The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay: “I never wanted but your heart—that gone, you have nothing more to give”

by Mary Wollstonecraft

The author and feminist was in the truest sense a "liberated woman." Falling in love with Gilbert Imlay in Paris in 1793, she defied 18th century convention to live with him for two years and bear him a daughter. These letters, written to him over the course of those two years, represent the outpourings of a woman deeply in love, and give the modern reader an insight into the personality of this important writer and crusader.

THIS TITLE IS CITED AND RECOMMENDED BY: Cambridge Bibliography of English,

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir

70 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attention than her writing because of her unconventional, and often tumultuous, personal relationships. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement; they had one daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts.

During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. 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.


After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.

Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Reviews

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this one up purely on a whim, not knowing anything about it but simply deciding it was time I read another one of Wollstonecraft's works. Both Vindications, I read quite a few years ago now. So then, I was slightly dismayed upon discovering that Letters to Imlay was going to be a bunch of correspondence showcasing the sappy romance between feminist icon Mary and some American upstart. And in fact, the first few letters are along this trajectory. Maybe I'm a bit of an asshole, but I get very little enjoyment out of seeing other people deeply in love with each other.

But boy, was I wrong about where this book was headed. It is actually one of the more difficult things I have read in a while. Having to witness the constant onslaught on misery that besets this brave and principled woman, having to witness her unheard cries for help, her relentless exposure to disappointment after disappointment by her scumbag "husband", all while she is left to raise their child on her own, suffering from heartbreak, sickness and chronic depression, is devastating.

There was actually a whole lot more I would like to say about this. What it has made me reflect on in regards to the burdens our society still heaps upon women, who have consistently demonstrated themselves to be, on the whole, so much more intelligent, compassionate and resilient than your average man (with which I also include myself). You can read this as just a very hard-going sop story about how hard things were for Mary Wollstonecraft in particular - and there is no denying that her trials were not for the faint of heart - but I think really she can be seen here as a stand-in for all women of all ages who have pushed themselves to the brink in order in order to get by in a patriarchal world, who have been let down, abused and taken for granted by the men around them, and whose talent, skills and wisdom have been criminally supressed so that men even of mediocre quality are given first place.

This has inspired me to try and be a better, more appreciative husband to the woman I married, who is the strongest and most hard-working person I have ever known, and who I love and respect much more than I ever tell her in the toils of daily life.

[Christy B · Rating 4 out of 5]

These were absolutely fascinating. The letters are from June 1793 until December 1795.

At first, they're just normal letters with normal niceties from a woman to the man she loves, but they really get good once she starts to get the idea in her head that Imlay's starting to give her the kiss-off. She keeps saying that she'll never write him again, but then he writes her a few lines, to get her off his back, I suspect, and then she continues to write to him.

There is just a slew of emotions coming off these letters: anger, desperation, depression. She really writes some zingers when she's really angry:

December 30, 1794
The common run of men have such an ignoble way of thinking, that, if they debauch their hearts, and prostitute their persons, following perhaps a gust of inebriation, they suppose the wife, slave rather, whom they maintain, has no right to complain, and ought to receive the sultan, whenever he deigns to return, with open arms, though his have been polluted by half an hundred promiscuous amours during his absence.

And then there's October 4, 1795, when it's clear that Mary is beyond distraught:

Do not keep me in suspense-I expect nothing from you, or any human being: my die is cast-I have fortitude enough to determine to do my duty; yet I cannot raise my depressed spirits, or calm my trembling heart-That being who moulded it thus, knows that I am unable to tear up by the roots the propensity to affection which has been the torment of my life-but life will have an end!

And it's obvious, that around here, she start to make illusions to suicide. In a letter written in November of 1795 she says things like:

When you receive this, my burning head will be cold.

But I shall plunge myself into the Thames where there is the least chance of my being snatched from the death I seek.

Obviously, this is written before she does throw herself in the Thames, but is rescued. It felt kind of invasive reading these words. Obviously, these letters weren't written with publication in mind. They are written in a raw, emotional way.

In the next letter, after she tries to drown herself, she says:

I have only to lament, that, when the bitterness of death was past, I was inhumanly brought back to life and misery.

I will stop here, or I'll just continue quoting. This collection of letters is available online for free, and I read them on my nook. I highly recommend them.

[M. Sarki · Rating 2 out of 5]

https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/174971...

The expectation (I have too fondly nourished it) of regaining your affection, every day grows fainter and fainter…

What an extremely tiresome obsession and example of pleading for something that does not exist nor ever will. Mary Wollstonecraft just could not let Gilbert Imlay go. Her incessant attempts to reason with him, to make of something that was never there, only in her own fantastical mind. The fact she did bear a child with Imlay was in no way hinged at keeping him home, devoted to her and the child, in fidelity, and honorable. For some reason she just could not believe Imlay did not love her and she knew he would one day be remiss in his failure to remain faithful as her husband. She continually threatened to never write him again but returned time and time again with more letters filled with her lovelorn pleadings. It quickly, and then irritatingly, became sadly despicable behavior on her part, especially because of claims branding Wollstonecraft a pioneer to the feminist movement. This collection of letters is an important and painful reminder that continuing the same outworn and repetitious behavior while expecting different results is in fact, and utterly, insane.

[Tara Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I surprisingly relate to Mary and find her here a passionate, virtuous, and with a strong sense of prife and character. A good read, though I wish we could have read a few of the replies.

[Tatyana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"My head aches, and my heart is heavy. The world appears an “unweeded garden,” where “things rank and vile” flourish best."

"Yes, I will be good, that I may deserve to be happy; and whilst you love me, I cannot again fall into the miserable state, which rendered life a burthen almost too heavy to be borne."

"There was so much considerate tenderness in your epistle to-night, that, if it has not made you dearer to me, it has made me forcibly feel how very dear you are to me, by charming away half my cares."

"I do not want to be loved like a goddess but I wish to be necessary to you."

"You have, by your tenderness and worth, twisted yourself more artfully round my heart, than I supposed possible."

"I have gotten into a melancholy mood, you perceive. You know my opinion of men in general; you know that I think them systematic tyrants, and that it is the rarest thing in the world, to meet with a man with sufficient delicacy of feeling to govern desire."

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women, shows off her emotional and very tender side in a series of letters to her great love, Gilbert Imlay, who is also the father of her first daughter Fanny. She is not well educated, so the letters are highly evocative and sweet-- something like a rteenager in love. Enjoyable.