Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark Flashcards
How does Godwin dissolve in his reaction to ‘Letters’ in Chapter 8 of ‘Memoirs’?
“She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius which commands all our admiration.”
How does Godwin describe his and Wollstonecraft’s growing intimacy in Chapter 9 of ‘Memoirs’?
“It grew with equal advances in the mind of each … One sex did not take the priority which long-established custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed … It was friendship melting into love. Previously to our mutual declaration, each felt half-assured, yet each felt a certain trembling anxiety to have assurance complete … Mary rested her head upon the shoulder of her lover, hoping to find a heart with which she might safely treasure her world of affection - fearing to commit a mistake, yet, in spite of her melancholy experience, fraught with that generous confidence, which, in a great soul, is never extinguished.
What did Fanny call Godwin?
“Man”
What does Wollstonecraft say about death?
“A desire of preserving the body seems to have prevailed in most countries of the world, futile as it is to term it a preservation, when the noblest parts are immediately sacrificed merely to save the muscles, skin and bone from rottenness. When I was shown these human petrifactions, I shrank back with disgust and horror. ‘Ashes to ashes!’ thought I - ‘Dust to dust!’ - If this be not dissolution, it is something worse than natural decay.
“It is treason against humanity, thus to lift up the awful veil which would fain hide its weakness. The grandeur of the active principle is never more strongly felt than at such a sight; for nothing is so ugly as the human form when deprived of life, and thus dried into stone, merely to preserve the most disgusting image of death.
“The contemplation of noble ruins produces a melancholy that exalts the mind. - We take a retrospect of the exertions of man, the fate of empires and their rulers; and marking the grand destruction of ages, it seems the necessary change of time leading to improvement. - Our very soul expands, and we forget our littleness; how painfully brought to our recollection by such vain attempts to snatch from decay what is destined so soon to perish.”
What does she go on to say about life, in the same passage?
“Life, what art thou? Where goes this breath? this “I”, so much alive? In what element will it mix, giving or receiving fresh energy? - What will break the enchantment of animation? - For worlds, I would not see a form I loved - embalmed in my heart - thus sacrilegiously handled! Pugh! my stomach turns. - Is this all the distinction of the rich in the grave? - They had better quietly allow the scythe of equality to mow them down with the common mass, than struggle to become a monument of the instability of human greatness.”
What reverie does Wollstonecraft fall into from rowing the boat “across the water, among the rocks”?
“It was not difficult; and I do not know a pleasanter exercise. I soon became expert, and my train of thinking kept time, as it were, with the oars, or I suffered the boat to be carried along by the current, indulging a pleasing forgetfulness, or fallacious hopes. - How fallacious! yet, without hope, what is to sustain life, but the fear of annihilation - the only thing of which I have ever felt a dread - I cannot bear to think of being no more - of losing myself - though existence is often but a painful consciousness of misery; nay, it appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust - ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together, Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.”
- She then describes the jellyfish in detail, which still seems significant to her thoughts on life and death; “Touching them, the cloudy substance would turn or close, first on one side, then on the other, very gracefully; but when I took one of them up in the ladle with which I heaved the water out of the boat, it appeared only a colourless jelly.”
And then she moves back to less emotional perceptions: “I did not see any of the seals”
Why does Wollstonecraft want to go further north in Norway, after Christiania?
“Why? not only because the country, from all I can gather, is most romantic, abounding in forests and lake, and the air pure, but I have heard much of the intelligence of the inhabitants, substantial farmers, who have none of that cunning to contaminate their simplicity, which displeased me so much in the conduct of the people on the sea coast. A man, who has been detected in any dishonest act, can no longer live among them. He is universally shunned, and shame becomes the severest punishment. Such a contempt have they, in fact, for every species of fraud, that they will not allow the people on the western coast to be their countrymen; so much do they despise the arts for which those traders who live on the rocks are notorious.
“The description I received of them carried me back to the golden age: independence and virtue; affluence without vice; cultivation of mind, without depravity of heart … I want faith! My imagination hurries me forward to seek an asylum in such a retreat from all the disappointments I am threatened with; but reason drags me back, whispering that the world is still the world, and man the same compound of weakness and folly, who must occasionally excite love and disgust, admiration and contempt. But this description, though it seems to have been sketched by a fairy pencil, was given me by a man of sound understanding, whose fancy seldom appears to run away with him.” (149)
What line of King Lear does Wollstonecraft use in Letter Fifteen?
“When the mind’s free, / The body’s delicate”
“I did not know I was wet before the hostess remarked it. My imagination has never yet severed me from my griefs - and my mind has never been so free as to allow my body to be delicate”
How is imagination depicted at the start of Letter Fifteen, when she has been unable to see the cascade at Frederikstad?
“How I am altered by disappointment! - When going to Lisbon, the elasticity of my mind was sufficient to ward off weariness, and my imagination still could dip her brush in the rainbow of fancy, and sketch futurity in glowing colours. Now - but let me talk of something else - will you go with me to the cascade?” 151
This is adapted from a private letter to Imlay from Hull, 1795.
How does Wollstonecraft rhapsodise on death, suicide, and immortality in letter 15?
She admires the noble forests, imagines forest fires and the destruction they could wreak.
“I have often mentioned the grandeur, but I feel myself unequal to the task of conveying an idea of the beauty and elegance of the scene when the spiral tops of the trees are loaded with ripening seed, and the sun gives a glow to their light green tinge … some sapling struggling for existence … The pine and fir woods, left entirely to nature, display an endless variety; and the paths in the wood are not entangled with fallen leaves, which are only interesting whilst they are fluttering between life and death. The grey cobweb-like appearance of the aged pines is a much finer image of decay; the fibres whitening as they lose their moisture, imprisoned life seems to be stealing away. I cannot tell why - but death, under every form, appears to me like something getting free - to expand in I know not what element; nay I feel that this conscious being must be as unfettered, have the wings of thought, before it can be happy.
“Reaching the cascade, or rather cataract, the roaring of which had a long time announced its vicinity, my soul was hurried by the falls into a new train of reflections. The impetuous dashing of the rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the exploring eye, produced an equal activity in my mind: my thoughts darted from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its misery? Still the tumultuous emotions this sublime object excited, were pleasurable; and, viewing it, my soul rose, with renewed dignity, above its cares - grasping at immortality - it seemed as impossible to stop the current of my thoughts, as of the always varying, still the same, torrent before me - I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of life to come.”
Godwin describes Wollstonecraft as Werther
“The situation in which Mary was introduced to her, bore a resemblance to the first interview of Werter with Charlotte”
This was deleted in second edition.
In Letter 5, what does Wollstonecraft say about human evolution, and warfare as central to progress?
“Man must therefore have been placed in the north, to tempt him to run after the sun, in order that the different parts of the world might be peopled. Nor do I wonder that hordes of barbarians always poured out of these regions to seek for milder climes, when nothing like cultivation attached them to the soil; especially when we take into view that the adventuring spirit, common to man, is naturally stronger and more general during the infancy of society. The conduct of the followers of Mahomet, and the crusaders, will definitely corroborate my assertion.”
