Frances Imlay (14 May 1794 – 9 October 1816), also known as Fanny Godwin and Frances Wollstonecraft, was the daughter of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the American commercial speculator and diplomat Gilbert Imlay. Wollstonecraft wrote about her frequently in her later works. Fanny grew up in the household of anarchist political philosopher William Godwin, the widower of her mother, with his second wife Mary Jane Clairmont and their combined family of five children. Fanny's half-sister Mary wrote Frankenstein and married Percy Bysshe Shelley, a leading Romantic poet, who composed a poem on Fanny's death.
Although Gilbert Imlay and Mary Wollstonecraft lived together happily for brief periods before and after the birth of Fanny, he left Wollstonecraft in France in the midst of the Revolution. In an attempt to revive their relationship, Wollstonecraft travelled to Scandinavia on business for him, taking the one-year-old Fanny with her, but the affair never rekindled. After falling in love with and marrying Godwin, Wollstonecraft died soon after giving birth in 1797, leaving the three-year-old Fanny in the hands of Godwin, along with their newborn daughter Mary.
Four years later, Godwin remarried and his new wife, Mary Jane Clairmont, brought two children of her own into the marriage, most significantly Claire Clairmont. Wollstonecraft's daughters resented the new Mrs Godwin and the attention she paid to her own daughter. The Godwin household became an increasingly uncomfortable place to live as tensions rose and debts mounted. The teenage Mary and Claire escaped by running off to the Continent with Shelley in 1814. Fanny, left behind, bore the brunt of her stepmother's anger. She became increasingly isolated from her family and died by suicide in 1816.
Contents
Life
Birth
Fanny Wollstonecraft was the daughter of the British feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the American entrepreneur Gilbert Imlay. Both had moved to France during the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft to practise the principles laid out in her seminal work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and Imlay to engage in speculative business ventures. The two met and fell in love. At one point during Wollstonecraft and Imlay's relationship, the couple could meet only at a tollbooth between Paris and Neuilly, and it was there that their daughter was conceived; Fanny was therefore, in Godwin's words, a "barrier child". Frances "Fanny" Imlay, Wollstonecraft's first child, was born in Le Havre on 14 May 1794, or, as the birth certificate stated, on the 25th day of Floreal in the Second Year of the Republic, and named after Fanny Blood, her mother's closest friend. Although Imlay never married Wollstonecraft, he registered her as his wife at the American consulate to protect her once Britain and France went to war in February 1793. Most people, including Wollstonecraft's sisters, assumed they were married—and thus, by extension, that Fanny was legitimate—and she was registered as such in France.
Infancy and early childhood
Initially, the couple's life together was idyllic. Wollstonecraft playfully wrote to one friend: "My little Girl begins to suck so manfully that her father reckons saucily on her writing the second part of the R[igh]ts of Woman" [emphasis in original]. Imlay soon tired of Wollstonecraft and domestic life and left her for long periods of time. Her letters to him are full of needy expostulations, explained by most critics as the expressions of a deeply depressed woman but by some as a result of her circumstances—alone with an infant in the middle of the French Revolution.
Wollstonecraft returned to London in April 1795, seeking Imlay, but he rejected her; the next month she attempted to commit suicide, but he saved her life (it is unclear how). In a last attempt to win him back, she embarked upon a hazardous trip to Scandinavia from June to September 1795, with only her one-year-old daughter and a maid, in order to conduct some business for him. Wollstonecraft's journey was daunting not only because she was travelling to what some considered a nearly uncivilized region during a time of war, but also because she was travelling without a male escort. When she returned to England and realized that her relationship with Imlay was over, she attempted suicide a second time. She went out on a rainy night, walked around to soak her clothes, and then jumped into the River Thames, but a stranger rescued her.
Using her diaries and letters from her journey to Scandinavia, Wollstonecraft wrote a rumination on her travels and her relationship—Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)—in which, among other things, she celebrated motherhood. Her maternal connection to her daughter prompted her to reflect on a woman's place in the world:
You know that as a female I am particularly attached to her—I feel more than a mother's fondness and anxiety, when I reflect on the dependent and oppressed state of her sex. I dread lest she should be forced to sacrifice her heart to her principles, or principles to her heart. With trembling hand I shall cultivate sensibility, and cherish delicacy of sentiment, lest, whilst I lend fresh blushes to the rose, I sharpen the thorns that will wound the breast I would fain guard—I dread to unfold her mind, lest it should render her unfit for the world she is to inhabit—Hapless woman! what a fate is thine!
Wollstonecraft lavished love and attention on her daughter. She began two books, drawn from her own experience, related to Fanny's care: a parenting manual entitled Letters on the Management of Infants and a reading primer entitled Lessons. In one section of Lessons, she describes weaning:
Childhood
Although Godwin was fond of his children, he was, in many ways, ill-equipped to care for them. As Todd explains, he was constantly annoyed by their noise, demanding silence while he worked. However, when he took a trip to Dublin to visit Wollstonecraft's sisters, he missed the girls immensely and wrote to them frequently.
On 21 December 1801, when Fanny was seven, Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont, a neighbour with two children of her own: three-year-old Claire and six-year-old Charles. She had never been married and was looking, like Godwin, for financial stability. Although Clairmont was well-educated and well-travelled, most of Godwin's friends despised her, finding her vulgar and dishonest. They were astonished that Godwin could replace Mary Wollstonecraft with her. Fanny and her half-sister Mary disliked their stepmother and complained that she preferred her own children to them. On 28 March 1803, baby William was born to the couple.
Although Godwin admired Wollstonecraft's writings, he did not agree with her that women should receive the same education as men. Therefore, he occasionally read to Fanny and Mary from Sarah Trimmer's Fabulous Histories (1786) and Anna Laetitia Barbauld's Lessons for Children (1778–79), but, according to Todd, he did not take great pains with their educations and disregarded the books Wollstonecraft had written for Fanny. William St Clair, in his biography of the Godwins and the Shelleys, argues that Godwin and Wollstonecraft spoke extensively about the education they wanted for their children and that Godwin's writings in The Enquirer reflect these discussions. He contends that after Wollstonecraft's death Godwin wrote to a former pupil to whom she had been close, now Lady Mountcashell, asking her advice on how to raise and educate his daughters. In her biography of Mary Shelley, Miranda Seymour agrees with St Clair, arguing that "everything we know about his daughter's [Mary's and presumably Fanny's] early years suggests that she was being taught in a way of which her mother would have approved", pointing out that she had a governess, a tutor, a French-speaking stepmother, and a father who wrote children's books whose drafts he read to his own first. It was the new Mrs Godwin who was primarily responsible for the education given to the girls, but she taught her own daughter more, including French. Fanny received no formal education after her stepfather's marriage. Yet, the adult Imlay is described by Charles Kegan Paul, one of Godwin's earliest biographers, as "well educated, sprightly, clever, a good letter-writer, and an excellent domestic manager". Fanny excelled in drawing and was taught music. Despite Godwin's atheism, all of the children were taken to an Anglican church.
Teenage years
Godwin, never one to mince words, wrote about the differences he perceived between his two daughters:
My own daughter [Mary] is considerably superior in capacity to the one her mother had before. Fanny, the eldest, is of a quiet, modest, unshowy disposition, somewhat given to indolence, which is her greatest fault, but sober, observing, peculiarly clear and distinct in the faculty of memory, and disposed to exercise her own thoughts and follow her own judgment. Mary, my daughter, is the reverse of her in many particulars. She is singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire for knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes is almost invincible. My own daughter is, I believe, very pretty; Fanny is by no means handsome, but in general prepossessing.
The intellectual world of the girls was widened by their exposure to the literary and political circles in which Godwin moved. For example, during former American vice-president Aaron Burr's self-imposed exile from the United States after his acquittal on treason charges, he often spent time with the Godwins. He greatly admired the works of Wollstonecraft and had educated his daughter according to the precepts of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. He was anxious to meet the daughters of the woman he revered and referred to Fanny, Mary, and Claire as "goddesses". He spent most of his time talking with Fanny about political and educational topics. Burr was impressed by the Lancastrian teaching method and took Fanny to see a model school in 1811.
It was not Burr, but the Romantic poet and writer Percy Bysshe Shelley who had the greatest impact on Fanny and her sisters' lives. Impressed by Godwin's Political Justice, Shelley wrote to him and the two started corresponding. In 1812, Shelley asked if Fanny, then 18 and the daughter of one of his heroes, Mary Wollstonecraft, could come live with him, his new wife, and her sister. Having never actually met Shelley and being sceptical of his motivations (Shelley had eloped to marry his wife, Harriet), Godwin refused. When Shelley finally came to visit the Godwins, all three girls were enamoured of him, particularly Imlay. Both Shelley and Fanny were interested in discussing radical politics; for example, Shelley liked to act as if class were irrelevant, but she argued that it was significant in daily affairs.
In 1814, Shelley spent a considerable amount of time at the Godwins' and he and Fanny may have fallen in love. Later, Claire Clairmont claimed that they had been. Fanny was sent to Wales in May of that year; Todd speculates that Godwin was trying to separate her from Shelley while Seymour hints that Mrs Godwin was trying to improve her despondent mood. Meanwhile, the Godwin household became even more uncomfortable as Godwin sank further into debt and as relations between Mary and her stepmother became increasingly hostile. Mary Godwin consoled herself with Shelley and the two started a passionate love affair. When Shelley declared to Godwin that the two were in love, Godwin exploded in anger. However, he needed the money that Shelley, as an aristocrat, could and was willing to provide. Frustrated with the entire situation, Mary Godwin, Shelley, and Claire Clairmont ran off to Europe together on 28 June 1814. Godwin hurriedly summoned Fanny home from Wales to help him handle the situation. Her stepmother wrote that Fanny's "emotion was deep when she heard of the sad fate of the two girls; she cannot get over it". In the middle of this disaster, one of Godwin's protégés killed himself, and young William Godwin ran away from home and was missing for two days. When news of the girls' escapade became public, Godwin was pilloried in the press. Life in the Godwin household became increasingly strained.
Death
Theories
On 9 October 1816, Fanny left Godwin's house in London and died by suicide by taking an overdose of laudanum at an inn in Swansea, Wales; she was 22. The details surrounding her death and her motivations are disputed. Most of the letters regarding the incident were destroyed or are missing. In his 1965 article "Fanny Godwin's Suicide Re-examined", B. R. Pollin lays out the major theories that had been put forward regarding her suicide and which continue to be promulgated:
Fanny had just learned of her illegitimate birth.
Mrs Godwin became more cruel to Fanny after Mary Godwin and Claire Clairmont ran off with Percy Shelley.
Fanny had been refused a position at her aunts' school in Ireland.
Fanny was depressive, and her condition was aggravated by the state of the Godwin household.
Fanny was in love with Percy Shelley and distraught that Mary and he had fallen in love.
Pollin dismisses the first of these, as have most later biographers, arguing that Fanny had access to her mother's writings and Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which openly discuss the circumstances of her birth. Fanny herself even makes this distinction in letters to her half-sister Mary Godwin.
Pollin is also sceptical of the second explanation, pointing to Fanny's letter to Mary of 3 October 1816 in which she defended her step-mother: "Mrs. Godwin would never do either of you a deliberate injury. Mamma and I are not great friends, but always alive to her virtues, I am anxious to defend her from a charge so foreign to her character."
Pollin finds no evidence that Fanny had been refused a position at her aunts' school, only that such a scheme may have been "in contemplation", as Godwin later wrote, although Seymour grants this explanation some plausibility. St Clair claims that Fanny was on her way to join her maternal aunts in Ireland when she decided to die by suicide. He believes that it was to be a probationary visit, to see if she could be a teacher in their school. Godwin's modern biographer, Richard Holmes, dismisses this story.
Suicide and aftermath
On the night of 9 October, Fanny checked into the Mackworth Arms Inn in Swansea and instructed the chambermaid not to disturb her. The same night Mary Godwin, staying in Bath with Shelley, received a letter Fanny had mailed earlier from Bristol. Her father in London also received a letter. The alarming nature of the letters prompted both Godwin and Shelley to set out for Bristol at once (although they travelled separately). By the time they tracked her to Swansea on 11 October, they were too late. Fanny was found dead in her room on 10 October, having taken a fatal dose of laudanum, and it was only Shelley who stayed to deal with the situation. Fanny left behind an unaddressed note, describing herself as "unfortunate", perhaps referring to Mary Wollstonecraft's description of her as "my unfortunate girl" in the note she wrote on "Lessons" before she herself attempted suicide:
I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existence of a being whose birth was unfortunate, and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavouring to promote her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will give you pain, but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature ever existed as
The note appears to have originally been signed, but the name was torn off or burned off so that her body could not be identified. When the announcement was printed in the local newspaper, The Cambrian, therefore, it did not refer to Fanny specifically.
At the inquest, Fanny was declared "dead", rather than a suicide or an insanity victim, which saved her body from various indignities. Todd speculates that Shelley arranged for Fanny to be declared "dead" (an appellation more common for the well-to-do) and removed any identifying items, such as her name on the note. She also concludes that to protect the rest of the family, he refused to claim her body. No one else claimed Fanny's body and it was most likely buried in the graveyard of St. John-Juxta-Swansea (now Saint Matthew's Churchyard). In fact, Godwin wrote to Percy Shelley:
Do nothing to destroy the obscurity she so much desired, that now rests upon the event. It was, as I said, her last wish ... Think what is the situation of my wife & myself, now deprived of all our children but the youngest [William]; & do not expose us to those idle questions, which to a mind in anguish is one of the severest trials.