This Was Followed By Her "Vindication Of The Rights Of
Woman While The Air Was Full Of Declamation On The
"Rights of Man."
The claims made in this little book were in advance of the opinion
of that day, but
They are claims that have in our day been conceded.
They are certainly not revolutionary in the opinion of the world
that has become a hundred years older since the book was written.
At this the Mary Wollstonecraft had moved to rooms in Store Street,
Bedford Square. She was fascinated by Fuseli the painter, and he
was a married man. She felt herself to be too strongly drawn
towards him, and she went to Paris at the close of the year 1792, to
break the spell. She felt lonely and sad, and was not the happier
for being in a mansion lent to her, from which the owner was away,
and in which she lived surrounded by his servants. Strong womanly
instincts were astir within her, and they were not all wise folk who
had been drawn around her by her generous enthusiasm for the new
hopes of the world, that made it then, as Wordsworth felt, a very
heaven to the young.
Four months after she had gone to Paris, Mary Wollstonecraft met at
the house of a merchant, with whose wife she had become intimate, an
American named Gilbert Imlay. He won her affections. That was in
April, 1793. He had no means, and she had home embarrassments, for
which she was unwilling that he should become in any way
responsible.
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