The Ladies Finger is delighted to bring you this excerpt from Bee Rowlatt’s In Search of Mary, a biographical treasure hunt in search of the first celebrity feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Rowlatt travels from the coasts of Norway to a naked re-birthing in California, via revolutionary Paris, to learn about her long-time hero. At the point at which this excerpt is situated, Rowlatt and infant son are in Norway tracing Wollstonecraft’s mettlesome adventures in Scandinavia.
Hours later, still recovering from the epic breakfast, I think about Marguerite and those unknown people who keep the known people known. Was Wollstonecraft good to
Marguerite? She defends vulnerable women, but does this play out in her treatment of her and Frances’s faithful companion?
Marguerite’s appearances in Letters from Norway are fleeting – there’s not that much of an impression. Which is odd, because Wollstonecraft goes off all the time about how Swedish women treat their servants.
Marguerite started working for Wollstonecraft back in Paris. She gets debilitating seasickness every time they travel in a boat. She is scared of steep roads and cautious of strangers. “Poor Marguerite!” says Wollstonecraft breezily
(she never gets seasick and is never cautious). Marguerite is also a first-hand witness to Wollstonecraft’s agonies with Imlay. It is she who is sent, again and again and again, to strange post offices in the hope of collecting a letter from him. There must have been many occasions to think, “Mon Dieu, I didn’t sign up for this.”
Towards the end, when they’re homeward-bound, Wollstonecraft, Frances and Marguerite are travelling from Denmark to Germany. They’ve been on the road for some time. When Marguerite and baby Frances both fall asleep, Wollstonecraft is relieved – they have so little in common. Marguerite’s excitable chattering about the strange foreign fashions begins to grate. But she poignantly adds that Marguerite’s “happy thoughtlessness” and “gaite du coeur” are “worth all my philosophy?” If only she, like Marguerite, could simply be happy…
Even if Wollstonecraft sounds high-handed, it’s unlikely she was unkind to her chirpy companion. At least, I don’t want her to be, so I plough around for evidence. Her Original Stories, an early kids’ book of excruciating primness, has a worthy chapter on ‘Behaviour to Servants – True Dignity of Character’. And although Wollstonecraft certainly gave her peers the haranguing of their lives, her future husband, Godwin writes: “To her servants there was never a mistress more considerate or kind.”
She herself describes with the usual indignation how
… ladies of the most exquisite sensibility, who were continually exclaiming against the cruelty of the vulgar to the brute creation, have in my presence forgot that their attendants had human feelings, as well as forms. I do not know of a more agreeable sight than to see servants part of a family.
But what Wollstonecraft doesn’t do is reflect on her own privilege in the current scenario: the fact that she is being enabled in her quest, as Knut points out, by another woman’s hard work. And what irony that, until now, neither do I. Searching back and forth for Marguerite references in Wollstonecraft’s book while capering around on a fabulous adventure. And far away, back home, my own nanny Nori, steps up whenever Justin’s sent on another foreign trip.
Remember how I resented Wollstonecraft that early morning in Kragero – oh well, it’s fine for her, she’s got a maid – remember that? It’s also true of me, and why it’s possible for me to do this. If it wasn’t for Nori… The thought trails out and leaves me comfortable. We’ve all heard the breezy career mum describing her nanny as “like my wife!” This complex relationship between women, of co-dependency and hierarchy, is an untapped source.
Elephant taps on door: hello, just popping round to come and sit in the middle of your room. Middle-class women are the direct beneficiaries of this inequality: it’s a source of both freedom and guilt. So far I have avoided looking the elephant in the eye. Something tells me this may not last much longer.
Wollstonecraft has done both sides. She was once a governess. She’s almost certainly suffering from depression, and it’s not her finest hour. The letters she sends to her sisters reveal something of a nightmare employee, and at least three of Wollstonecraft’s biographers feel sympathy with her boss, Lady Kingsborough. In episodes that have a flavour of modern kiss-and-tell, Wollstonecraft spills the nanny beans on the lisping, decadent mother who prefers to lie around in satins with her lap dogs rather than care for her children.
When Lady K tries to include her governess socially at fancy parties, Wollstonecraft sees the invitations as patronizing and enraging and uses them to satirise her boss. (Despite her vast wealth, Lady Kingsborough was married off aged fifteen for “breeding”. She bore twelve children and had no significant education. Maybe, just maybe, her rights needed vindicating too?) The lady tries to give the governess a cheap cotton dress. Wollstonecraft not only rejects it, but storms off and sulks in her room until Lady K has to come and apologise to her.
Wollstonecraft boasts that the children like her more than their mother. Even if this is true, she relishes it too much: “At the sight of their mother they tremble and run to me for protection” and the “sweet little boy… calls himself my son”. And while sulking in her room, Wollstonecraft is also writing a book, Mary: A Fiction, in which the eponymous heroine’s rough-cheeked mother packs her children off to be cared for by nurses, while she lies on cushions playing with her dogs. Beware the revenge of the nanny.
There’s something unsettling in the stand-off between a chippy young Wollstonecraft and her aristocratic new environment. Wollstonecraft picks incessantly on Lady K’s looks and beauty regime, but his Lordship rarely takes any flack. Surely he gave as much cause for anger? But he gets off lightly. It’s the yawnsome old spectacle of the catfight. It’s easier to slag women off for having childcare than to address the bigger picture. I’ve done it myself. My heart sinks a little that Wollstonecraft did it too.
If anything, Wollstonecraft’s own governess memories should make her more supportive of the loyal and cheerful Marguerite. I think again about my nanny, Nori. Like Marguerite, she is impressive. She finished her degree in a second language alongside working with us. She works part-time, and if it’s been a few days since her last shift I physically droop with relief when she walks in the door. She’s seen us through house moves, nit infestations, miscarriages, pregnancy and newborn madness. She puts up with chaos, shouty arguments and unpredictability; in exchange she provides stability and calm. In short, she delivers sanity. How do you thank someone for that?
Gratitude doesn’t come easily where childcare is involved. I’d like to blame this thought on someone else but secretly I’ve thought it myself: childcare should be good and loveable, but not too good and loveable. Do mothers resent success in a carer? Of course! It’s hard enough to love your own kids all day long. How much harder must it be if they are someone else’s, poking your bum and asking about muffin tops? I think for a while about how to be more appreciative then sign with satisfaction about my benevolent intentions. It’s easy to be a good person at long distance.
Excerpted with permission from Bloomsbury India. In Search of Mary: The Mother of all Journeys, by Bee Rowlatt. Rs 399, 288 pages.