But Love Is
Blind (as we’ve all heard), and Mary was always more impressed with talent than
with looks—with a glaring exception, Gilbert Imlay, of whom I’ve written
extensively earlier in this endless draft. But even in Imlay’s case, it was his
publication and travel experiences that attracted her as much as his good
looks—well, reported good looks: No
authentic image of him has ever surfaced, as I’ve mentioned.
So Mary
Wollstonecraft, already embracing the sort of
free-love/marriage-is-a-bogus-institution beliefs that would later draw her to
William Godwin (a fellow believer), made a rather frank suggestion to Sophia
Fuseli, the painter’s wife. Mary would join their household. They would … share
… Henry. (Yes, in that way.) Sophia,
startled, quickly rejected the proposal and told Mary she was no longer welcome
in their home.
Here’s how
Wollstonecraft biographer Janet Todd describes what ensued: She [Mary] was humiliated, bested by a woman
with half her significance [in Mary’s view]. … Presumably Fuseli made no effort
to contradict the banishment; Wollstonecraft left with neither hope nor
dignity. There was nothing to do but retire.[1]
In her 2005
biography of Wollstonecraft, Lyndall Gordon is not so sure there was a sexual
dimension to all of this. In her own
terms, she writes, Mary’s proposal
was innocent; the leer came from Fuseli. … Whatever the truth, this is a complex
relationship, but there’s enough to question Fuseli’s insinuations.[2]
We’ll
probably never know. The evidence is slight (letters are missing, journal
entries), and it’s unlikely anything new will appear to confirm or dismiss either vision of
these events. To me, however, it seems unlikely that Sophia would banish her
for anything but a sexual reason.
All right. Time
to return to Mary Shelley’s story—to her efforts to become a playwright.
 |
| Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie, ca. 1797, the year of her daughter's birth and of her own death |
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