You're Dead to Me - Mary Wollstonecraft

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Greg Jenner and his guests Dr Corin Throsby and comic Cariad Lloyd discuss the life and legacy of Mary Wollstonecraft. As a successful ghostwriter, an advocate of human rights and witty book critic, we look into how Mary Wollstonecraft navigated a tumultuous 'Reign of Terror' in France, A treasure hunt, and multiple heartbreaks to be recognised as the 'Mother of Feminism' in part to her book 'The Vindication of the Rights of Woman'. Research: Chris Wakefield and Rosanna Evans Script: Emma Nagouse, Chris Wakefield and Greg Jenner Project Manager: Siefe Miyo Edit Producer: Cornelius Mendez

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC Kids show Horrible Histories. And today we are travelling back to 18th century Britain to learn about the life of radical thinker Mary Wollstonecraft. And to help me untangle the revolutionary rigour from the feminist philosophy, I'm joined by two very special guests.

In History Corner, she's a writer, broadcaster and academic who teaches at the University of Cambridge. She's an expert in romantic literature and early celebrity culture. She's a BBC New Generation thinker and four-time guest on this show. Having also appeared in the Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Vampires in Gothic Literature episodes is the fabulous Dr Corinne Throsby. Welcome back, Corinne. It feels like we're getting a bit like Marvel-esque here, isn't it? We've had sequels, now we're having the prequel that no one knew they wanted. But yeah, I'm absolutely thrilled to be here, particularly to talk about someone so amazing as Mary Wollstonecraft. Yeah, I guess that makes you the Scarlett Johansson. You've been

in all the movies and you're coming back for a prequel. And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, actor, writer, improviser. You will recognise her from all the telly, QI, having the news for you, Peep Show, Would I lie to you? She's also the host of the award-winning podcast about death, Griefcast, which is actually very funny. And more importantly, she's another You're Dead to Me alumna from episodes on The Witch Craze and Agrippina the Younger. It's self-confessed history nerd, the wonderful Cariad Lloyd.

Welcome, Cariad. Oh, thanks so much for having me back again. I'm excited. We are very delighted to have you back. I think of you as a sort of Jane Austen mega nerd because Austentatious, you write a new novel every night with your gang of funny people. So Mary Wollstonecraft is a little bit earlier. What do you know about Mary's life?

Is this going to be something that you're quite comfortable with? I did study Wollstonecraft a little bit because I went to Sussex and they are all about the radicals. I cannot hear the name Mary Wollstonecraft without immediately in my head afterwards going the vindication of the rights of women. Like it just all flows as one. I actually worked very near where she used to live at one point in my life on Newington Green. So I know a little bit about her but it's not a specialist, but I am a fan of her. So what do you know?

This is where I have a guess at what listeners might know about today's subject. And regular listeners will indeed know about Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley. Both women, of course, were feminist authors in their own right, but the OG Mary doesn't get the big glossy movies, the TV series.

I suspect the thing that you might have heard about her recently was a bit of a kerfuffle when a controversial metal sculpture dedicated to Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled in London in 2020 and it caused quite the hoo-ha because you could see the hoo-ha. But I'm not sure people know her life, so I think in this episode we're going to try and get to the bottom of some of these elements that maybe should be in a movie or a TV series, but maybe it'll be a bit sad because, warning here, Carrie-Anne, today's episode will have quite a few quite sad moments. And listeners,

we will give you a couple of trigger warnings in advance of the really sad stuff. So Corin, call me a cliche, but can we start with the start? Where was Mary born? What's her family's situation? So she was born in 1759 in Spitalfields in London. Very nice area now. Not so nice then. Noisy, crowded, polluted.

Her dad came into some money. He was a silk weaver. He weaved handkerchiefs and he decided to move the family to the country and to become a gentleman farmer. But unfortunately, he was terrible with money and an alcoholic and his ventures just kept on failing and he kept on moving the family. His drinking got worse and he was actually a very violent man and there's the very sad story that mary used to sleep outside her mother's bedroom to protect her mother from when he came home so it was a difficult start for mary and she really took on this protective role of the family where

she was the second oldest so she was kind of a mother to her siblings so it's not a jane austen romance novel then carrie and we're straight out the. So it's not a Jane Austen romance novel then, Carrie-Anne. We're straight out the gates. No, it's hitting much more of the Brontes, isn't it, than it is Austen. Yes. Yeah, that's a real bad combination, isn't it? Like, alcoholic and bad with money. It's like, oh, that's a bad start for her.

I was briefly going to make a joke about the idea of a gentleman farmer as someone who farms gentlemen. If only he'd thought of that, Greg. Maybe that would have made him some money. We've got a pretty sad start to Mary's life. She feels slightly like her other siblings are getting a better deal. Yeah, well, certainly compared to her male siblings. So she really felt like her mother favoured her older brother, Ned. When they moved to a lovely market town in Yorkshire called Beverley, the children got an opportunity to go to school. And Mary was thrilled about this, but then saddened by the fact that her brothers got to go

to a really good grammar school and she got to go to a girls' school where all she learned was pretty much needlework and piano and a little bit of French. So yeah, she really sort of felt that inequality with her brothers. So Cariad, what do you think this does for Mary's ability to make friends? Well, she's making friends with some really, really musical ladies who can say oui and non and make a lovely sampler. That's similar to Austin though, isn't it? Like her brothers were being educated and she wasn't. And so that's when she went to the library kind of thing that's how it was yeah that's how it was i mean women were property so why would you educate your table your table doesn't need to learn maths does it oh god

yeah no that's that's a yeah i feel the weight of male guilt greg is holding all the men's guilt in this episode like oh sorry i'm so sorry'm going to spend the whole episode apologising for a hundred years of patriarchy. I can see it. The sense we get quite early on, she's also quite an intense person. Corinne, is that fair? I mean, the way she makes friendships, it's a bit full on.

So when she goes to Beverley, she becomes friends with an intellectual dad who takes her in and gives her books to read. And she's really adopted by this family in many ways. And they have a daughter called Jane Arden. Mary adores her and really latches onto her. And Mary's aware of the fact that she's quite a controlling and demanding friend. No, that sounds a little bit like Christian Grey, that she says, I'm a little singular in my thoughts of love and friendship. I must have the first place or none. So yeah, she has these intense relationships and we'll see this as a recurring theme in her life.

She's heartbroken because she has to leave her friend Jane because her dad fails in Beverley, moves the family back to London. And then she meets a friend who really becomes really her best friend in the world. Yes. Now this young lady is introduced to her by another pair of surrogate parents. In London, when she's 16, she lives with Dr Henry Clare and his wife. He's a churchman. They are super into philosophy and they're giving her a crash course in how to think big. And they introduce her to a new best friend whose name is, let's say, unfortunate, shall we, Carrie? I'd have a guess if you want. The clues would be, think genitals and think body parts.

Is it Mr. Testicles? Hello, Stephen Testicles. Nice to meet you. Lord Testicles of Spitalfield. And my brother, Mr. Balls. Mr. Piss? Master Piss. Captain Piss.

She falls in love with Captain Piss. No, it's a lady. It's a young woman by the name of Fanny Blood. Oh, well. Oh, no. That's too good. I mean, that's a drag name. It's a name that's funny on both sides of the Atlantic.

American listeners are probably laughing for different reasons because fannies are bottoms out there. And of course, Americans listening, if you do have fanny blood, then please consult a doctor. Can I just ask, I know she's a hard life, Mary, but also like she seems to like

be meeting intellectual people. They weren't completely dropped out of society. Like she's still managing to get into these houses to be near books. Yeah, definitely. And she's obviously a really clever,

interesting, charismatic girl because these families are inviting her into those homes and she's obviously a really clever, interesting, charismatic girl because these families are inviting her into those homes and she's really eager to soak up whatever Fanny Blood. No, soak up whatever. She was the tampon to Fanny Blood is what we're saying. Exactly. Soaked it all up and expanded her mind tampon. They had a lot in common.

Fanny also had an alcoholic dad, was also the oldest girl who had to take care of her family. And in fact, Fanny took care of her family financially as well. She worked as a drawer of botanical drawings. And Mary was so impressed by this. Mary had this dream that she and Fanny would move in together, start an unconventional life together, which now would just be like two women sharing a flat in London, but then seemed like this utopian dream. Oh, that's so hot. They just basically wanted to start Sex and the City.

Well, Fanny let the team down because Fanny got engaged. Oh, Fanny. Fanny and complain about how shallow all the society women in Bath where she was living were. Her mother also needs caring for, so Mary then moves in with her mother. That relationship has been strained by a lifetime of, well, sadness and abuse, I suppose. Yeah, Mary always felt really let down by her mum. I mean, now when we look back, it's like her mum was in this incredibly abusive relationship. But Mary always thought she was a bit pathetic. And she quit this job to go back and care for her mother, but really felt very much like she wanted to escape her family and was really quite estranged from her family at this point. There's another awkward moment in the family histories that her sister,

Eliza, marries a shipwright and he's called Meredith Bishop. This is 1782. But Eliza also has a really tough time. And Meredith writes a letter to Mary saying, please come and help. And Mary gets there and it gets a bit full on again. It's true. She really throws herself into things. It became clear that Eliza was suffering from postnatal

trauma. She'd just had a baby and fell apart, really. And Mary came to live with her and pick up the pieces. And she started to suspect that Meredith was abusing her sister. Mary went on a bit of a crusade to free her sister from this situation, in which her husband owned her. They were worried that he would put Eliza into a mental asylum. And yeah, Mary convinces her sister to run away. But this means leaving her baby because the baby belongs to its father. And so in fact, this decision, which Mary made in good faith with all her moral convictions, but it really had quite tragic consequences in that the baby died and her sister really never forgave her.

Oh, that's hard. That is some hard, that's like EastEnders level storyline, isn't it? Yeah, sorry. The 18th century has got a lot of sad stuff that we're going to have to wade through today, I'm afraid. Whereas now everything's lovely. A glorious utopia now.

Eliza and Mary now are on the run a bit. They haven't really got any skills per se. They haven't really got any money. And so the obvious next move they're going to go and do, Carrie, is of course... Karaoke, bingo, girls holiday, get over it, like just get yourself out there. That's what they did. They went to Magaluf. No, they opened a school. It's quite a left field move. Oh, it was hugely difficult. But Mary came out of this realisation that her sister and her mum had been in these situations where they were beholden to men. And Mary felt that education was the best way of equipping women to be independent. got some backing from a wealthy widow called Mrs. Berg, who was from a town just outside of London called Newington Green. And this turned out to be an absolutely life-changing move for Mary, because here was a really lively intellectual scene around a church, which was led by a minister and philosopher called Richard Price. And he was very pro-revolution. He had really radical ideas and he became a huge influence on Mary and her thinking. And yay, Fanny Blood came to join the team and bring her skills. And this was a really great period in Mary's life. She's got this

intellectual stimulation. She's got Fanny nearby. It's all lovely. Who doesn't need some Fanny nearby? She's got Fanny nearby. It's all lovely. Who doesn't need some Fanny nearby? Was the school in a church? Or was the school in the building on Newington Green? It's in a building, I think.

Yeah, I worked in that building. Oh, did you? Really? Yeah. And it has the blue plaque on it. And there's like this huge old really drafty windows. And that's why I used to sit next to the big drafty window. And it's literally on newington green which is why her statue was placed there she's developing herself intellectually

she's finding her voice but she sadly can't keep hold of her fanny because fanny as you said is engaged and has gone off to portugal with her new fella she did go on holiday she did although it was nice that she was reunited with her fiance but f but Fanny was not well. She was a sickly Fanny and Mary really encouraged her to move to Portugal because she felt like it would be good for her health. Fanny actually fell pregnant and that only made her more ill. Mary, who was desperate to be with her and help her, went to Portugal. Mary who was desperate to be with her and help her went to Portugal and she arrived four hours before Fanny's baby was born oh wow but soon after Fanny died and so did the baby and Mary was absolutely heartbroken that's devastating isn't it oh my god to make that trip then oh it was a huge deal and she did it even though

she knew that it meant that the school would fail without her but she made that call and decided to go to fanny on the voyage back from portugal in december 1785 there was yet more drama this time mary was able to save some lives um the ship she's on encounters a french vessel that's in distress. Everyone on board is in trouble and the English captain of the ship says, no, we're not helping them.

And Mary's like, come on, mate, you've got to sort it out. So how would you convince an English captain to change his mind and save some Frenchmen? Well, we all know

she had excellent French skills and embroidery. So she immediately whips up a banner saying, choose love, welcome all refugees. The captain sees the delicate cross stitch, the beautiful blanket stitch.

He swayed immediately. God, this woman can sew. What am I thinking? And he welcomes him on board. She basically yells at him and calls him an absolute coward. And eventually he's just like, fine, fine. Women don't have guns or fighting, but we do have moaning. We will moan at you until you do what I ask.

She knew. That's all she had. She's done a good deed. And next stop in her extraordinary life, Corinne, she's off to Ireland. She goes to work for a very wealthy, landowning, aristocratic family. And she's sort of worried about it right from the beginning because these people are part of the colonisation of Ireland, the oppression of Catholics. So she has political differences with them. And she thinks the daughters are a bit spoiled, but really takes it upon herself to educate them. And what follows

is what I like to think of as a kind of montage, like all the best education movies, like Dead Poets Society and Dangerous Minds. She does mathematics. They go and visit poor people to see how privileged they are. The girls absolutely love her and she loves them, but Mary cannot stand their mother, Lady Kingsborough. She thinks that all Lady Kingsborough cares about is how she looks and how she is in society and going to parties and doesn't really care about her children. Very judgmental about these things. And she also hates Lady Kingsborough's dogs. She had these little yappy dogs that would pee in the middle of the room and Lady Kingsborough didn't care. She'd feed them with a spoon and she talked to them in a ridiculous baby voice.

Mary didn't think that kids should be talked in a baby voice let alone dogs so she constantly fought with lady kingsborough even publicly she actually in public would often criticize her boss which i know i mean good for her but unsurprisingly it meant that she uh she was pretty well not actually not promptly fired to lady kingsborough's credit. She kept Mary on for, I think, a good year before she finally fired her. And the other complaint that Mary has is that Lady Kingsborough wears too much rouge makeup. Mary hated women who cared too much about their appearance. This is part of Mary's philosophy, that women had been objectified and she didn't want them playing into their own objectification.

Cariad, have you ever had a boss whose petty little foibles just ate away at you and you couldn't deal with it? Yeah, like I did a lot of temping and I was not a good employee. I used to think it was a question. I remember I had my feet up on the reception desk while I was doing some sewing and they said, oh, sorry, Cariad, would you mind doing some photocopying would you mind i took literally and i was like oh i'm quite busy just doing my sewing because i thought they meant would you mind and she was like okay right and then walked off and i was like that was weird and then my temp agency called me and were like they don't want you back tomorrow what did you do i was like i didn't work i'm so sorry all. So she's been to Ireland. She gets

fired from that job. So what's next on the career resume? She's basically done every single job that an 18th century woman, you know, that was available to them. How old was Mary at this point? She's 28. Can I ask why she isn't married? Like, it's not quite bold in itself. It totally is. And this is part of her philosophy, that she is feeling that marriage is an impressive state and she doesn't want to do it. And so she takes up writing. And her first book, is it Thoughts on the Education of Daughters? Yeah, she wrote this book about female education.

She wrote a novel as well. And amazingly for her time, there'd been a number of very successful women writers at this point, but she was the first writer to be kept on retainer by a publisher with regular writing gigs. And this was with a publisher that she met through Richard Price, a guy called Joseph Johnson, who became a great mentor to her. He really believed in her and thought she was a great talent. And she was able to publish with her initials, MW, these regular pieces that she wrote for him.

So no one knew she was a woman and she could write whatever she wanted. And she did translations where hilariously she would totally fix the bits in the original that she thought weren't quite up to standard. She wrote books and these regular reviews. Carrie, what kind of book critic do you think she was? Oh, I bet she sat down with real relish. Let me just say, this book is so dreadful and so patronising. She was probably completely right at the time. But I mean, who doesn't love a

reviewer that doesn't hold back? Like, unless it's your work, obviously, no one likes that. No, she was absolutely brutal. She described some works as trash. And one line she said, only a few readers were still awake by the end of the novel. Can you imagine how good she would have been on Twitter? She would have been one of those people that you're like, oh, I shouldn't follow them, but they are very funny. Yeah, so she's writing these reviews. So she has written her first book on the thoughts of educating young women,

but she's also written a novel, which is called Mary, a Fiction, about a woman called Mary. You're like, uh-huh, I think a fiction is perhaps protesting too much, but okay. But then Joseph Johnson, her publishing friend, says, Mary, I think you should write children's stories. One of the stories, Cariad, is called Crazy Robin. And would you like to guess the plot of Crazy Robin? Right, there's a Robin. He is crazy. And all sorts of crazy things happen. He goes to Portugal,

he rescues people off boats. Corinne, fair to say Pixar are not going to make Crazy Robin anytime soon. It's quite bleak. Pixar are not going to make Crazy Robin anytime soon. It's quite bleak. Yeah. She had this idea that she wanted to write a story that would teach children that the poor and the destitute are worthy of our sympathy. Always a great start for kids' books. She really doesn't get her audience.

She uses the word declivity in the first sentence. You know, I'm all for improving kids' vocab, but to cut a long story short, Crazy Robin is a lovely guy, hard worker, falls on hard times, goes into debt, his wife and children die, all that he's left with is a beloved dog. The dog gets shot by a posh guy on a horse, and then he washes the blood off the dog's corpse and in a kind of weekend at Bernie's move carries the dead dog around with him and pretends that it's still alive so night night kids and Crazy Robin also at one point had been kept in the Bastille prison in Paris which brings me

neatly into the next section of Mary's life. It's 1789. And hey, French Revolution, ding dong. Where do you think Mary stands on the French Revolution? It's hard to say, isn't it? Someone like Mary. So pro-royalty. She must have been over the bloody moon when that happened. She must have been like, yes, finally. Pretty much spot on, really. She's responding to another writer, isn't she? Edmund Burke. She is. Edmund Burke, who is a conservative politician and thinker, he wrote a pamphlet called Reflection on the Revolution in France, saying these traditions are really important.

The way that our society has been structured has worked thus far and we should keep it. And she is like, hell to the no. She writes a pro-revolution pamphlet saying that we need to constantly be revising the way that our country is run and that this is really what will make us a moral utopia. It's the same time as Thomas Paine then? Yes, exactly. And this is The Vindication of the Rights of Men. Oh, yes, of course. Yes, that's her first one. She publishes it anonymously initially

and then it sells quite well and she puts her name on it and then it stops selling so well because people are like a woman with opinions? Um, no. The famous writer and politician

Horace Walpole calls Mary a hyena in petticoats which is pretty mean. It's that common thing of your gender is at the front of everything. Immediately it's like oh, she's a woman and of your gender is at the front of everything.

Immediately it's like, oh, she's a woman, and so you don't get to any of her opinions. And Vindication of the Rights of Men, which I did read so many years ago, is really good and actually really clear and surprisingly fresh. Whereas Burke is something I don't want to upset the Burke fans. It's a little tough to read. She does get a lot of backlash off the back of it, but she then does something rather bold, Corinne, which is she moves beyond the rational dissenter position.

Richard Price, all these people she's been hanging out with, she moves beyond their position and goes, yeah, but what about the women? And this is where, Carrie-Anne, your famous Mary Wollstonecraft vindication of the rights of women sentence comes in. It's an absolute classic feminist text, Corinne, isn't it? It's one of the gold standard, first great arguments for giving women an education and valuing them in society.

At the time, women were thought of as being incapable of rational thought. I mean, it's incredible to think of now, but this was a really deeply held belief. And she was basically saying, bollocks to that. Women might behave like idiots, but it's because they haven't been given the tools to think for themselves. And so they have to rely on men. And really, she was saying that this is a huge waste for society. If you have half the population sitting around curling their hair, filing their nails and baby talking with their dogs. You're going to miss out on these people contributing to society. So she was saying that men also lose when women are denied an education.

And she argues for mixed sex education of schoolboys and schoolgirls at the same time in the same schools. It's a really radical text. There are a couple of contradictions. It's not a flawless argument, but she writes it very fast and with great passion. Mary gets a lot of negative feedback. One critic called Thomas Taylor sneers that she will then be writing books on the rights of animals, vegetables and minerals,

because, of course, women are just like minerals. There's a lovely, angry letter sent into Ladies' Monthly magazine, I think it is, describing from a woman saying that her four daughters have read the book and they've all been corrupted in different ways. Do you want to guess what the four different corruptions were, Cariad? Oh, I imagine they'd started thinking, speaking, looking, not out the window gracefully, but at people and winking. The worst of all, winking. You're so close. So one has taken up horse racing, fox hunting and betting.

The second daughter has started learning Latin and Greek. Oh, no. The third began scientifically dissecting her dead pets. And the fourth was challenging men to jewels. Three of them sound quite radical. One of them sounds like an old man at the bookies. So there we go. So this is a period of intellectual celebrity for Mary Wollstonecraft.

So she's hanging out with famous people now. She's going to her publishing pals' parties. There at the parties are William Blake, William Wordsworth and William Godwin. All the Willies. But no Fanny, sadly. No Fannys. Oh, just Willies now. She was gone.

But also at the party is a very handsome artist by the name of Henry Fuseli. Do you know Henry Fuseli, Cariad? Have you heard the name? No, I don't. Apart from he invented the pasta, right? That's right. Corinne, does Henry Fuseli light her romantic fuse? Is this a bit of a love match?

It is a bit. So Henry Fuseli was a Swiss painter. His most famous painting is called The Nightmare. It's got a woman swooning in a nightie and a demon sitting on her and a kind of ghostly horse peeking through a curtain. But anyway, he was massively into sex, really. He was into talking about sex, theorizing about sex, drawing sexy pictures, having sex. He was married, always boasted about his affairs, including with a Protestant priest.

If he were alive today, he'd probably have a ponytail and a silk shirt that was undone, too many buttons. Mary was really taken with him, and they would have these long discussions into the night. Mary started to think that maybe, not that it could be something more necessarily, although he later boasted that she kind of was desperate for him. But she suggested perhaps she could move in in a platonic way into his household with him and his wife. His wife didn't go for it. That sounds like every woman at a party. You meet some guy and you're like, oh, we're having such a great chat.

So interesting. I've never thought of that. Oh, he's trying to sleep with me. And then Mary tried to wiggle out of it and make it platonic. But he was like, nah. And she gets humiliated in society for this suggestion of moving in and having a thruple. And everyone's like, look at you, you weirdo, radical loser.

I'm not saying she's fleeing, but there's an opportunity now to go somewhere else and to get away from these bad rumours. Where do you think she goes, Cariad? Is it Ibiza? She's done Magali. Oh, she goes to France, surely, to join the revolution. She does go to France. Absolutely. And Corinne, is it everything she dreamed it would be? Yes and no. So first of all, big props to Mary for going to France. There were so many pamphlets

at this time about the revolution, mostly by men, of course. And she really wanted to go and see this firsthand. Life in Paris is pretty exciting, and she loves this sense of being part of history. But she quickly realizes that the revolution has taken a turn for the super violent. She's witnessing all sorts of bloodshed, execution, violence in the streets. And she starts to realise that the new regime isn't that different from the old regime. She sees King Louis XVI being led to his trial. And she has quite an emotional response to it, actually. I mean, given that she'd been anti-monarchy and all that, seeing him taken off to be tried and later guillotined, she cries, right? She does. She really surprises herself.

And, you know, she's so struck by his dignity, is the way she describes it, in the face of his fate. And she's really moved by it. Being in France at this point as a British woman is actually pretty dangerous. So she's under state surveillance. She's at risk of arrest. She finds herself actually as a sort of bit of a moderate revolutionary. You know, in Britain, she's a radical radical in france she's a bit centrist all her friends in the kind of centrist party basically get rounded up and beheaded so she's not safe her views on women's rights are also clashing with the views of jean-jacques rousseau who's this big star in france and he's

absolute sexist and then even when she's trying to do a bit of spot-a-tourism, Corinne, even that's dangerous because she pops off to go and have a little look around Paris and to go look around Versailles. And even that's life-threatening. Yeah, there's always this sense that she's in danger. I mean, if they knew what she had written and what she was writing at the time about the revolution, she definitely would have been imprisoned if not killed. So she was witnessing all sorts of things, occasionally intervening, but she quickly learned that she had to really keep her head down. But still, there was this sort of quite vibrant expat community that she became part of. So while in France, we do get another fella walk into her life. It's an American, actually. He's

Captain Gilbert Imlay. He sounds saucy. Is he saucy, Corinne? He's definitely mysterious. He had been involved with the American Revolution. He was a land speculator. And so he was in France trying to sell American land to people who were escaping the French Revolution. Sounds dodgy. Yeah, he was a little bit dodgy. He was a great conversationalist. He was very literary. He'd written two books. He was very dashing. And Mary Wollstonecraft, she's now in her mid-30s and she has quite a few suitors in Paris at this time. She's really got a glow going on and Imlay notices her and he pursues her and they fall quite seriously in love. Being an American, he actually registers her as his wife, as Mary Imlay,

because at the moment, France is now in war with Britain. And so her now being an American citizen, married to an American, means that she is relatively safe compared to her British friends. I mean, she's not actually married, but she's registered as married. She's registered as married, yeah. So this is 1794, the period we call the Terror. Not a great name for a revolutionary period. How's it going? Terrifying.

Oh, okay. So she's settled in with this chap, but he keeps vanishing on her, going, Bye, I'm just off to go do a secret deal. I'll see you whenever. It's a classic sort of not quite working relationship where Mary loses her virginity to him, which is a big deal for her. And she really sees this as a commitment to each other. And she imagines that they will go to America and live together in America and that that will be amazing. And he is not quite so into it. So there's this real vicious circle of her clinging and him retreating.

It's interesting, isn't it? She was so radical in that she's happy to like pretend to be his wife and not get married but then her heart is still quite traditional in that she wanted one man to love when you'd expect it to be more like henry fusely of like yeah yeah she's sleeping around but perhaps that wasn't even conceivable for a woman to even get to that place so the start of that female revolution is just not to get married like that's enough she was obviously quite like still looking for stability it sounds like even in the middle of the terror like i mean that's bad choice to go to the middle of france in the middle of the terror to find your stability like mary babes no as a historian the thing i'm going to flag up also quickly is that she also is writing a really influential history of the French Revolution

while she's there. She's living it. She's seeing it. Obviously, she's a radical, so she's got a certain point of view, but it's actually a really important text and it often gets forgotten when people discuss Mary Wollstonecraft.

So look it up. It's called A Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution by Mary Wollstonecraft. Wow, I didn't know that. She was basically working on a documentary while she was there. She's doing an op doc. tell me more about the terror oh you're dead okay right so as well as producing a landmark history book mary also now produces a new human being she has a baby with gilbert imlay uh and the baby is named fanny after Fanny Blows.

Oh, Fanny. Yeah. But I'm already worried about what happens to this baby. Well, I think we talk about the baby actually in the Mary Shelley podcast about what happens to her when she grows up. She makes it through infancy, which is exciting. Oh, she did. This is a really difficult period in Mary Wollstonecraft's life because she is delighted to be a mother. She loves the baby, but she gets, like her sister, really quite serious postnatal depression. I think about

when I had my baby with all the support that I had, and I was a total mess. And Mary Wollstonecraft was in this situation where she was in a literally war-torn country away from her family and her close friends with no real support. And it was a really bitter winter after Fanny was born. And in fact, the Seine froze. And so there was a food shortage because food couldn't get in. It was a really, really bleak time

and she really struggled. Yeah, people are dying in the streets of starvation and cold. It's like historically cold winter. So she and the baby make it through, but incredibly tough times and Gilbert's not really struggled. Yeah, people are dying in the streets of starvation and cold. It's like historically cold winter. So she and the baby make it through, but incredibly tough times, and Gilbert's not really there. Oh, Gilbert, what's wrong with you? Gilbert's off. He can't handle it.

Of course he can't handle it. You can see that moment he turned up. He wasn't going to be useful when the baby turned up. We all knew that. At this stage, I'm now going to give listeners a trigger warning because we're now going to talk about serious self-harm. So if you want to skip ahead a couple of minutes, you're very welcome to do that. So Corinne, we now get, unfortunately, the Depression getting even more serious for Mary.

In 1795, she goes back to London to try and reconnect with Gilbert where he's gone to. But while she's there, she does self-harm, doesn't she? In those times, it was so difficult being a single mother. She was still, in inverted commas, Mrs. Imlay and wanted to make it work. When she arrives in Dover, she's full of hope that it will and he's not there to meet her. She's so distraught by his cold behaviour when they do finally connect. I mean, she's taught Fanny now to say papa. She's sort of really hoping to draw him into their family. When it doesn't work, she's still in the grips of depression. All the tragedy that she's had in her life, it all comes to a head at this point. And she decides to take laudanum, which was then a kind of common painkiller, an opiate, but she overdoses. We don't know exactly what happened, but she sent a letter to Gilbert

and he realised that she was probably going to try and kill herself and he seems to have been able to save her just in time. And Gilbert responds with classic empathy by doing what, Cariad? Let me guess, he goes away again. It's the opposite, actually. He sends her and the baby off, not to a spa or a recovery centre or a hotel or a hospital. He sends them on an actual mission to go and retrieve lost treasure.

Shut the front door, Gilbert. What are you doing? The woman's got postnatal depression. She's on opiates. She needs a rest, a nice weekend in the Cotswolds. Like, this is the least this woman needs. A mission for lost treasure. Yeah, in Scandinavia.

Oh my God, what? Gilbert! It's a pretty amazing story. Gilbert had done a dodgy deal. So Robespierre had banned luxury goods in France. And so he'd managed to buy the silver at a kind of bargain basement price, puts it on a ship to Scandinavia with a captain to bypass blockades around Britain and the ship disappears. So he is like, I'm going to kill two birds with one stone, get rid of Mary and hopefully retrieve my stolen silver. So Mary, bless her, is up for the adventure and she takes baby Fanny and her maid slash nanny Marguerite and like a big shout out such a constant in Mary's life and stays with her right to the end so yay for Marguerite but anyway two women and a baby set off on this huge adventure for Mary it was the difficult

journey but it was a time for her to have some reflection she left the baby with marguerite in sweden and goes to norway herself to try and track down this captain and she sort of spends some time clearing her head reflecting on the beauty of the swedish landscape writing she's writing loads at this point letters back to imlay she sadly comes to the conclusion that she and Imlay could still make this work. I mean, really, Mary. Oh, Mary, let it go, love. Read your own book. Read your own book. She tracks down the captain, but she can't get the silver.

She gets back to Sweden. There are three letters waiting for her from Gilbert. And they're basically, you're dumped, you're dumped, and you're dumped. Mary suspects that Gilbert's having affairs. We know he is having affairs. Again, second trigger warning. If listeners want to jump ahead again a couple of minutes, we get a second suicide attempt,

this time by drowning in the River Thames. But fishermen get there in time to save Mary. And Gilbert does come to visit Mary. How do you think he acts this time, Cariad? Oh, God. With care, sensitivity, thoughtfulness. He's been hit on the head and he's had a personality change. A giant tampon fell from the sky and knocked some kindness into him.

And then he went to Paris with his new girlfriend. He just sort of goes, bye. I want to swear so badly because that blooming man, no wonder she was a feminist. Still, let's pivot to some better news because,

you know, Mary Walsh-McCraft is a great writer who's been doing a lot of fascinating writing in the Scandinavian fjords. I don't know what she's doing there hunting down,

it's like a true crime podcast looking for lost treasureship or whatever. But she's been writing a lot. In 1796, she publishes the letters and they are praised. They are praised. My nuance window is going to be about these letters. So you'll hear more about them later.

But she also has made another fan in a chap called William Godwin. They have met before and their first meeting was, well, not ideal. It didn't go well. They met at a dinner party to meet Thomas Paine Carriard. And they were both really excited about meeting Thomas Paine. William couldn't wait to make a new friend. And Mary Wollstonecraft just dominated the conversation all night. Talked over him.

And he came away from that dinner party thinking, she is terrible. It's a bit Darcy and Lizzie, isn't it? Yeah, a little bit. So yeah, fast forward five years, they meet again. And he really is a really lovely figure. I'm such a big fan of William Godwin's. He was a brilliant philosopher, at this time a very famous philosopher, with similar ideas to Mary.

He's pro-revolution, but anti-violence. He's also a feminist. He's an atheist, so he doesn't mind that Mary is a fallen woman and has this baby out of wedlock. Yeah, they start a little friendship, very sweet in these kind of letters to one another, and it blossoms into a romance. So she'd had the heady captain and all the romance story romance, and then she found the real romance. Exactly. And Godwin, you know, he wasn't a dashing man. He's short.

He was awkward. Not a great looker. It was a real meeting of minds. In fact, he writes some love poetry for mary and she says it's not great they really were kind of equal in this way they really sort of paid each other out in their in their letters to each other and yeah she she gives them a few pointers but that's like a true partnership you can say to someone this isn't good like that's love isn't it love is not sending someone off to find your silver in

Sweden. Love is being like, you know that poem? I don't think you should publish it. Like I love you. So I'm telling you now. He's 40 years old. Mary is probably late 30s perhaps. And Mary gets pregnant again in 1796. And a bit awkward because she's technically not married, but sort of had been married to Gilbert Imlay. There's a moment of tension for Mary but William comes through for her. Yeah he does. They're in this awkward position because they know that if they do get married then that exposes the fact that she wasn't married. Everyone kind of thinks she was married because she's wanting to protect Fanny from being seen as an illegitimate child and so she's really

carrying on this pretense that she's Mrs Imlay but she wants to lose the name. She wants to be Mrs. Godwin. And William was explicitly anti-marriage. He'd written about how marriage is a terrible institution that enslaves women. Mary largely agreed with him. And so it was a difficult position, but they decided that for the sake of their unborn baby, it was best to get married. But they kept it way low key. Beyond way low key, there is one witness in the entire place. And in his diary, Godwin records it with a single word. Yeah, I love it. The single word, hilariously, so unromantic.

They get married in St. Pancras Church and the single word is PANC. Bit of hanky-panky doesn't mean you can still go to St Pancras Church so it has a beautiful beautiful graveyard and there is the hardy tree right next to it which is where they moved all the graves around this tree. Yeah and it's where Mary Watson Palford is buried as well so yeah it was a very important church to that family. She's finally got her happy ever after and that sets the tone for their relationship because in some ways this is a relationship of equals. Their domestic arrangements are also a little bit radical, but also rather sweet. Yeah. Much later, Virginia Woolf talked about

how much she sort of wanted to model her own relationship on this. It's quite modern. They moved to the Polygon in Somerstown, which is just behind King's Cross. And they had separate rooms for William so that he could go and work during the day so they had these two places to go so that they could really keep their own lives they were both into this idea of an equal partnership a partnership in which Mary doesn't have to do all the domestic side of things and that she can work and this was really quite radical at that time who doesn't want their own flat with someone nice next door that you love but you still have your own flat like that's joyous sounds brilliant

and it wasn't always perfect but really they were both extremely happy together well obviously i'm gonna have to burst the bubble because tragically, we know that to bring Mary Shelley into the world, Mary Wollstonecraft had to leave it. And that is 1797. This is the tragic death in childbirth of this great philosopher, this great historian, leaving behind a baby who survives and will become a very famous writer in her own right and leaving behind William Godwin as a widower. How does he react to Mary's death? He's just absolutely gutted. He's so devastated that he can't go to the funeral. And one of the ways that he dealt with his grief was by writing her memoir. And he decided to do this as a kind of act of love, tribute to her. But he did it in this very rushed way. He didn't consult her sisters, which they were extremely upset about.

And he didn't include her work, even though he meant it in the best way. He couldn't have predicted that the work completely ruined Mary's reputation. People were so shocked by the fact that she'd had two children out of wedlock. And they were shocked by the fact that God'd had two children out of wedlock. And they were shocked by the fact that Godwin was revealing this in this work. And it really destroyed her reputation. And she really fell off the radar. And apart from a few women writers in the Victorian and then 20th century eras, Elizabeth R. Browning was a fan and George Eliot read her. But really, she was quite obscure

and it wasn't until the 1970s that she got revived by the second wave feminists and started to be read more it's so interesting like why did he when she hadn't revealed that and she was obviously smart enough to know I have created this role for myself as a woman and it's very carefully curated and I can't reveal who I am because of society and he's not an idiot it's so interesting that I guess he was fully grief stricken it's a bit like you know I don't know giving a tell-all interview in like a red top paper immediately after someone died you're just like I just want to talk about her I just want to say everything there was also a sense that he philosophically believed in the idea of truth

so it was again, you know, with these guys, I love them and they're really into kind of living their ideas. But in this case, it really backfired on him. And I mean, he was devastated by this. Like he obviously didn't want it to have that effect, but yeah, it really destroyed her reputation. And, you know, it's funny, Greg, you mentioned it like right at the beginning of the podcast, how there isn't really much pop culture around Mary Wollstonecraft. But I was realizing recently that she's an exact contemporary of Alexander Hamilton. Where's the Mary Wollstonecraft stage show? I feel like we can do this. I remember getting to university and that was the first time I was like, what? Mary Shelley

had a famous mum? I was like, no one has mentioned this ever. And she wrote what? She's known to people who are looking, but she's not as common in the culture as like Mary Shelley is. Even now, she's this controversial figure where various generations of feminists have argued over her because she is imperfect. A lot of her work is contradictory. It's difficult, not everything to everyone and the sense that we need our feminists to somehow be perfect. Yeah, it's a shame that she doesn't get more credit. But you know, she got the statue. That's something. She was obviously an extraordinary trailblazer in philosophy, in history, in novels. She left

quite the mark on her own era and then has been rediscovered. But it's time now to hear a bit more about her works. The nuance window! bit more about her works. This is where Cariad and I take a little sit back and we let Corinne take the mic for two minutes to tell us anything we need to know about Mary Wollstonecraft. And you've already told us you're going to go into some of her work from Scandinavia. So without much further ado, Corinne, the nuance window, please. Well, you know how every travel documentary you see has a celebrity making constant comments about the emotional journey they're on?

Well, Mary Wollstonecraft practically invented that style with her book, the snappily titled Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Travelogues were hugely popular, mainly because very few people had actually travelled anywhere and they wanted to know what stuff overseas looked like and the gross things that local people eat. And these books were almost always written by men and tended to be very facts-oriented. And Mary reviewed at least 40 of them when she was a reviewer for Joseph Johnson, and of course she ripped them to shreds. But when she came to write her own version, she did do the factual thing and was suitably patronising towards the Swedes. But she also included personal revelations so that the reader is taken not just on a journey

around Scandinavia, but a journey into her mind. And she wrote in this really clear, direct and quite intimate voice that makes the reader feel like she's a friend. William Godwin read it before he and Mary got together and he later said that if ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this is that book. and its genre-busting mix of travel, philosophy, feminism, politics and memoir now makes it just seem way ahead of its time. It was also an enormous influence on the next generation of writers, the Romantics. Her sublime description of the transformative power of the Scandinavian landscape inspired not only Coleridge and Wordsworth, but particularly her own daughter and future son-in-law, Percy Bysshe Shelley, they all started to turn to nature to rev their imaginations. When I read the final scenes in Frankenstein that take place in the North Pole, I can't help but think of Mary Shelley reading about her mother's brave journey north. So check it out. It's freely

available online and I really recommend people read it. Marvellous. Thank you so much. So we love having you on the show, Corinne, because you often give homework and recommendations. I love giving homework. So, yeah. So what do you know now? So what do you know now?

This is our quiz for our comedian, Cariad, to see how much she can remember. Previous quizzes, you have been surprisingly competitive, Cariad, and you've twice scored a full 10 out of 10. I know, but I'm worried I'm quite tired. My small child woke me up very early. We'll let you off if it's not a flawless 10 out of 10. I think you'll do well here.

So we'll start with question one. In what decade was Mary Wollstonecraft born? 1759. Oh, yeah, okay. You didn't come to play, did you, Carrie? No. Question two. What was the name of Mary's BFF who became the namesake of her firstborn daughter? Oh, well, I wasn't sure if you were referring to Jane Arden or Fanny Blood. Very good. Basically a mark and a half, really. Question three. What did Mary open with Eliza and Fanny? A school in Newington Green that I used to work in. It was a school.

Question four. When Mary worked as a governess in Ireland, why did she not like her employer, Lady Kingsborough? Because she let the dogs sleep on the bed, they pissed everywhere, and she was too busy putting on the bed, they pissed everywhere, and she was too busy putting on her rouge instead of educating her children. Very good. Question five. What famous feminist text did Mary publish in 1792?

I want to say The Vindication of the Rights of Women, but it might be The Vindication of the Rights of Men. I'm not so sure on the date. Which one was it? The prequel or the sequel? Both is fine, but yes. It was Rights of Women in 1792, but you're right. It's actually Rights of Woman, by the way, everyone, singular.

Oh, of Woman, yes. Yeah, yeah. She only wants one woman to have rights. Yeah, that's right. Question six. According to one angry mother, name one of the bad influences a vindication of the rights of women had on her daughters. Oh, well, it was the fox hunting, learning Latin and Greek, duelling. Yeah, hunting, betting, dueling, Latin, anatomy.

Question seven. In the 1790s, why did Mary Wollstonecraft travel to France? To join the revolution. Exactly. Question eight. Why did Mary go to Scandinavia in 1795? Who could forget? Because her ridiculously selfish and horrible sort of husband

had lost some silver. And like any rational woman, she thought, don't worry, babes, I'll get that for you. Absolutely. Question nine. What behaviour at a party during the 1790s initially put William Godwin right off Mary? Talking over Thomas Paine, by the sounds of it.

OK, this for a perfect round. In fact, frankly, I gave you an extra half mark. This for better a perfect round in fact frankly i gave you an extra half mark this for better than perfect round mary wilson the craft sadly died giving birth to who oh mary shelly it was mary shelly 10 and a half out of 10 once again carrie ad lloyd a flawless. And once again, Corinne with brilliant stuff. So thank you, both of you. And listeners, if you've enjoyed this episode and want to keep the family history rolling on, then check out our episode on Mary Shelley with Corinne. And if you want to hear more from Cariad, then listen to the Witch Craze episode or the Agrippina the Younger episode, both very funny. And of course, if you like the podcast, then please leave us a review. Tell all your friends. Subscribe on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. All of that stuff.

Now it's time really for me to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We've had the fantastic Dr. Corinne Throsby from the University of Cambridge. Thank you, Corinne. Oh, thanks so much. I'm going to get on the phone now to Lin-Manuel Miranda and get that stage show happening. Brilliant. Great. Can I have some free tickets while you're at it?

Absolutely. Thank you. And in Comedy Corner, we've had the incredible quiz queen, Cariad Lloyd. Thank you, Cariad. She was Mary, Mary Wollstonecraft. See, you've already got it. That would be the first time.

Thank you so much. I love learning with you guys. This is like my open university. It's so good. And to you, lovely listener, make sure to tune in next time where we'll be joined by two more intrepid investigators as we pootle off into the past.

But for now, I'm off to Scandinavia to go and track down some missing treasure. Bye! You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.

The research was by Chris Wakefield with support by Rosanna Evans. The script was by Emma Neguse, Chris Wakefieldanna Evans. The script was by Emma Naguse, Chris Wakefield and me. The project manager was Saifah Mio and the edit producer was Cornelius Mendes. Hi, I'm John Ronson and I want to tell you about a new podcast

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