William Godwin: Hypocrite or realist?
Philosopher William Godwin was a force to be reckoned with in the intellectual life of late 18th and early 19th century London. Looming larger-than-life in my new release, Maggie Almond and the Scandalous Sister, his values and beliefs shape the three sisters in the novel. Also, his cruel treatment of his most beloved daughter, Mary, moulds her into the writer she eventually becomes and inspires her most renowned novel, Frankenstein.
I could spend years reading and writing about Godwin. Highly intelligent and avant-garde, it was eventually the conflict between his beliefs and reality that saw his downfall as one of the leading thinkers of the era to an impoverished bookseller, constantly on the run from the bailiffs. But it was his ideas regarding love that proved the most difficult for society to grapple with.
In 1793, William Godwin raised the radical idea in his book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness that marriage was immoral.
‘Co-habitation is not only an evil as it checks the independent progress of mind; it is also inconsistent with the imperfections and propensities of man. It is absurd to expect that the inclinations and wishes of two human beings should coincide through a long period of time. To oblige them to act and to live together, is to subject them to some inevitable portion of thwarting, bickering and unhappiness. This cannot be otherwise, so long as man has failed to reach the standard of absolute perfection.’
In fact, Godwin was a proponent of free love. He called the institution of marriage a ‘fraud’ and ‘the worst of all laws.’ Godwin believed marriage would be a distant memory in the new, free society he envisioned for the future.
Yet, despite his views, Godwin married twice, first to Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797 and then Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801. Until Godwin’s new, free society was realised he found it easier to obey his society moral codes than buck against them.
So, when Mary Wollstonecraft, philosopher, writer and advocate of women’s rights, discovered she was pregnant, Godwin proposed, and Wollstonecraft accepted. Illegitimacy and the social stigma that went with it were not something the power couple wanted for their child.
Godwin and Wollstonecraft. The original power couple.
However, Godwin’s vision served as an inspiration for the Romantic literary movement.
In 1811 Shelley started corresponding with Godwin, who was now a bookshop owner with a paltry income. Shelley offered himself as both an admirer and a patron. Godwin jumped at the suggestion.
Percy Bysshe Shelley dreamed of establishing a rural ‘free love’ commune in the Lakes District. He longed for Godwin’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary, to join him in his community. Neither Shelley’s wife nor Mary were as enthusiastic about the proposal and Shelley never realised his dream of a commune.
However, the young poet took Godwin’s assertions about marriage and ‘free-love’ to be a rational justification for abandoning his first wife, Harriet, and eloping to Europe with Mary in July 1814. Godwin vehemently disapproved and reacted as furiously as any father of the era would. He refused to see Shelley and Mary on their return to London a few months later. Unashamedly, he still demanded Shelley’s financial patronage.
Mary and her father did not reconcile until Harriet Shelley’s suicide. Her death meant Mary and Shelley were free to marry. Once an honest woman, Godwin invited Mary back into the family fold.
You can read more about Godwin and his impact on Mary Shelley in my new release, Maggie Almond and the Scandalous Sister.