Mary Wollstonecraft | Page 6

unquestioning obedience even in trifles, and to making
them as afraid of her displeasure as they were of their father's anger. "It
is perhaps difficult to give you an idea of the petty cares which
obscured the morning of my life," Mary declares through her
heroine,--"continual restraint in the most trivial matters, unconditional
submission to orders, which as a mere child I soon discovered to be
unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory. Thus are we
destined to experience a mixture of bitterness with the recollection of
our most innocent enjoyment." Edward, as the mother's favorite,
escaped her severity; but it fell upon Mary with double force, and was
with her carried out with a thoroughness that laid its shortcomings bare,
and consequently forced Mrs. Wollstonecraft to modify her treatment
of her younger children. This concession on her part shows that she
must have had their well-being at heart, even when her policy in their
regard was most misguided, and that her unkindness was not, like her
husband's cruelty, born of caprice. But it was sad for Mary that her
mother did not discover her mistake sooner.
When Mary was five years old, and before she had had time to form
any strong impressions of her earliest home, her father moved to
another part of Epping Forest near the Chelmsford Road. Then, at the
end of a year, he carried his family to Barking in Essex, where he

established them in a comfortable home, a little way out of the town.
Many of the London markets were then supplied from the farms around
Barking, so that the chance for his success here was promising.
This place was the scene of Mary's principal childish recollections and
associations. Natural surroundings were with her of much more
importance than they usually are to the very young, because she
depended upon them for her pleasures. She cared nothing for dolls and
the ordinary amusements of girls. Having received few caresses and
little tender nursing, she did not know how to play the part of mother.
Her recreation led her out of doors with her brothers. That she lived
much in the open air and became thoroughly acquainted with the town
and the neighborhood, seems certain from the eagerness with which she
visited it years afterwards with Godwin. This was in 1796, and Mary
with enthusiasm sought out the old house in which she had lived. It was
unoccupied, and the garden around it was a wild and tangled mass.
Then she went through the town itself; to the market-place, which had
perhaps been the Mecca of frequent pilgrimages in the old times; to the
wharves, the bustle and excitement of which had held her spellbound
many a long summer afternoon; and finally from one street to another,
each the scene of well-remembered rambles and adventures. Time can
soften sharp and rugged lines and lighten deep shadows, and the
pleasant reminiscences of Barking days made her overlook bitterer
memories.
That there were many of the latter, cannot be doubted. Only too often
the victim of her father's cruel fury, and at all times a sufferer because
of her mother's theories, she had little chance for happiness during her
childhood. She was, like Carlyle's hero of "Sartor Resartus," one of
those children whose sad fate it is to weep "in the playtime of the
others." Not even to the David Copperfields and Paul Dombeys of
fiction has there fallen a lot so hard to bear and so sad to record, as that
of the little Mary Wollstonecraft. She was then the most deserving
object of that pity which later, as a woman, she was always ready to
bestow upon others. Her affections were unusually warm and deep, but
they could find no outlet. She met, on the one hand, indifference and
sternness; on the other, injustice and ill-usage. It is when reading the

story of her after-life, and learning from it how, despite her masculine
intellect, she possessed a heart truly feminine, that we fully appreciate
the barrenness of her early years. She was one of those who, to use her
own words, "cannot live without loving, as poets love." At the strongest
period of her strong womanhood she felt, as she so touchingly
confesses in her appeals to Imlay, the need of some one to lean
upon,--some one to give her the love and sympathy, which were to her
what light and heat are to flowers. It can therefore easily be imagined
how much greater was the necessity, and consequently the craving
caused by its non-gratification, when she was nothing but a child.
Overflowing with tenderness, she dared not lavish it on the mother who
should have been so ready to receive it. Instead of the confidence which
should exist between mother and daughter, there was in their case