her times and was thus able to respond to her times; Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a response to a report to the French National Assembly stating that women should only receive a domestic education. Ah, I can imagine this going on right now at the United Nations. Her times are our times.
William Godwin (1756–1836) entered Wollstonecraft’s life as an acquaintance in 1787—and sparks did not fly. He reentered her life around 1795, once she had already given birth to a child (Fanny Imlay) out of wedlock and had attempted suicide following a breakup with the child’s father, the American adventurer Gilbert Imlay. As Wollstonecraft recovered and began her literary life once more, Godwin became part of it. What began as a slow courtship became a devoted and passionate relationship that led to marriage (the first for both of them) and a beloved daughter born August 30, 1797, known to all of us as Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. That is the first reason for the title of this book—Godwin raised Shelley to love Wollstonecraft and read her works—it is undeniable that Wollstonecraft influenced the author of the world-renowned classic.
Previous to her pregnancy with Mary Shelley, Wollstonecraft set about trying to write a novelistic sequel to Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which she called Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, the first work included in this present volume. She was unable to finish it, though. While giving birth to her daughter Mary, the placenta broke apart and became infected; eleven days later, she died in agony from septicemia.
In Maria: or The Wrongs of Woman we have what is considered by some to be her most radical feminist work. Maria, the protagonist, has been robbed of her infant daughter and imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband. Maria falls in love with a man who is imprisoned in the asylum as well. British society deemed this a vindication of adultery. This highlights the everlasting damnable dance that continues to be played by society regarding misogyny, racism, and all other ills. How can anyone think a woman is being adulterous when all ties of duty have been broken by the man? How can anyone think abortion is bad when a woman was raped? How can anyone think a cop is innocent when there is video footage that they murdered a man simply for having black skin?—unless you count going to the bodega to buy cigarettes a crime.
The Wrongs of Woman is a philosophical, gothic novel that criticizes marriage as a patriarchal institution protected by a patriarchal institution: the legal system. The two main characters are female and from different social classes. This alone made the work pioneering when it was written. The book was unpopular in its time because it was published alongside Memoirs, which revealed details about Wollstonecraft’s life that scandalized European society. Wollstonecraft was on the spot with the title of the book—nothing fancy, just the wrongs of woman. At its most basic, misogyny is about the wrongness of the sheer existence of a woman, just like at its most basic, racism is about the wrongness of the sheer existence of people of color.
According to Wollstonecraft, those who had the privilege of reading advanced copies of the manuscript for critique failed to grasp its point. Maria’s wrongs were political, not personal. Wollstonecraft wrote to one friend who had criticized it:
I am vexed and surprised at your not thinking the situation of Maria sufficiently important, and can only account for this want of—shall I say it? delicacy of feeling, by recollecting that you are a man—For my part I cannot suppose any situation more distressing than for a woman of sensibility with an improving mind to be bound, to such a man as I have described, for life—obliged to renounce all the humanizing affections, and to avoid cultivating her taste lest her perception of grace, and refinement of sentiment should sharpen to agony the pangs of disappointment.
Wollstonecraft’s book broke bounds then, and I daresay so much of the world is still of a mindset that the book will break bounds now, two hundred years later. Her work brought to light that women’s rights, as citizens, mothers, and sexual beings, cannot be fully realized under the patriarchal system of marriage present at the time. This book is relevant now because the patriarchal systems Wollstonecraft judged still exist today.
When Wollstonecraft died on September 10, 1797, her husband Godwin, by his own words, plunged into despair: “I firmly believe there does not exist her equal in the world. I know from experience we were formed to make each other happy. I have not the least expectation that I can now ever know happiness again.”
But the baby Mary Shelley and her elder sister Fanny Imlay kept him going. A few days after her death he got the message, the writer’s message, that unknown command that one has to write something, and that if one doesn’t one will be betraying something deep and unknowable. His message was to write Wollstonecraft’s memoir—to render her immortal, to pay her due homage.
On a personal note, I can understand that message because even as I write this, someone so dear to me has just passed that I have, ironically, received the same message and have spent the larger part of the last few days compiling information and editing her memoir. It is as if I have been possessed and will not stop. Her voice must be heard, her life is worth remembering, she has something to offer the world. I have no doubt this is what Godwin felt.
Luckily for us, he didn’t ignore the call. He spent the next four months rereading all her works, speaking with her friends and acquaintances, reading and organizing her correspondence.
Godwin and Wollstonecraft were well matched—they were both ahead of their times. Godwin understood that in order for Wollstonecraft to be truly understood and honored, he needed to hide nothing. There was nothing wrong with Wollstonecraft. She was not a freak. He explains:
“I cannot easily prevail on myself to doubt, that the more fully we are presented with the picture and story of such persons as the subject of the following narrative, the more generally shall we feel in ourselves an attachment to their fate and a sympathy in their excellencies. There are not many individuals with whose character the public welfare and improvement are more intimately connected than the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.”
And so, he published the unfinished Wrongs of Woman and Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft being so famous at the time that he deemed it unnecessary to include her name in the title. As a result, Wollstonecraft, her works, and even Godwin were dragged through the mud. The usual misogynistic drivel that we still hear today was heard back then: Wollstonecraft was called illogical, immoral, adulterous, suicidal (how dare you!), extravagant (oh my!). Even her compassion in caring for friends and orphans was judged—goodness forbid one should be kind. She was made into a freak. That is the second reason why this work is titled Mother of Frankenstein.
Godwin did not fail to see and name the hypocrisy of society as he wrote the Memoir, as ostracism of his wife preceded the publication of these two works. In Memoirs he recounts how Wollstonecraft never hid the fact that she was an unmarried mother to Fanny Imlay—it was common knowledge. And yet, it was upon Wollstonecraft’s marriage to Godwin that society went berserk. The couple thought marrying would “place her upon a surer footing in the calendar of polished society, than ever.” The opposite happened. Now the truth of Wollstonecraft as an unmarried woman with child could not enter in one ear and escape the other. Society was livid; Wollstonecraft and Godwin were confused and disappointed.
The third and final reason why this work is titled Mother of Frankenstein is because those who knew and loved Wollstonecraft considered her a mother, both at the personal and universal levels. She returned to the home she had resolutely left behind to take care of her dying mother. She was constantly thinking of other people’s wellbeing and putting her own money on the line to see their wishes come true, as when she assisted the parents of her best friend Fanny in transporting themselves to Ireland. She worked tirelessly to make her siblings independent and even took an orphan seven-year-old girl under her protection and care, for the child’s mother had been her friend. And could we not say she was being a mother to all women when she wrote Vindication of the Rights of Woman and The Wrongs of Woman?
This volume is a much-deserved tribute to a remarkable woman. We cannot move forward unless we acknowledge the past. We cannot be pioneering unless we know the pioneers that got us here. I’ve been educated since I was a toddler, traveled the world, and have a career that—although it should pay more—allows me to support myself. I’ve thus been largely exempt from the female slavery that Wollstonecraft wrote about and lived herself. I, along with so many women and men, stand on the shoulders of Wollstonecraft and others, whose names have been forgotten and left unsung. This is why Godwin did the right thing. He knew she was a giant. He knew women and men like you and I would be standing on her shoulders, whether we knew it or not.
This edition of her works is an important attempt at letting you, reader, know and honor the shoulders on which you stand.
—Constanza Ontaneda, 2021