Godwin, women, and "the collision of mind with mind".
Wordsworth Circle; 3/22/2004; Clemit, Pamela
WilliamGodwin held to a lifelong ideal of unreserved social communication. "If there be such a thing as truth," he declared in An Enquiry concerning Political Justice (1793), "it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind" (3:15). As well as according a central role to private conversation in his own development, he argued that colloquial discussion, "whether written or oral" (3: 14), was the chief means by which social and political improvement could be achieved. As he wrote in a chapter called "Mode of Effecting Revolutions": "If we would ... improve the social institutions of men, we must write, we must argue, we must converse" (3: 115). Moreover, Godwin argued that "equal and liberal intercourse" (4: 371) between the sexes afforded special opportunities for moral and intellectual enlightenment. Throughout his long career, he sought to put this belief into practice by cultivating the acquaintance of gifted women authors. Yet Godwin's progressive views concerning women have been virtually unnoticed by commentators. Biographers and historians of feminism, such as such as Tomalin (294-95), Caine (40-43), and Shattock (14-15), have focused instead on his apparent error of judgement in publishing Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798). This work, intended as tribute to the revolutionary life and thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, inadvertently damaged the cause of women's emancipation by provoking widespread critical hostility (Clemit and Walker 11-36). Godwin's creative interactions with other women intellectuals, as documented in his unpublished diaries and correspondence, are still to be explored.
Such interactions were at their most intense in the decade following the French Revolution, when Godwin, then at the height of his fame among educated radicals, acted as literary adviser to several women writers who were also sympathetic to the cause of reform. These women sought to overcome the barrier of traditional notions of femininity, which impeded their public ambitions, by forming alliances with helpful men. In addition to Wollstonecraft, they included Amelia Alderson (later, Opie), Mary Hays, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Mary Robinson, all of whom sought Godwin's guidance in their complex negotiations with the public sphere. A study of this entire network of literary and social relations would be the subject of another essay. In this short piece I concentrate on one example of Godwin's "equal and liberal intercourse" with women, his literary dialogue with Elizabeth Inchbald.
Godwin's interaction with Inchbald is of special interest for three main reasons. First, Inchbald, unlike most of Godwin's other women acquaintances, did not share his background and education in English Protestant Dissent--though, as a Roman Catholic, she shared his experience of belonging to a marginalized social and religious community. (1) Second, their association far outlasted its origins in the early 1790s. Although their personal contact ended in 1797, when they exchanged harsh words after Wollstonecraft's death (Paul 1: 276-79, Manvell 99-105), they continued to correspond on literary matters for the next twenty-five years or so. Third, their relationship was based on a mutually beneficial exchange of information and advice. An examination of this creative interaction not only adds to our understanding of the individual careers of Godwin and Inchbald, but also contributes to the broader critical debate concerning the extent, vitality, and significance of the dialogue between male and female authors in the Romantic era.
Godwin's education in the traditions of the Rational Dissenters, a group distinguished by their religious heterodoxy, their interest in progressive education, and their belief in the possibility of moral regeneration, led him to espouse advanced ideas concerning women's role in society. (2) Though the Rational Dissenters did not hold to a unified doctrinal position, they shared an emphasis on private judgement as the foundation of true religion, which led to a belief in the intellectual and moral perfectibility of all. In Joseph Priestley's words, "Certainly, the minds of women are capable of the same improvement, and the same furniture, as those of men ... they should have the same resource in reading, and the same power of instructing the world by writing, as men have" (419). For John Aikin, men and women were united by a common morality that cut across distinctions of sex: "Virtue, wisdom, presence of mind, patience, vigour, capacity, application are not sexual qualities; they belong to mankind" (341). Such views underpinned Godwin's observation, in an early draft of Political Justice: "Nature intended the sexes to be mutually improved by the society of each other; and man cannot shake off the communications of his fair instructress, without making himself perpetually inferior to what he might otherwise have proved" (4: 371). (3)
These enlightened attitudes were not purely theoretical: they also shaped Dissenting social practices. The social circles frequented by Godwin from the mid-1780s onwards were largely comprised of Rational Dissenters and those sympathetic to their campaign for greater religious toleration, which, by the late 1780s, included Roman Catholics (Fitzpatrick, "WilliamGodwin" 4-28, "Joseph Priestley" 3-30). They sought to realize the ideal of a free public sphere, in which men and women of all religious persuasions should be able to think, debate, and publish without State interference (Seed 158-9). In such circles, women, who were excluded from institutions of higher education, relied on sympathetic men for practical help in their efforts to establish a public role (Watts, Gender, Power 77-80, 93-4). For example, Andrew Kippis, Godwin's former tutor at Hoxton academy, helped to launch the career of Helen Maria Williams, just as he did Godwin's own. As well as finding a publisher for Williams's first poem, Edwin and Elfrida (1782), Kippis introduced her to many of his literary, political, and artistic acquaintances and encouraged her to establish a literary salon--where guests, from 1788 to 1791, included Godwin (Ruston 16, Fitzpatrick, "WilliamGodwin" 14, 19). When, in the early 1790s,Godwin read and criticized the manuscripts of Alderson, Hays, and others, he was participating in a well-established tradition of treating women as intellectual equals and assisting their careers. (4)
Godwin's association with Inchbald was one of his earliest--and most fruitful--professional friendships with women. When the pair met on October 29, 1792, she, three years his senior, had retired from her first career as an actress and was already a successful dramatist and novelist. (5) He, after a decade of anonymous publications in an extraordinary diversity of genres, was writing the final books of Political Justice (published February 14, 1793). (6) Mary Shelley, in her fragmentary posthumous memoir of her father, "Life of WilliamGodwin," emphasized Inchbald's feminine appeal: "[Godwin] could not fail to admire her, and she became & continued to be a favourite. Her talents, her beauty, her manners were all delightful to him. He was wont to describe her as a piquante mixture between a lady & a Milkmaid" (58). Yet Godwin, who had read a manuscript draft of Inchbald's first novel, A Simple Story (1791), two years before he met her, was equally drawn by the "free or philosophical" (Boaden 1: 159) character of her mind. (7) Judging from his diary, he treated her no differently from close male friends, such as Thomas Holcroft and William Nicholson, with whom he engaged in regular political and philosophical discussions. (8) For example, on December 18, 1792, after attending Thomas Paine's trial in absentia on a charge of publishing a seditious libel--Part Two of Rights of Man (1792)--Godwin called on Inchbald to "talk of Erskine, France & promises" (Goodwin 271, Abinger MSS, Dep. e. 200). (Thomas Erskine was Paine's defence lawyer.) On February 27, 1793, their conversations took a more literary turn--"talk of Sheridan & reading"--but they soon reverted to philosophical topics: "necessity" on June 4, "education" on August 24, and "marriage" on September 16 (Abinger MSS, Dep. e. 200, e. 201). This last entry was cited by Kelly (Jacobin Novel 91n) as evidence that Godwin proposed marriage to Inchbald, but it is more likely that it refers to his criticisms of the institution of marriage in Book Eight of Political Justice. (9) The surviving evidence suggests that their mutual personal regard found its main expression in their comments on each other's works: in their frank admiration of each other's literary abilities, and in their equally unreserved criticisms of each other's perceived faults. (10) I'll concentrate on two examples of this mutually advantageous interchange.
First, in the early 1790s, Godwin acted as a valued source of professional advice to Inchbald. For example, mindful of the growing climate of government repression, which followed the Proclamation against Seditious Writings and Publications of May 1792 (Goodwin 208-67), he advised her against publication on politically inflammatory subjects. On their first meeting, they discussed her play, The Massacre, a tragedy based on the St. Bartholomew Massacre of 1572, which contained pointed allusions to the killing of 1,000 royalist prisoners in Paris in September 1792 (Boaden 1: 365n). When, after the visit, Godwin wrote advising her to withdraw the play from the press, Inchbald replied on November 3, 1792 that she found "so much tenderness mixed with the justice of [his] criticism" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509) that she was willing to agree. Again, Godwin regularly assisted Inchbald, who was acutely conscious of her lack of formal education, in preparing her manuscripts for publication. As well as revising her hugely popular comedy, Every One Has His Fault (1793), he corrected a draft of her second novel, Nature and Art (1796), in response to her characteristically direct instructions, given in a letter of January 24, 1794: "Pray mark bad spelling and grammar, obscurities, tediousness & c & c--and pray don't preach" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509). (11) Above all, Godwin encouraged her to persevere with the novel, which took her two years to write. When she sent him a tentative sketch, he provided affirmative feedback:
I perceive in this sketch the same sureness of aim and steadiness
of hand, which first told me what you were capable of, in the
"Simple Story." It seems to me that the drama puts shackles upon
you, and that the compression it requires prevents your genius
from expanding itself.... I know not what is to come, but what I
have already seen leads me confidently to hope the same mastery
in the execution of the remainder of your plan. Do not, I conjure
you ... desert a beginning that promises so much instruction and
delight! (Boaden 2: 354)
When she finished the manuscript, Godwin was again on hand to respond. According to his diary, he read it twice in December 1795, evidently approving it, since the following month Inchbald sold it to Robinson for [pounds sterling]150. (12)
Yet the flow of advice between the two writers was by no means all one-way. That Godwin learned as much as he taught is suggested by a letter to Inchbald, dated December 1, 1817, in which he recollected "with some emotion the sort of intercourse that passed between us when Caleb Williams was in his non-age, and in the vigor of his age. Particularly, I have looked a hundred times with great delight at the little marginal notes and annotations with which you adorned the pages of my writings of that period" (Boaden 2: 221). These annotations have not so far been identified, but Inchbald also gave her opinion of Caleb Williams, which she read just prior to publication, in several undated letters. After reading the first thirty pages, she wrote excitedly to Godwin, "Nobody is so pleased when they find anything new as I am.--I found your style different from what I have ever yet met.... I have to add to your praises, that of a most minute and yet most concise method of delineating human sensations" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509). Significantly, this first critical reaction was one of recognition as well as discovery: in singling out Godwin's economical depiction of psychological states, Inchbald highlighted what he had learned from her own methods of dramatic revelation of character in A Simple Story--a work he re-read frequently as a source of inspiration for his own. (13) When she had finished, she gave a more considered verdict: "Your first volume is far inferior to the two Last.--Your 2d is sublimely horrible--captivatingly Frightful.--Your 3rd is all a great genius can do to delight a great genius....--It is my opinion that fine Ladies, milliners, mantuamakers, and boarding school Girls will Love to tremble over it--and that men of taste and judgement will admire the superior talents, the incessant energy of mind you have evinced" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509). As well as correctly predicting the novel's appeal to all classes, Inchbald cautioned Godwin against politically outspoken remarks, "and these particularly marked for the reader's attention by the purport of your preface." It is not known whether or not Godwin toned down his political criticisms as a result of this advice, but when the novel appeared on May 26, 1794, the preface was withheld.
Second, in 1805 Godwin and Inchbald exchanged a series of letters concerning his new novel, Fleetwood (1805), and the four-volume manuscript of her private memoirs, which was much sought after by publishers (Boaden 2: 57, 63, 76, 231). When Godwin sent Inchbald a copy of Fleetwood, she replied on March 1 giving her reaction to the first few pages--"I recognize a Master's hand already"--and asked him to read her memoirs as "a profound secret" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 515). On March 7 she wrote again, giving a comprehensive assessment of Fleetwood's strengths and weaknesses. What seized her attention, as in Caleb Williams, was the psychological intensity that led the reader to identify with the protagonist. "Indeed," Inchbald remarked semi-playfully, "you seem, in this work, to know every thing--the secrets of my heart you have told a thousand times over in it, and that reader who does not find his own most secret propensities there, I can venture to say is no judge of himself" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509). The novel's greatest weakness, in her view, lay in the plotting. She condemned Godwin's use of "that teazing, tormenting & common place recourse of every writer novelist or dramatist, who makes the most dreadful events occur only for want of one moments explanation"--probably alluding to Fleetwood's implausibly rapid conviction of Mary's unfaithfulness. Yet the work's faults, Inchbald concluded, were outweighed by its chief beauty: "'tis all Human and in that, consists its excellency."
In return, Inchbald demanded an equal frankness from Godwin concerning her memoirs: "I charge you on your honour to be as rigid as possible on the demerits of this work, & not flatter me into a publication that I may Repent of all my Life to come" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509). (14) Her uneasiness concerning exposure of "my Real feelings"--in a letter of April 8, 1805 she alluded to the adverse reaction to Wollstonecraft's Memoirs--is reflected in a flurry of questions: "Shall I suppress it altogether? Or shall I take out the dullest parts & compress it to three or two volumes? Or, shall I take out real names & insert fictious ones & add interest to the story by some bold fictious incidents, and so render it a novel, in Lieu of Biography? ... In case of compressing, tell me what parts should be taken out." Although Godwin's replies have not been located, Inchbald's side of the correspondence indicates that his responses were prompt, affirmative, and constructive. (15) For example, on April 8, she wrote, "I am bound to you beyond measure for the trouble you have had, and you have given me so full an explanation that I have but one or two questions" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509). On April 13, she asked him to suggest some cuts in volume two, and sent him a list of contents so he could "prescribe without seeing the patient" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509). In another letter, undated but evidently part of the same sequence, she took up his "kind offer of more minute criticism still if I request it," and sent him the manuscript of volume two, confessing she was "totally at a loss where to curtail" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509). On May 11, acknowledging the final return of the manuscript, she thanked him "for the extreme trouble you have taken at my request and the extreme good nature with which you have borne your fatigue" (Abinger MSS, Dep. c. 509). Such communications demonstrate an unusual degree of professional intimacy, even by Godwinian standards. As late as December 23, 1817, Godwin was still encouraging Inchbald to publish her memoirs, but she eventually destroyed the manuscript, following the advice of her confessor (Boaden 2: 223, 1: 2-3). Even so, these letters reveal how much she trusted Godwin as a literary adviser and problem-solver, and how much he, in turn, could be relied upon.
Godwin, Inchbald, and their associates sought to live a life based on a shared philosophical commitment to unreserved discussion as a means of spreading truth. For these like-minded friends and acquaintances, writing was not a solitary process, but a shared, even collaborative activity, supported by a network of literary and social relations. In this way, Godwin's interactions with women writers challenge the traditional characterization of the Romantic author as a solitary genius, divorced from social reality, and prefigure other models of collaborative literary-political activity in the period, notably Keats and the "Cockney School," and Shelley and his circle. (16) Moreover, the literary interchanges of Godwin and his associates were based on intellectual equality between men and women, not confrontation or opposition. Yet Godwin's commitment to egalitarian professional relationships between the sexes was by no means confined to the 1790s. In later life, he continued to act as a magnet for women intellectuals and social reformers, including Harriet Martineau, Madame de Stael, and Frances Wright. (17) Perhaps the most remarkable long-term consequence of his treatment of women as intellectual companions is the oeuvre of his daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, which engages in continuous, creative dialogue with his own.