A Letter to the Women of England and The Natural Daughter

by Mary Robinson, Sharon M. Setzer (Editor)

Mary Robinson's A Letter to the Women of England (1799) is a radical response to the rampant anti-feminist sentiment of the late 1790s. In this work, Robinson encourages her female contemporaries to throw off the "glittering shackles" of custom and to claim their rightful places as the social and intellectual equals of men. Separately published in the same year, Robinson's novel The Natural Daughter follows the story of Martha Morley, who defies her husband's authority, adopts a found infant, is barred from her husband's estate and is driven to seek work as an actress and author. The novel implicitly links and critiques domestic tyrants in England and Jacobin tyrants in France. This edition also includes: other writings by Mary Robinson (tributes, and an excerpt from The Progress of Liberty); writings by contemporaries on women, society, and revolution; and contemporary reviews of both works.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Feminism, 18th Century, British Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1799

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Mary Robinson, nee Darby (1757-1800) was an English poet and novelist. During her lifetime she was known as 'the English Sappho'. She was also known for her role as Perdita (heroine of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale) in 1779 and as the first public mistress of George IV. After seeing her as Perdita, and declaring himself enraptured with her, the Prince of Wales, offered Mary Robinson twenty thousand pounds to become his mistress. However, he soon tired of her and abandoned her after a year, refusing to pay the money. Her reputation was destroyed by the affair, and she could no longer find work as an actress. Eventually, the Crown agreed to pay Robinson five thousand pounds, in return for the Prince's love letters to her. In 1783, at the age of 26, Robinson suffered a mysterious illness that left her partially paralyzed. From the late 1780s, she became distinguished for her poetry. In addition to poems, she wrote six novels, two plays, a feminist treatise, and an autobiographical manuscript that was incomplete at the time of her death.

Reviews

[Eleanor]

Reread, January 2025: I read this again for a book group I’m newly involved with, which is run under the auspices of Chawton House and focuses on literature from the (very) long 18th century. The last time I read it, I found it incredibly frustrating and even unpleasant, at times; it’s a novel that relies on prolonged misunderstanding, a plot device that has made me frantic with anxiety since I was a small child. One of the great things about discussing a novel with other people, though, is the different angles you get on it. The opening chapters of The Natural Daughter are strongly reminiscent of stage comedy: the dialogue between our heroine Martha, her sanctimonious sister Julia, and her ill-matched parents, her peevish father and obtuse mother, is very funny and feels zingy in the manner of Restoration drama. There was an excellent observation in discussion about the general behaviour of men in this novel: Austen’s heroines always get to marry someone decent, but the love interest here is—although not evil—somewhat famed as a heartbreaker, and the rest of the men are either genial buffoons or malevolent hypocrites. My contribution was to do with the ambivalence of Robinson’s portrayal of Martha’s “naturalness” as an actress and writer. She turns to writing to support herself, as Robinson did, but finds that she’s too sincere to be able to adapt to the fickle and lowbrow literary market; yet her stage acting is superb, precisely because she’s unaffected and convincing; her social status in the real world, however, is constantly menaced by her inability to “dissemble” or “flatter” wealthy unworthies. It’s a very curious combination of traits, and reflects, I think, a wariness about adaptability, a sense that its value depends on context and on an unquantifiable type of personal integrity. Source: old personal copy

Original review, July 2023:You know when you’re watching a movie and the protagonist is caught in some compromising situation like, idk, they’re standing over a dead body holding a pair of pruning shears, and the antagonist(s) are all like “aha! YOU are the killer!” and actually our hero-/ine was just doing some pruning and stumbled over the body and the cause of death wasn’t stabbing-with-garden-shears anyway but they don’t EXPLAIN any of this, they just meekly go to jail and start working on their appeal, and you’re screaming “JUST TELL THEM THE HEDGE NEEDED SOME WORK” at the screen? The Natural Daughter is like that, but for “dead body”, read “illegitimate baby”, and for “pruning shears”, read “basic human decency”. A better novel than Robinson's previous one, Walsingham, but wildly stressful.

[Scarlettfish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful essay from an early feminist. Differs from Wollstonecraft in that she celebrates the achievements of women, rather than denigrates the way women give in to the culture of sensibility (as Wollstonecraft did). Notable for her calls for a university for women. The novel included in this volume, The Natural Daughter, is a highly political novel about gender relations and the French Revolution. Very interesting, although rife with astonishing coincidences.

[Tim Rideout · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘A Letter to the Women of England’ 1799

‘O! my unenlightened country-women! read, and profit, by the admonition of Reason. Shake off the trifling, glittering shackles, which debase you. Resist those fascinating spells which, like the petrifying torpedo, fasten on your mental faculties. Be less the slaves of vanity, and more the converts of Reflection. Nature has endowed you with personal attractions: she has also given you the mind capable of expansion...’

Mary Robinson intellectually and empirically vindicates the rights of women. This is a concise, powerful essay, as relevant today as it was in 1799.

[Diem · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Letter..." was excellent. It reads less assertive and groundbreaking in an age where we tend to forget how restrictive women's lives were. You have to really put yourself in a time where basic human rights were not extended to women. Then the true spirit of the letter comes through.

"The Natural Daughter", explores some very compelling feminist themes. You have to be able to overlook the melodrama and implausible nature of the story. Easy enough to do.

Mary Robinson's own story is extremely interesting and lacks no melodrama or implausibility of its own.

[Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read The Natural Daughter. Worth reading for views on rights of women in the 18th century. There is a lot of plot, too much, and the coincidences become irritating after a while. Best read in conjunction with looking at Robinson's life. The aspects of women writers looking for patronages and views on actresses were interesting. Sentences were very long in places although the first part of the book read like a play at times being close to farcical. Worth reading for study purposes but unlikely to appeal to anyone outside of that.

[Charles Pace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Letter=4 stars
Novel=2 stars
Average=3 stars

[Lidiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a bit bothered by Robinson`s writing. Sometimes I feel like she is moving forward with her feminist 17th century perspective, but all of a sudden she steps back, leaning towards the same conservative writing which was expected of a woman of her time.